Here’s another bit from the (tree) Telegraph, reminiscent of a similar postI took from the Telegraph about the Balen Report.
Tim Walker of Mandrake has this:
“While it is always a joy to see Polly Toynbee and her chums on the BBC, (funny haha) I was still minded to put in a request under the Freedom of Information Act, to ascertain how often – if at all- newspaper journalists who feel more positively about the Coalition are invited on to the BBC News Channel.
One month on, I have a response of sorts. “The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purpose of ‘journalism, art or literature’ and it would, in any case, be an enormous amount of work to try to find the information” says Stephanie Harris of the corporation. “the BBC is not required to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output of information that supports- and is closely associated with – these creative activities.”
If anything has ever highlighted the nonsense of the FOI legislation then this, surely has to be it.”
Hmm. Anyone would think that he’d read this blog. Craig, if you ever do the enormous amount of work required to find out the information, I’d send your bill in to the Telegraph.
Never understood why the Telegraph didn’t contact Craig and get him to do some work on their behalf.
Tim Walker of course as some may know used to occasionally do the BBC paper review at night time. The BBC dropped him due to (so the BBC said) something to do with his manner.
Walker was usually scathing of the one eyed twat from Fife. Say no more.
During the election the Telegraph Blog Boss Damian Thompson got in touch to incorporate B-BBC and (as I understood it) Craig’s research into the DT Blogosphere but when he was contacted on the number he gave he never got back.
Craig’s analyses are devastating. He more than deserves a salary from the Telegraph to compile them full time. It’s a service to British democracy. If its not the job of a Fleet Street newspaper to show how a British institution subverts democracy instead of supporting it like it should I dont know what is.
Surely the beeb is already keeping such data close to hand in order to ensure that there is balance in the variety of msm sources they use.
If this information is not available (rather than non-disclosable) then the beeb have some explaining to do. But I’m not holding my breath.
The BBC don’t monitor their output for political balance. It’s a lie, the BBC lie, they’d never dare challenge that view because they can’t prove they carry out political balance.
There is worse, particularly with climate change.
The BBC admits to being biased. It’s justification is ‘some scientist told it to be biased’. Completely against it’s charter.
So, as a FOI request, who are those scientists. It’s journalism.
Whatever about the FOI legislation being nonsense, what this really highlights is the nonsense of forcing anybody to fund this law-unto-itself broadcaster, just because they want to watch TV.
In other words,’we know that releasing those facts would be devastating to the fabricated illusion of BBC impartiality so we are using our get out of jail free card’.
In fact the BBC could access that information easily, detailed records are kept as to which MSM contacts and pundits they use and which papers they source their stories from.
The BBC do keep detailed records of invited guests and the figures could be computed within a days work at the BBC computer terminal by one employee.
For instance they know exactly how many times the guardian has been used for a story and they know how many times gaurdian journalists have been invited onto the BBC airwaves, its right there at the touch of a few keys.
Obviously the BBC knows full well that the relase of this information would show a massive gap between the gaurdian and the express for instance. A paper which has a far fewer readership gets hugely more airtime than the paper that reaches far more readers.
We see the childish tricks the BBC plays, tricks from people who never left the emotional state of their university days. If in doubt lie and decieve, use tricks and deceptions and bluffs. If cought caught out squeal victimhood so loudly that the accusation is drowned out. Its time the BBCwas taken off its pedestal and taken down a peg or two, the little Lord Fauntleroys at the BBC need a good spanking!
This request is very diferent to the Balen report request. It asks for non sensitive, and statistical only evidence. The information commissioner, if required to adjudicate in this matter should find against the BBC on grounds of Journalistic freedom.
The cost issue is the blanket ‘get out’ clause – by simply revealing that they do not hold the information in a readily obtainable format then they presume an unreasonable cost.
This time they are caught though. They pay their contributers, and not via the PAYE system so it should be easy to trace the invoices, would be done by computer and should involve minimal extra cost. All businesses have ‘codes’ which allow them to make detailed analysis of their spending – I cannot believe that the BBC does not assign a code to such freelancers.
About 15 years ago, I once wrote to David Jordan, then Editor of ‘On the Record’ to send me a breakdown for how many complaints his programme recieves for pro-Labour and pro-Tory bias. He wrote back saying they didn’t have the resources to do this.
I wrote back, copying in the Rt Hon Peter Lilley, suggesting he hire a YTS trainee to sift through the complaints and put them in their respective piles and count them. Peter Lilley asked him to copy him in to his reply. Nothing was ever heard. David Jordan is now BBC Head of Editorial Policy and Standards.
Why has this Stephanie Harris thrown in the line “in any case, be an enormous amount of work to try to find the information”?
So far as I am aware this in itself is not a reason that can be used to refuse a FOI request and so has no relevance to the original request. I suspect that the BBC would like it if the “too much like hard work” excuse was a valid reason for refusal and are starting to use it now in conjunction with “valid” reasons so that, at some time in the future, they might chance there arm and use the excuse by itself.
We all know that the BBC see’s these FOI requests as nothing more than a nuisance, and has been making noises which suggest that they would like to see the number of requests cut down in some way – the “too much like hard work” rebuttal would be just what the BBC are looking for.
It is unfortunately a reason to refuse: the request must not entail excessive cost. It is for the information commissioner to determine excessive in each case should the applicant appeal.
It should not however be a valid reason in this case. There should be little extra cost since the information must already be available through the BBC’s own internal monitoring of bias. The BBC has a statutory duty to be impartial which implies a duty to monitor its output. Saying “we’re not biased” doesn’t count, whatever Ms Boaden thinks.
I agree Roland, though my view is that it would be easir to assess by looking at payments to individual freelance commentators as this would require nothing but an index search of whatever accounting program they use. No cost at all.
Meanwhile, Craig himself is keeping a low profile on this thread. Either that or he has gone AWOL !
Very slightle OT, but R4 Saturdays, has “The week at Westminster”, almost always presented by a left-wing journalist or left-wing Beeboid reporter. Or on one occasion, Jackie Ashley, a left-wing journalist married to left-wing Beeboid, Andrew Marr.
Since the election, almost every edition has been devoted to coalition-bashing.
I can’t remember the last time a non-lefty presented it.
It would , surely, be easy for the BBC to respond to an FOI on this one , or would they just use the “journalism” cop-out ?
“slightly” !
The BBC know exactly what a breakdown in figures will show. That’s why they wont show them. How on earth can they claim that overall coverage ‘balances out’ when they have no intention of keeping the statistical data to ensure it?
Humbug. Subversion. What does the BBC/Guardian ‘muck raking’ department have on Parliamentarians that they’re too afraid to do anything about it?
On the contrary, I would say that evidence has shown us that the BBC thinks that the complaints they get prove their reporting really is balanced. They get complaints from both sides, don’t you know. Never mind the quality or validity fo the complaints themselves, of course. It’s all about the perception they get from the raw numbers. That they bother to check.
The complaints would suggest balance – simply because the left has little better to do than complain and is easily offended.
The evidence would show something entirely different.
Thought you might be interested in who has been presenting Week in Westminster since the election. The mainstays are Jackie Ashley (Guardian and self-identifies lefty); Steve Richards (Independent and self-identified lefty); Elinor Goodman (former C4 News political editor – what do you think?). Of the 15 programmes since the election these three have presented 8.
Those identifiable as being from the right have presented three times (once each for Andrew Pierce & Peter Oborne, both of the Mail; Ben Brogan of the Telegraph).
Finally, Peter Riddell, political pundit formerly of the Times, got to present three times, and George Parker (who he?- of the FT) did it once.
So the way I read it: lefties 8; righties 3; unidentifiable 4.
Sounds like lefty bias, reads like lefty bias, and . . . who’d have thunk it, acts like lefty bias.
All this information is readily available in the bbc Programme Catalogue. This was available online for a while and some of us used it to investigate how many appearances were made by each pundit.
It could easily be made available again – it didn’t contain any confidential data – and the beeb should be forced to open it to the public (after all, we paid for it via the licence fee).