Serve a complaint robust enough to penetrate the barrier surrounding the BBC’s complaints department, if there really is a complaints department, only to get it batted back with “We think we got it about right”
A typical case in point concerns the Middle East coverage, about which Mark Thompson says “We get complaints from both sides so we must be doing something right.” I’m no statistician, but I think I’ve spotted a flaw in this logic.
Thompson by all accounts gets paid an enormous salary, so he really ought to be smart enough to realise that this theory only works if you start from the premise that there’s a perfectly balanced audience; not one that has been subjected to ongoing abuse in the shape of many years’ distorted reporting.
With a virtual monopoly over our access to information on the subject, our opinion on the rights and wrongs of the matter is in their hands.
Consequently the concerned righteous majority has become virulently hostile to Israel. Add significant Muslim input, and what do you get?
Answer: The BBC’s negative and biased reporting meets with the approval of the majority. They’ve become such haters of Israel that the mere sound of Mark Regev’s voice is enough to provoke a furious response. Indeed if a single, scare-quoted word from an Israeli spokesperson emerges, as it occasionally has to, people are up in arms. They are acclimatised to the notion that Israel is responsible for the whole world’s problems. That accounts for complaints that the BBC favours Israel. So, occasionally, when the BBC is forced to include a nominal “other side of the story,” some of the indignant anti-Israel majority will protest, despite having little justification, as in the Mavi Marmara Panorama.
The relentless bias against Israel constantly upsets the pro-Israel minority, whose justified complaints join the spurious unjustified ones forming a veneer of balance that bolsters the BBC’s illusion of getting it right.
If the pro and anti complaints received are roughly equal in number, that means the ratio (of objections to the BBC’s bias against Israel) from the relatively small number of pro-Israel complainants is, per capita, disproportionately high, which reinforces the veracity of the case for the existence of the BBC’s anti Israel bias. Have I explained that complicatedly enough? I hope so.
On the other hand, it could be that the number of complaints are not actually equal, but split, in the Helen Boaden sense of the word, meaning that there are a certain number ‘for’ and a certain number ‘against,’ whether the ratio is actually 1000 to 1, or 50/50.
Either way Mark Thompson and Helen Boaden are paid enormous salaries. A person on HIGNFY with a small head said Sir Philip Green was a fat greedy shit.
There is a type of consumer programme that’s designed to name and shame people who practice to deceive. One is called Rogue Traders, in which a dishonest rogue is lured into a BBC honey-trap involving, for our entertainment, secret filming of shoddy work and outrageous overcharging. Matt Alwright and a television film crew are filmed by another film crew ineffectually confronting the miscreant, getting their fingers slammed in car doors and being run over as the rogue speeds away in his van. The toothless anticlimax of an outcome, is that the rogue’s picture gets to be pinned up in the rogues gallery, though no-one knows where that is.
I wonder if we could get Mark Thompson and Helen Boaden’s picture in there, or perhaps name them on HIGNFY as fat greedy shits, and please don’t tell me the coverage of the Middle East is balanced.
According to this evening’s Lebedev News (aka London’s ES) BBC news supremo Helen Boaden – “Does my bias look big in this?” – is tipped to take over from Mark Thompson when he stands down.
Thompson won’t so much stand down as float down, into the huge cushion of money that is his pension courtesy of telly-tax payers.
So Helen could step up from receiving only twice the Prime Minister’s salary (I hesitate to say “earning”) to over five times his salary. Won’t she have done well? Socialism pays.
‘BBC news supremo Helen Boaden – “Does my bias look big in this?” – is tipped to take over from Mark Thompson when he stands down.’
Well, she ceratinly has all the boxes ticked.
Not any a ‘non-unique’ business, would recognise, mind.
One’s where treating customers with contempt means, pretty soon, no customers.. Unless the customers have to be customers no matter what.
That said, I have an ongoing complaint running with an NHS PCT, and it has, so far, been taken very seriously from the off. Mind you, one suspects a lot of money is being consumed to listen and claim to learn, but if you refuse to let go until something substantive is proven to be forthcoming.
In addition to the actual number of complaints from either side, I say it’s at least as important to address the quality of the complaints themselves. Are the bulk of one side little more than Muslims and Guardian readers screaming about how genocidal Zionists directly control the BBC, sprinkled with gags from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while the other side has a number of non-Jews making rational points? Conversely, are the bulk of one side little more than a bunch of internet Hagana-types defending Israel First and claiming that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism?
That would tell me a lot more about how full of it the BBC is.
Be interesting to see all the complaints the BBC gets, not just the ones it feels constrained to deal with, for whatever reason.
There are probably fewer than we think, since there are places where people can let off steam like Have Your Say and few people actually go the formal complaint route.
The characters pretending to report on the Israeli-Arab conflict are certainly among the most biased at the BBC. Since a guy called Berg produced a reasonable report during the 2006 Lebanon war and another guy tried to get Hezbollah to reveal its casualties, I don’t believe there has been one BBC journalist not producing biased rubbish against Israel till Jane Corbin did her Panorama programme on the flotilla.
The BBC broke its proud record of anti-Israel hostility with that one. But there is little doubt it was just a flash in the pan.
I thought B-BBC was the complaints system! 😉
Excellent post, Sue.
Thanks Grant.
I’ve noticed quite a few examples of complaints submitted to the BBC by pro Israel complainants on other websites, sometimes on B-BBC, often accompanied by the fobbing off letter. The complaints I’ve seen are usually rational and well argued, but the drawback is that there’s such a big gulf between the starting point of the BBC and the Israel supporter that communication is difficult. A complainant has to bear in mind that the BBC doubts Israel’s legitimacy.
If the complaints from anti-Israel lobbyists are anything like examples we’ve seen from Ken O’Keefe and his ilk, then however damaged he is as an individual, or how irrational their complaints may be, they do start off with the advantage that the BBC is inherently sympathetic to the anti-Israel lobby.
This is academic. The complaint that was upheld, probably the most successful since Barbara Plett’s tears, only resulted in a tap on the wrist of Jeremy Bowen who carried on regardless, as a kind of martyred hero.
As for B-BBC being the complaints department – if only. It’s more like the rogues gallery. We pin up the picture, but hardly anyone cares. 😉
And a number of deluded lefties took that mild caution of Bowen, that the BBC took two years to come up with and then only because the complainant persisted, as proof positive that the BBC is pro-Israel.
The are slightly more ‘anti-Israeli’ complaints than the opposite. The numers are about the same if you remove those originating from the US which tend to be lobbyers.
‘The complaints I’ve seen are usually rational and well argued’ – I’ve seen thousands and I can’t agree. Of course I include yours among those.
Thanks for your comment. What are you talking about?