Times – “Bias at the Beeb – Official“
There are some things you do not need an official report to tell you – that John Prescott thinks he is a babe magnet, that President Mugabe is not entirely in favour of white farmers and that Al-Qaeda takes a pretty dim view of the West. The report commissioned by the BBC into itself concluded with something equally blindingly obvious. It said that the organisation is institutionally biased and especially gullible to the blandishments of politically driven celebrities, such as Bono and Bob Geldof. Almost anyone in Britain could have told the BBC that for free, but maybe it’s better to have it in an official report.
Even taking into account the small but insistent internal voice pointing out that the Times is part of the Great Satan Murdoch’s media empire, there’s not much to disagree with there.
” … what emerges from the report is a picture of an organisation with a liberal, anti-American bias and an almost teenage fascination with fashionable causes … the BBC is a self-perpetuating liberal arts club.”
Telegraph – “BBC report finds bias within corporation”
The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded. The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased – and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.
After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial. But it says coverage of Live 8, the 2005 anti-poverty concerts organised by rock star campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono and writer Richard Curtis, failed to properly debate the issues raised. Instead, at a time when the corporation was renegotiating its charter with the government, it allowed itself to effectively become a promotional tool for Live 8, which was strongly supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Geldof, Bono and Curtis were attempting to pressure world leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, which was taking place at the same time, to help reduce poverty in developing countries under the banner ‘Make Poverty History’.
Mr Blair said the campaign was a “mighty achievement”. The huge Live 8 concerts across the world were its culmination and the BBC cleared its schedules to show them, with coverage on BBC One, Two and Three and Radio One and Two. Around the same time it also screened a specially-written episode of Curtis’s popular sitcom The Vicar of Dibley that featured a minute long Make Poverty History video and saw characters urged to support it. And it aired another Curtis drama, The Girl in the Café, in which Bill Nighy falls in love with an anti-poverty campaigner – even giving Gordon Brown an advance copy. The BBC also ran a week long Africa special featuring a series of documentaries by Geldof and a day celebrating the National Health Service, prompting Sky News political editor Adam Boulton to tell a House of Lords select committee it was in danger of peddling government propaganda.
The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.
(En passant, the BBCs uncritical coverage of the millionaires Geldof, Bono and Curtis illustrates neatly a feature of modern philanthropy. In Victorian times a rich man with a conscience would put his hands in his own pockets to fund a worthy cause – a tradition which continues in America (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett) to this day. Across the water the favoured option of a charitably inclined multimillionaire is to get poorer people to fund your favourite causes via higher taxation – while in some cases avoiding such taxes yourself.)
Strangely the Observer headlines its report “Vicar of Dibley accused of breaking BBC guidelines“. Can’t imagine why. But they also have BBC insider Richard Tait’s view of the report.
UPDATE 18/06 – Commenter Richy is clairvoyant !
“If overly critical then surely the it’ll be placed in the “england” section or the “entertainment” section.”
“Entertainment” it is !
You can find the report here. Plenty of pdfs to get through. The “impartiality monitoring group” doesn’t look like a diverse cross-section of British political opinion to me – you do wonder what political perspectives the man who “co-founded the Democracy Coalition for Children and Young
People” or Kat Fletcher bring to the party.
More coverage at Times (also under Entertainment), Telegraph, Mail, more Sunday Times. Oh, and apologies for calling a BBC Trustee a BBC ‘insider’. Cultural misunderstanding … via commenter JBH, the Michael Crick anecdote about BBC execs all being Guardian readers. Sounds too good to be true – Mr Crick seems to have a puckish sense of humour. But I’m sure it “illustrates a wider truth”, as Dan Rather and Piers Morgan would say.
An excellent video about the evil BBCs bias
come on uv – you are a troll
no im not
This report is still a whitewash: “its coverage of conventional politics is judged to be fair and impartial”
While the support for Geldof and Bono is sickly, simplified and unquestioning at least it is well meant. Compare this to the African news output. Al-queda in Somalia are admired for bringing “law and order” to the country. Bbc viewers and listeners are not educated about Darfur because it would mean using the “M” word, show China in a bad light and reveal the structural irrelevance of the UN. This Bbc report sees Live 8 and the culture of celebrity as an easy, non-threatening, scapegoat. It is being used to hide the insidious, ugly and evil bias of the BBC.
I doubt anything will change at the corporation. The report will be publicised, there’ll be the usual speechifying from BBC-types about the importance of high standards and impartiality and then … it’ll be back to business as usual.
I think legislation is the only way to force change on the BBC. It can’t happen internally because those in the corporation who might actually be in favour are not in a strong enough position to do anything about it. At the very least more recruits (many, many more) who don’t come from the arts pages of The Guardian need to be hired. How can the BBC even begin to contempate that unless it is legally compelled too? The answer is they won’t. The liberal groupthink at the BBC will fight like hell to retain power.
What everyone else said.
The BBC produces these reports about once a year. They acknowledge bias in something that’s been and gone, but always claim that there’s no wider conclusions that can be drawn, no endemic problem with their culture and all their critics are still mad.
It’s nearly 25 years since the BBC spiked ‘The Falklands Play’, but here we are again:
http://pubphilosopher.blogs.com/pub_philosopher/2007/06/bbc_killedoff_a.html
Re Bono – a little reminder that the members of U2 aren’t the only celebs who abandoned Ireland when it changed its tax laws:
“JOHN SIMPSON, the BBC’s foreign editor, spent seven years in Ireland as a tax exile. He returned to the UK recently. While there he wrote three books.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/ulster/article316369.ece (scroll down)
Maybe people should actually read the report when it comes out tommorow rather than swallowing whole what the Sunday papers have written about it.
Richard Tait is not a “BBC insider”. He’s a BBC Trustee – and says:
“The report is unlikely to satisfy those critics who believe the BBC’s editorial ‘centre of gravity’ is wrong.”
Where can we find the full text of this review rather than the snippets fed us by The Times?
The report siezed on the Live8 issue, knowing that “its been and gone”, and because who is going to articulate the case FOR world povery? I mean who’s going to say “let ’em starve, its the only way to stop them breeding. Oh an AIDS is natures way of saying “enough”? Nice safe fault to have, the BBC, wanting to end poverty.
And what does report say of the BBCs news output outside the UK – sucking up to arab opinion in an effort to overtake Al Jazira as the world’s favourite news source.
I’ll believe change when they stop placing all job ads in the Guardian – the main future source of liberal-bigotry. Perhaps they will start placing them just in the Independent to spite us all.
Maybe people should actually read the report when it comes out tommorow rather than swallowing whole what the Sunday papers have written about it.
Fair enough. Any reason why people sholdn’t be allowed to read the Balen report and make up their own minds about its content?
“Maybe people should actually read the report when it comes out tommorow rather than swallowing whole what the Sunday papers have written about it.”
Quite right, Nick. And perhaps you’d like to take the opportunity to offer “people” similar advice not to swallow whole what the BBC has written about itself.
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The contents of the report are irrelevant. All that matters is that millions of people will hear BBC and bias in the same sentence.
Although I don’t think we’re at the tipping point yet, eventually enough people will assume that the institution is so riddled with left-wing bias such that the question will not be over whether such bias exists but what to do about it.
Andrew – hopefully you will find the report on the BBC Trust’s website tommorow.
And the BBC regularly places job adverts in places other than the Guardian.
PJF – the BBC is by law obliged to be impartial. Impartial about everything including itself. It’s very difficult to be impartial about yourself but we have to try. The Sunday Papers are under no such obligation. So I would of course use my own judgement about what the BBC says about itself. But I tend to find what the BBC says about itself is usually more accurate, let alone more impartial, than what the papers say.
“The report is unlikely to satisfy those critics who believe the BBC’s editorial ‘centre of gravity’ is wrong.”
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | 17.06.07 – 6:18 pm
Which suggests the question: “Where does Richard Tait believe the BBC’s editorial centre of gravity should be?”
In Friday’s R4 Feedback Bowen when discussing Middle East coverage said that since Israel considers herself western-style democracy with free press etc it is judged by higher standards i.e. he did not deny that in relation to Israel his standards are different or – self-admittedly • he employs double standards.
The Sunday Papers are under no such obligation. So I would of course use my own judgement about what the BBC says about itself. But I tend to find what the BBC says about itself is usually more accurate, let alone more impartial, than what the papers say.
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | 17.06.07
………………………………..
from the sunday times…
all media organisations are biased and that applies especially to newspapers. But our bias is openly declared. If readers want different views they have no compulsion to pay and can go elsewhere.The BBC is in a different category; everyone has to pay for it and it is in the tricky position of being founded to be free from bias.
Nick Reynolds (BBC)
I think you need a new straw man. The calumny of the press isn’t the issue. The issue is the very real and pernicious bias in the BBC’s coverage towards America, Israel and and Islamic extremism. I would be happy to pay the licence fee for both your arts and the rest of your factual programming. But we are in a war where our principal allies are America and Israel and our principal enemies are muslim (absent the appearance of buddhist suicide bombers). And the BBC is ruthlessly dishonest about both, so I guess that’s kinda impartial. It’s plain wrong that I am forced to visit sites like this, Fox, Hot Air or Jerusalem Post just to discover positive developments in Iraq or what’s really happening in the West Bank or even the Scooter Libby case.
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | 17.06.07 – 7:32 pm:
You say:
… the BBC is by law obliged to be impartial. Impartial about everything including itself. It’s very difficult to be impartial about yourself but we have to try. The Sunday Papers are under no such obligation.
I agree with you. However, there exists a case study to which so far no-one has provided an explanation, which, on the face of it, constitutes proof that the BBC is not impartial but is in fact institutionally biased and even bigoted.
The case study concerns the BBC’s failure to assess the merits, and, having done so, then report the findings of an independent investigation into the political controversy which, according to the BBC, “helped bring down the last Conservative government.”
This controversy – the “Neil Hamilton Cash for Questions affair” • had been investigated by two NW freelance journalists – one of whom represented Granada TV for best NW News reporter of the Year. They concluded that the newspaper which authored and drove the story, The Guardian, had perverted the official inquiry into the affair by submitting forged documents and perjurious witness statements.
So, clearly, if these two freelances are to be believed, this is an issue of immense national importance.
So, I have a question for you: Do you accord with the refusal of the BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson and his deputy Mark Byford to accede to requests to instigate an assessment of this evidence in order to establish its merits? (An initial appraisal would take half an hour or so).
After some 7 years the BBC culture is well entrenched, and I suspect the new trustees have neither the courage nor the skills to bring about the needed changes in what is the most opaque public funded institution in the UK.
“…the BBC is by law obliged to be impartial.”
Nick, is it fears of legal repurcussions that makes the BBC so reluctant to release the Balen report? I ask because you didn’t reply to max’s question that came right between Andrew’s and mine, which you did so kindly answer.
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It’s the little things that give the BBC’s institutional Leftist bias away… From today’s Sunday Telegraph Magazine’s profile of Newsnight Political Editor Michael Crick:
He was Jeffrey Archer’s nemesis and the prime minister-elect tries to avoid him. As Michael Crick settles into his job as political editor of ‘Newsnight’, will he tone down his terrier-like approach? Nigel Farndale asks the questions:
In many ways, the terrace house Michael Crick shares with his mother is all you would hope it to be … – a 49-year-old student who recently became the political editor of Newsnight. Crick writes his political biographies in here, surrounded by football memorabilia … and a copy of the Guardian. The only thing that seems out of context is the copy of The Daily Telegraph next to it.
‘Actually, the Guardian is my mother’s. I’m the one who tends to read the Telegraph.’
But what if his colleagues at the BBC find out? He gives the first of many slightly mad, cackling laughs.
‘It’s funny, I heard about a BBC executive who went to join colleagues for an away-day in Manchester, and when she checked into the hotel the staff on reception asked if she would like a copy of the Guardian sent to her room in the morning. She asked why the Guardian. That was, of course, what all her colleagues who had already checked in had ordered.’
Like I said, it’s the little things …
Can anyone really be surprised about the bias at the BBC?, I work in The Netherlands and the anti-Israeli, anti-US, Pro-Muslim and Pro-PC behaviour of the BBC is so different to the reporting of the Dutch and German public broadcasters.
Last month one of the Dutch Newspapers discussed the FOI act in the UK and how the BBC refused to release the ‘Balen’ report, the upshot of the article was: How is it possible for a public funded body to use public funds to stop the release of a report which was paid for by the public?, the inference was that the BBC is bias and is hiding behind the same FOI act that it seems to use so often to attack other parties.
Nick Reynolds (BBC):
PJF – the BBC is by law obliged to be impartial. Impartial about everything including itself.
————————————
Great – when does the Balen Report get published?
Nick….? Nick………?!
…tumbleweed…..
Joseoh | 17.06.07 – 8:40 pm | #
Good to hear the Dutch exposing the indefensible behaviour of the BBC over the Balen report. There’s hardly a murmer about it in our press.
On BBC News 24’s Face to Face Michael Gove got in a few well aimed shots at BBC bias – running rings round Polly the hack Toynbee who obsessively attacked the Murdoch press. He also quoted a Guardian editorial a day after 9/11 – “a bully with a bloody nose is still a bully”. On this occasion I think Gove gave the bully Toynbee a bit of a bruising.
JBH QC:
It’s the little things that give the BBC’s institutional Leftist bias away..
Surprising, then, that JBH thinks so highly of the former Living Marxism magazine, and specifically of one of its writers, himself a high honcho in the Revolutionary Communist Party:
James Heartfield is a university lecturer and radical journalist of unimpeachable integrity and intellect.
http://www.guardianlies.com/Pegs%20that%20stood%20up/index.html
JBH: We abhor Leftist bias. Except when it agrees with us.
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Nick Reynolds, Hillhunt and John Reith,
After this issue, can we then look at the “comedy” shows the BBC broadcasts on Radio 4?
Oh, and Thought for Today, Analysis, Cause For Concern, File on Four ?
robin:
After this issue, can we then look at the “comedy” shows the BBC broadcasts on Radio 4?
I think you’ll find that you need to listen to them. There aren’t many pictures on the radio.
Hillhunt: Here to be helpful
Hillhunt,
Thats not a very good distraction technique. Look () in your dictionary and you will see () that my terminolagy is correct.
Putting aside your pedantry, can you address the question or not ?
Robin:
Putting aside your pedantry, can you address the question or not ?
Okeydoke. Your question was:
can we then look at the “comedy” shows the BBC broadcasts on Radio 4?
Answer: Yes we can look at them. I’ll also be listening. It improves the effect.
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With all this attention on the BBC’s admission of its own bias and its journalists’ snivelling hypocrisy, thank the gods hillhunt is here to draw our attention to the important subject of his perception of double standards by another commenter.
(Seriously, hillhunt, many gold stars for your consistent ability to drive the humour challenged commentariat off-piste whilst not getting banned. Top piss-taking/troll marks)
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HillHunt,
You really are a wonderful ambassador for the BBC. Condescending, smug and never answering the question that was asked. Keep it up.
Right, so there`s no defence by the likes of Hillhunt to the blatent bias of a lot of output on Radio 4.
Hillhunt. Really quite ashamed of BBC bias.
hillhunt | 17.06.07 – 10:20 pm:
JBH: We abhor Leftist bias. Except when it agrees with us.
Er, eh? Like I suspect most who contribute to this blog, I abhor Leftist bias full stop. I also abhor Rightist bias too. However I applaud Leftists, Rightists, Middle-of-the-roadists, and the entire world-and-his-wifeists who disregard their respective particular innate beliefs and special interests in order to champion the cause of truth and justice, especially when it conflicts with their beliefs and interests.
You show that this concept of truth and justice, above all other considerations, is as far as you are concerned, a wholly alien, bizarre, unfathomable one.
Clearly, a potential Oskar Schindler you are most certainly not.
The BBC is failing to report on things in Gaza….it is time they sent Barbara Plett in there to give us proper reports…she might even get to interview the guys who kidnapped Alan Johnston.
K:
HillHunt, You really are a wonderful ambassador for the BBC.
Excellent point.
Which would be even better if I had any connection at all to the BBC. Which I don’t.
With all this attention on the BBC’s admission of its own bias and its journalists’ snivelling hypocrisy, thank the gods hillhunt is here to draw our attention to the important subject of his perception of double standards by another commenter.
As it happens, I do agree with a real BBC employee, who argues above that it would be useful to read the full report first.
Leaving aside the Sunday Times’s time-honoured role as a cheerleader for Murdoch’s TV empire, I’m not sure there’s that much in the bits published so far to get your pants wet about.
Live8? A patchy, but at times thrilling global music event, well worth the tiny slice of the licence fee it cost, if only because it re-united Pink Floyd briefly. Yes, the Irish guys used the platform to keep pleading for more cash for Africa. Trouble is, that complaining about that is a bit like complaining about the Waltons espousing Mom and apple pie. Who wants more Africans to starve or die of AIDS?
Richard Curtis is one of the UK’s most successful film-makers, and he wrote a touching, brilliantly-cast polemic. Not sure I want the BBC to turn down writers like him (and actors like Bill Nighy & Kelly MacDonald) just because they’ve got a soft spot for starving people. Do you?
The NHS? There’s plenty of form from panorama down of reports which do not “celebrate” the NHS, but ask awkward questions of it.
Climate change is a much more interesting subject, although it’s a mistake to argue for a simple on-one-hand, on-the-other kind of coverage as if you were covering Tory/Labour debates. Even so, I’m with Paxman on that one…
Nothing at all in the reports published to date about Biased BBC’s big hard-on issues, especially Israel/Palestine.
And, sadly, nothing at all about the touchstone issue that keeps every man jack of us awake in the wee small hours – the fate of Neil Hamilton, ex-MP.
And nothing about the bias on Radio 4.
Hillhunt. Wishing that the BBC`s bias was the norm.
hillhunt | 17.06.07 – 11:04 pm:
And, sadly, nothing at all about the touchstone issue that keeps every man jack of us awake in the wee small hours – the fate of Neil Hamilton, ex-MP.
Hmm. Your attempted characterisation of the political controversy that, according to the BBC, “helped bring down the last Conservative government,” as a trifling matter concerning a single Tory MP that few care about, wore thin several months ago.
jbh qc:
However I applaud Leftists, Rightists, Middle-of-the-roadists, and the entire world-and-his-wifeists who disregard their respective particular innate beliefs and special interests in order to champion the cause of truth and justice,
Which is why you were busy recently disinterring ancient and (in one case, seriously erroneous) Reds-under-the-beds smears to bolster your otherwise threadbare personal grudge against the BBC?
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/760953733203267066/#359497
JBH: Red Is The Colour
Robin:
And nothing about the bias on Radio 4.
Hang on, I thought we all had to listen – or in your case look – first?
Hillhunt: One Step At A Time
hillhunt | 17.06.07 – 11:15 pm:
Which is why you were busy recently disinterring ancient and (in one case, seriously erroneous) Reds-under-the-beds smears to bolster your otherwise threadbare personal grudge against the BBC?
My source of information was The Guardian’s David Leigh. And the “smears” were levelled not by me, but by Britain’s (surely heroic) security services MI5.
jbh qc:
My source of information was The Guardian’s David Leigh. And the “smears” were levelled not by me, but by Britain’s (surely heroic) security services MI5.
Y-e-e-e-s. Except that everyone now acknowledges that they got it wrong in Ms Hilton’s case.
An eminent silk such as yourself knows that it’s no excuse to claim that a libel has already been uttered by someone else. Especially when it’s already been corrected.
Perhaps the BBC is far more worried by criticism than many of us think.Even this site may disturb it’s equanimity a little.The growing world wide criticism of Beeb coverage of the Middle east cannot be ignored for ever.The BBC is closely allied to the dominant liberal axis of power.This axis is about to commit cultural suicide by endorsing a boycott of Israel-academic and other.Soon individuals will have to choose which side they are on.This concept will be new to most of them.Smart put downs and heavy irony will no longer be enough.How on earth will the beeboids handle it?.I watch and listen with interest.
“As it happens, I do agree with a real BBC employee, who argues above that it would be useful to read the full report first.”
Very wise, hillhunt. How about the Balen report? Would you like to be able to read that?
What do you think of the snivelling hypocrisy of BBC journalists hiding their own (dirty?) linen behind their convenient opt out of the Freedom Of Information act?
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pjf:
As a BBC outsider like most Biased-BBCers, I know no more than you about Balen.
But given the amount of BBC openness about its own shortcomings lately (when did the unaccountable Murdoch empire last attempt such a thing?), I suspect that the arguments that it should be kept confidential might have some merit. Clearly the courts thought so, and the courts are not places the media usually find much comfort…
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“BBC is closely allied to the dominant liberal axis of power.This axis is about to commit cultural suicide by endorsing a boycott of Israel-academic and other.Soon individuals will have to choose which side they are on.This concept will be new to most of them.”
I can’t comment about “most”, but I can say “not all”:
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/fighting/article.php?id=28
Good on ’em.
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“…(when did the unaccountable Murdoch empire last attempt such a thing?)…”
The “Murdoch empire” has to account for itself every day. If people think it’s shite, they don’t pay for it.
I’m quite happy for the BBC to make investigations of itself, and find itself wonderful, so long as it is directly accountable to its consumers in this way.
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hillhunt | 17.06.07 – 11:30 pm:
In my post of 11:25 pm I say:
My source of information was The Guardian’s David Leigh. And the “smears” were levelled not by me, but by Britain’s (surely heroic) security services MI5.
To which you replied
hillhunt | 17.06.07 – 11:30 pm:
An eminent silk such as yourself knows that it’s no excuse to claim that a libel has already been uttered by someone else. Especially when it’s already been corrected.
Clearly, you demonstrate an unshakable belief that you’re on solid ground refuting MI5’s allegations against Ms. Isabel Hilton, which I had repeated in good faith. However, your passionate defence of Ms Hilton merely throws into stark contrast your failure to take me to task for my allegations against Guardian editors and journalists:
01) Peter Preston
02) Alan Rusbridger
03) David Hencke
04) David Leigh
05) John Mullin
plus Guardian lawyers:
06) Geraldine Proudler
07) Geoffrey Robertson QC
Plus Mohamed Fayed and his employees:
08.) Doug Marvin
09) Stuart Benson
10) Iris Bond
11) Alison Bozek
12) Philip Bromfield
I take it therefore that you have no answer to the evidence I’ve collated castigating these twelve individuals of colluding to pervert the Downey inquiry.
Further to my “good on ’em” post above, I should point out that the motivation behind the BBC-NUJ journos’ petition was about being seen to be not taking sides.
This is entirely correct and appropriate for journalists who believe themselves to be impartial.
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PJF:
“…(when did the unaccountable Murdoch empire last attempt such a thing?)…”
The “Murdoch empire” has to account for itself every day. If people think it’s shite, they don’t pay for it.
Depends whether you assume that the only price we pay (or not) for it is the cost of the newspaper (or Sky Box).
Whether it’s the coarsening of tabloid culture by The Sun, the News of the Screws’s murky entanglement with sleazeballs like Clive Goodman and Mahzer Mahmood, the suborning and corrupting of professional sport by Sky’s financial clout or the dancing-to-attendance on Rupe from Maggie to Blair, Murdoch has a huge and – in real terms – unaccountable grip on public life in Britain and many other places. NI’s corporate governance and tax affairs are epics of sleight of hand and deliberate evasion.
Ignoring that is as self-serving as anything you allege about the BBC’s own behaviour.