David Vance Writes:
“Anyone who saw the gushing coverage afforded to the dour Scot’s speech at the Labour Party conference today might wonder if the BBC was the broadcasting arm of the Labour Party. There were several aspects about this coverage which caught my eye”
He also links to this article. News as nu-nu-Labour pabulum.
I don’t think this can be an example of BBC bias. The speech got gushing coverage in that bastion of left wing journalism the Daily Telegraph too.
Just to add, the Toady programme just now had a slot several minutes long on Brown’s speech, as the last item.
Gushing praise on how Brown was appealing to people of all political persuasions, minimising his faults as a speaker, giving the impression that the Conservatives and Lib Dems were ‘insects to be crushed underfoot’, establishing himself as a leader quite independent of Blair’s legacy… etc., etc.
The only note of criticism was that the speech lacked an ‘overarching theme’, but this was hastily glossed over as the kind of thing only political ‘anoraks’ would notice, and that everyone would be madly impressed with the clips shown on television and reprinted in the papers.
The best description I can come up with for this item is ‘fawning’.
[The Moderator: If you want your comment to appear you’ll have to do better than that, Ralph.]
One part of the BBC news story linked in the article struck me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7009728.stm
“In a BBC interview ahead of his speech (Brown) said he was “getting on with the job” of implementing Labour’s manifesto from 2005, adding: “Do I need to call an election to do so? No.””
It makes me uncomfortable. It gives the impression that Gordon Brown’s press man pulled the BBC writer aside, just before the speech, and gave him an exclusive quote to put in his story, as a metaphorical box of chocolates. This might not be the case; perhaps the quote is pulled from an old interview. The BBC are using it to show that Gordon Brown has previously ruled out an election, but it comes across as if the writer was trying to advocate Brown’s competency by pulling in quotes from elsewhere.
The report itself is curious; it feels like a press release, but there’s a small attempt at bringing in opposing viewpoints in the final paragraphs – Menzies Campbell urges Gordon Brown to call and election, and there’s something from shadow Europe minister Mark Francois about an EU treaty, which comes across as irrelevant, because the report doesn’t mention Europe at all otherwise.
Richard, you must be reading a different Telegraph to me.
“Brown signals a new chapter of illusions” (Leader)
“It was as if he had nothing to do with the past decade of New Labour rule, with its unsatisfactory schools and hospitals; yet he was its chief domestic policy architect. … His avowed aim of making Britain a world leader … will be little more than fantasy politics if he continues to work with public service models constructed in the aftermath of the Second World War, and which many consider to have been discredited long ago.”
“The leader’s vision: Britain as a work camp” (Andrew Gimson, conference sketch):
“We are told that people in the olden days used sometimes to laugh at authority … and even thought it a good idea, at the end of each day, to relax with a pint of beer and a cigarette. But that almost unimaginably barbaric era is over and so is the ridiculous notion that the answer to some of our problems might be to give people more freedom, not less.”
Oh yes. They loved it.
There is very little in that article about the BBC. It seems clear that this is more about your own bias against GB than anything to do with the Beeb.
Merton: What article? Vance’s? It’s about the BBC. The BBC’s? It’s by the BBC.
Or my comment? I was merely pointing out that defending the Beeb by claiming the Telegraph to be similarly enamoured of the PM is ludicrous.
(I hate blog comments. No proper threading. What was wrong with Usenet?)
I agree with Rachel that fawning is a totally suitable description of the beeboids so called objective reporting of brown.
beeboids are also continuously at pains to potrtray disolusioned Tories as flocking to his camp. This IMHO is complete and utter b**ocks – look at the Tory gains in the last council elections, how conveniently the beeboids dismiss them.
backwoodsman – if it doesn’t fit “the narrative” then it will not be reported properly. I think we have to accept that the BBC is institutionally biased and will support Gordon Brown’s Labour party to the hilt.