Relax everyone, fold up your tents and steal away into the night knowing you have done your job.
The BBC is no longer biased….or rather it is biased but against both the Tories and Labour, so, em, it is not biased….I guess that only leaves Ken Livingstone and UKIP in the BBC’s good books.
Guido Fawkes brings us this, a letter from a Labour ‘communications facilitator’ who is aggrieved at having too many government ministers being dragged in for the inquisition and ritual disemboweling they normally get on the Today programme.
He seems to have chosen a time frame to suit…one over a longer term might show more often than not that we get Labour shadow ministers given a free ride and essentially given their own mini party political broadcast.
From Guido:
It seems Miliband’s normally jovial spinner Bob Roberts has had enough of the Beeb. Media Guido has got hold of his letter to the BBC Director General Mark Thompson:
Dear Mark
I am writing to complain about the striking lack of balance on the Today programme this week.
From Monday to Thursday, the following Ministers and MPs have appeared on Today:
Government: Eric Pickles, Richard Benyon, Simon Burns, Tim Loughton, Hugh Robertson, Grant Shapps, Louise Mensch, Don Foster, Theresa May, Iain Duncan Smith, Crispin Blunt, David Davis, Nicky Morgan (Total 13)
Labour: Margaret Hodge, appearing as Chair of a Select Committee (Total 1)
By any measure, it is neither fair nor balanced for the Today programme to interview 13 Government MPs and 1 Labour MP over the course of four days.
Why are listeners hearing so much coverage being given to the Government and virtually none to the official Opposition?
We have previously raised our concerns with the Today Programme Editor and with the BBC’s Westminster News Editor, but we have not received a satisfactory response, hence we are writing you as Editor-in-Chief of the BBC.
I look forward to an urgent explanation why this unacceptable lack of balance has been allowed to occur and reassurances that it will be remedied immediately.
Yours sincerely,
Bob Roberts
Alan, here was me hotfoot over here to ring the alarm bell and you were already on the job, good man !
As pointed out by many of Guidos’ posters, this is merely a cynical ploy enabling the bbc to give their fatuous, ,we get complaints from both sides’, defence whenever the heat comes on !
This could be a ‘jumping the shark’ moment for this blog. So when – for a change – they’re exposed for bias AGAINST Labour- it’s a ploy? That really is paranoid claptrap. Hope your tin foil hat is comfortable.
Rubbish. All the interviews with Ministers that I heard were hostile. Most interviews with Labour people or all the special interest wallahs are patsy by comparison – some of them downright fawning.
I suggest you check back with some of the analyses by Craig of specific interviews. Or of the LONG-RUN patterns of who gets invited on to Question Time, who does the Points of View or Thought for the Day slots.
Please go away until you have done your homework
That’s assuming Labour have added their figures right…and you know how good they are with those….when there’s no more boom and bust we’ll agree there’s no more bias on the BBC.
No actually we see a ploy by political allies of the BBC to cover the fact that all BBC staff are unionised left wing labour/liberal party members ! so go on name me the outed Tory’s on the BBC and don’t say the usual one or 2 phoney lib demmers like Pratten and portallo and then we can discus the BBC employing nearly every failed Labour ex MP and spinner as in house talent or talk about the many BBC types who have publicly showed their Labour cred and that some are even actively supporting and financing !
Your argument’s about as coherent as that sentence, which is to say not at all. Look, I’m not denying the existence of left wing bias. I’m just observing that interpreting this complaint as a grand conspiracy is batshit crazy.
These bat-hominems do you no favours RWB. Run along and be sure to get behind closed doors before sun down.
Incidently, how do you KNOW there is no grand conspiracy?
An argument beloved of conspiracy theorists everywhere. I don’t KNOW that George W Bush didn’t conspire to bring about the destruction of the Twin Towers, but I’m pretty damn sure that it was militant Islamists that were responsible.
RW&B,
You’re eagerness to seize an opportunity of accusing posters here of being only fit for a straitjacket is touching . Collusion between the Beeb and Bob almost certainly did not occur – but things panned out just as if it had, anyway – and almost certainly is not the same as absolutely certainly. A noticeably excessive number of Tory MP’s, on Today, in one week may have been a chance occurance or it may not have been. It could be that, mildly irritated by increasing right wing clamour about their bias, the BBC deliberately started inviting a disproportionate number of government spokesmen for a reasonably measurable period of time in order to provide themselves with ammunition against their critics. The complaint from Labour may just have been the icing on the cake. I bet normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
.
After a week of different press articles highlighting the left-wing bias of the BBC’s output, it certainly is convenient for the corporation this letter has been leaked.
We all know how devious the behaviour of Labour spinners and BBC management is, so Redwhiteandblue, as the old saying goes “if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck……….”
7 hostile, attacking, interviews against 1 softly softy all is well with Labour interview will do an immense amount of harm to the coalition/Tories. The bonus of course, as others have mentioned, is when questions are asked about bias, the BBC can claim balance simply because of this ONE example.
My ePetition is now up “Do you want to keep BBC’s Licence Fee ? Yes or No “http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34655
Neil, signed. Good move on your part.
misterned’s comment is correct:
“This letter actually demonstrates the BBC’s anti-tory bias. They are calling in Tories to attack them. It does not need labour MPs as the BBC’s own staff are far more effective at attacking the Government than labour MPs are. You only have to listen to the interviews to know that these tories are not invited in to propagandise without interruption or challenge. On the rare occasions that labour MPs are invited, they are often allowed to do just that.
Additionally, attacks on the Government by labour MPs are largely ignored by the public as partisan politics. The BBC do not want attacks on the government to be ignored, so if they, an impartial beacon of unbiased public service broadcasting, attack the government, the attack will be far more effective than if the same attack was coming from labour MPs.
Then it also gives labour an excuse to claim anti-labour bias, thus the BBC are being attacked by both tory and labour for bias which “must mean that we are getting the balance about right”
Moreover, the Labour position is only counting the one visiting Labour figure, overlooking the resident ones on the BBC payroll. They don’t need to invite an outside Labour figure, for exactly the same reason we have no need for a British Embassy in London!
The Tories masochism strategy is one long disaster.
Is there no-one there at Tory HQ who “does a Craig” and counts interruptions/minute by Beeb hacks as opposed to the gentle lobs of open questions sent to Labours Balls Boys?
Why the hell do we need to tell the Tories how to fight back against the relentless dripping of bile into the nations ears ?…Coulson or Hilton may not have been the answer-but they need someone who will take the BBC on..
That fat sitting duck of a monoculture there at the BBC needs to be knocked off the dunghill….anyone of us lot could do it-so why are the Tories so shit?
Spot on ChrisH
So they don’t want to be seen any more as the “nasty party” – but what’s wrong with a bit of nous and street wisdom?
They have got to show the stomach and ability to get down and dirty – without being offensive, just clinical, ruthless, assertive and CLEVER…
The other way to put this is to say that when there’s a Left Vs Right debate, the right is represented by a Tory MP (partisan, professional liar) and the left by some professional charistocrats (hands on, putting something back into the community, working at the coal face, alturistic).
It’s all about creating the impression that the right is driven by ideology while the left is driven by the need to help people – even if the help doesn’t help anyone except the guys getting paid £60K of your cash to show each power-point presentations using buzz words like multi-agency approach.
Of course, the other tell that this is a potemkin argument is the BBC’s lack of reaction. Tory MPs only have to suggest a freeze on the licence fee and they’re accused of wanting to muzzle the BBC. Meanwhile, Labour want to dictate the guest list for a news program and no one in Beebotopia thinks there’s anything at all remarkable about that.
I can only here reiterate my CSI analogy, whereby the ME sticks his probe into a corpse who is lying with head in an oven and feet in the freezer and pronounces, based on liver temperature between the two extremities, that the stiff is ‘just about all right’. No, it’s still dead, rotting from all ends and needs burying. Just some can’t get their heads around that yet.
Pm’s interview with Philip Hammond was presumably, if the premise is accepted, a case of right wing fawning . Relentlessly hostile in tone it was ostensibly about the Levenson appearance of Cameron but soon changed into a very hostile interview on the Army cuts. The interviewer even seemed to be demanding that the minister reveal a possible conversation with Prince Charles. Quite against convention as he well knew. Bias? Not really- just a consistently hostile attitude to the coalition and it’s ministers. The BBC cannot change. It is the mouthpiece of the liberal elite in all it’s irrational glory.
Came on here to post on this. The interview could’ve been on The Day Today or Brass Eye; cheap, puerile and absolutely intractable questions designed to humiliate Hammond rather than inform the audience.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for grilling the despicable lowlives who deign to rule us in the current day and age; but no Labour pol has ever been subjected to this level of interrogation by the BBC. Ever.
And this followed the deliberate programming of ‘the worst bits’ from Cameron’s Leveson appearance; they were even introduced as such.
If the Tories aren’t having a council of war this evening about the BBC, they are doomed forever.
It is a stitch-up! Normally we get “Today David Cameron announced xxxx and here is Ed Milipede to comment”.
Not that I am a fan of the Nu-Tories, I am not sure why the BBC dislikes them, they are so liberal!!
can’t the BBC say that everyone is gay? Like all the Hollywood actors and that everything is OK, because everyone is gay and happy?
Pasty stuffing Ballsup (still minus even any clear “plan” A himself!) alone counts as at least “13” of his useless lot and he practically fuckin lives at Al-Beeb HQ! With them still having pie stuffing Presgutt on as frequently as they do (why?), when Ballsup and Presgutt are both somewhere on Al-Beeb in the same week then that’s equal to at least 50 of the leftie turds being on there.