I was invited to read this article which alleges BBC bias against the NHS. It’s quite detailed, cannot say I agree with it myself, but I want to post bias from various perspectives. Give it a whirl and my thanks to Jamie for sharing.
BBC – BIASED AGAINST THE NHS
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I’d be more interested to see how our visitors from the BBC canteen deal with this since I think they (and their employer) are rather more distressed by criticism from the left than the slew of bias revealed on B-BBC. However, Open Democracy‘s report could be cited by the BBC as evidence for the usual “both sides criticise us so we’re getting it about right” theme.
On a skim of the piece cited it looks like the BBC might actually be guilty of incompetent journalism (yes I was surprised too) rather than bias. Some items of NHS change (if you take the piece at face value) were not covered or, if covered, were not covered in any depth.
Now I’m not financed by fake and other charities to spend my time analysing the BBC (it’s a life’s work I guess). Bearing that in mind, were I seeking to expose BBC bias the last person, for instance, I would use as an authoritative reference is Éoin Clarke – Labour activist and Guardianista supreme (referred to in the piece as “Dr” Éoin Clarke as if “Dr” was a medical reference rather than a PhD in modern history).
On a general point, there are no doubt lacunae in the BBC’s coverage of any subject. However, in my reading of this report, the lacunae here always seem to be filled by information garnered from articles in the Guardian (although the Mail is mentioned).
Putting this report in further context, for its pedigree in exposing bias and mendacity you only need look at Open Democracy‘s recent agitprop piece on AGW to see how “open” and “democratic” this outfit is. Mind you, that’s not to say that, in a “broken clock” analogy, Open Democracy might have got the BBC bang to rights here. Even so, IMHO allegations by this outfit – even against the BBC – should be taken with a cart-load of salt.
In over 8,000 words that Open Democracy piece on the NHS doesn’t mention patients except in quotes from others. That one fact seems to sum up their position.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
“BBC bias against NHS in support of the Government line” is about as credible as a blatent racist claiming ” Most of my best friends are black.”
Huitson: ” a freelance journalist, reading for a Masters in Politics and Government at Birkbeck” I wouldnt be surprised if this is his abridged Masters paper. It is all too long for a piece of freelance journalism. I suspect he is also hoping for more work from the Guardian.
His long anti-private sector polemic is only loosely about the BBC, and more about the current batch of reforms. He has pieced together a huge amount of output from strongly left wing sources, as though that represents an objective case.
He asks why the BBC have not consulted “experts” such as Professor Alyson Pollock – a left-wing academic who has built her entire career on accusing the evil private sector of trying to destroy the NHS. I can think of a lot of reasons to ignore her.
It reads like badly researched Private Eye. Shock horror! The Department of Health have employed management consultants, “who make a profit!” Horror, the NHS is being privatised! Do not be deceived by the length of the paper. Huitson shows no understanding of the economics and management of health services, or how the medical unions serve their members interests, not the public. Or much about anything but spoonfed anti-private sector propaganda.
He is a good example why there are no newspapers worth reading. They are all written by left wing journalists like Huitson.
Pollock was on Toady regularly.
Rather than look at this pretty tendentious piece of work by someone who’s obviously parti pris, why not look at the cultural assumptions that underpin the Beeb’s presentation of the NHS in programmes like “Casualty” and “Holby City”? It’s not difficult to work out the working assumptions of the Marxoids who produce these shows*.
* Full disclosure: I haven’t watched either of these programmes in years, but the great thing about the Beeb is that you can depend on it to take the Lefty position. I can’t imagine there are all that many readers of this site who watch it either, but if I’m wrong I’m willing to be corrected. I’d hate to turn into a sort of anti-Beeboid, holding forth without doing basic research, but in the case of these two programmes I really can’t be *rsed.
My favourite Casualty scene was when a man in a suit carrying a clipboard (hmm, symbolism defeats me there) wants to talk to Charlie Fairhead about “budgets”. Charlie pushes him aside. “Not now, I’ve got patients to see!”
Says it all, and why they have to keep bringing in the likes of McKinsey to balance the books. We’ll see if the GPs can manage a budget. Nobody else has so far.
According to this bloke http://t.co/i25nc9xh BBC covered up Jimmy Savile sex abuse using tax payers money.
How the BBC betrayed the NHS
I’m afraid I stopped reading there as it suggests the BBC owes some sort of allegiance to the NHS. Huitson is probably going to have a fit when Panorama on NHS tourism airs tomorrow night. Some say ( in proper BBC fashion I’m not saying who ) that the programme is a couple of decades too late.
Tha Palace-bilders are always keen for Ofcom to judge whether the BBC’s competitors are ‘fit and proper to hold a broadcasting licence’.
Perhaps it should be holding itself to similar scrutiny now.
Allow me:
Lansley says NHS plans will not be derailed
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis called the overhaul a huge gamble.
He added: “It is a disgrace that Lansley is pressing ahead with his plans.
“Although he says he wants to put patients in the driving seat, these are just warm words. Lansley has not asked the public what they think, nor were these proposals in the Tory manifesto – nobody voted for them.”
Government fights off Labour challenge to NHS plans
Separately, Prime Minister David Cameron has rejected suggestions that there was no mention of the proposals in the coalition deal agreed between the two partners a year ago.
He told a Dispatches special on Channel 4 that the “key elements of what we are proposing” – including greater GP-led commissioning and payment by results – were included in each parties’ manifestos before the election.
From the BBC’s “Democracy Live” section: Peer attempts to block NHS Reform
Lord Rea argued that the bill was an “enormous” piece of legislation aimed at “top-down” reorganisation of the NHS which had not appeared in the Conservatives’ manifesto or the coalition agreement.
Government sees off rebel challenge to NHS bill
Opening the debate for Labour, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham told the government it was not too late to scrap the bill, which is approaching its final parliamentary stages.
He said there was no mandate for the planned reforms and accused the government of failing to listen to voters – drawing the House’s attention to an e-petition backed by more than 177,000 people demanding the bill be dropped.
That’s all just online. People here heard plenty of examples of Beeboids bringing this up on air when this was first mooted. There was so much talk about how NHS reform wasn’t in the manifesto that Andrew Neil actually felt he had to provide a little balance:
What Tories said about health in their manifesto
Here’s a pretty objective analysis of what the Tory manifesto told us about health reform from fullfact.org.
Why would he feel the need to do that if the BBC had been censoring it?
Additionally, some of the pieces I’ve linked to define the Tories’ plans as “controversial”, a commonly used modifier for this (just do a search on the BBC website for “nhs reforms controversial”, and skip the stuff about Wales), and there’s plenty of effort from the BBC to convince you that the majority of the public are against them. Never mind all the times a Beeboid told some Tory figure that the changes might be too much too fast, never before have so many changes been suggested by so few, or words to that effect.
I knew that NHS reform wasn’t in the Tory manifesto only because I heard it on the BBC so many times. BBC biased against the NHS and propagandizing for the Tories? Perhaps in an alternate universe. Whoever wrote this seems not to have spent much effort paying attention to the BBC. I stopped reading after the first section because there was already so much evidence against the writer’s position.
Yes, I know, cue cries from our defenders of the indefensible of hypocrisy, you-don’t-do-irony-do-you, kitchen appliances hurling epithets regarding the polychrome-absorbent nature of other appliances, etc.
DP
I admire your work ethic!
I infer from your comment that what the Open Democracy report reduces to is a rant to the effect that the BBC isn’t biased enough. No surprise there: after all, that is the gist of most of the criticism of the BBC from the left.
No, Umbongo, the complaint was that the BBC was biased the wrong way.
I take your point there.
However, what I meant by “inferring from your comment” was that my rejoinder was based on the information contained in your comment. Agreed Open Democracy is complaining that the BBC is biased to the “right” ie against critics of the present reorganisation. My point is that, in concert with most critics from the left, Open Democracy is not interested in genuine impartiality. It wants bias in favour of the issues it supports.
I’ve now had a look at some of the other stuff about the BBC from this Open Democracy site, and there are some interesting things there after all. Just not this piece.
Statement from Newsnight bod on jimmy saville > http://t.co/7fRyDzhY
Off-topic Billy. Increase medication.
London calling summed up my own thoughts pretty well.
I bet some senior BBC types are in need of resuscitation now the Savile dirt has been uncovered. What is the cure for a puckering rear end?
Like a few others, the article stopped being of interest to me when I saw the letters “NHS”.
Here is the basic problem as I see it:
When the NHS was started 60+ years ago, Britain had a post-war population of about 48 million. And life expectancy was about 62 (I think). Today, the population is over 60 Million & life expectancy is close to 80.
Anyone with ½ a brain should be able to see that the NHS just cannot be made to function properly by just throwing more money at it with this change in population demographics. But it seems that there are quite a few of these dimwitted socialist fools who believe that the NHS should stay exactly the same as when it was set up. These are the people who make the most amount of noise when a Tory govt. tries to change the NHS & keep quiet when a Labour govt. does it. Maybe they believe that since it was Labour govt. which introduced the NHS, only a Labour govt. can make changes. I said they were dim-wits, didn’t I?
When any govt. dares to make proper changes to the NHS like introducing charges especially to foreigners & making damn sure that doctors don’t earn more than £200k, then maybe I’d be interested. But until then, the NHS will remain the single biggest waste of taxpayers’s money. It is such a good system that no other country in the world has adopted it !
The NHS is the only thing that survives from the disastrous Attlee government, and is used by Lefties everywhere, and particularly the BBC, to validate their world view. Bothe the NHS and the BBC are of course prime examples of “producer capture” – run for their workers rather than for patients or “customers”.
The fact is that the NHS would have gone bust by about 1955 but for two pharmaceutical fixes – antibiotics which cured TB and lead to the closure of dozens of sanatoria, and then drugs to teat mental illness which closed the asylums. Can’t precisely see where the next big fix is coming from. Something that addresses dementia would save a fortune.
Predictably BBC bigs up Labour smear that the NHS is being “Privatised”
“Labour in NHS privatisation vow.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham will vow to reverse the “rapid” privatisation of NHS hospitals in England in his keynote conference speech”
First Pledges, now Vows. FFS, doesnt anybody just “say” anything any more? These are religious expressions. Labour lies, BBC lapdog yelps in tune.
Britain’s wonderful NHS: Free to foreigners!
Post-Olympics hype, the reality of the NHS cannot be concealed from even BBC-NUJ-Labour.
Tonight, ‘Panorama’ has:
“Britain’s Secret Health Tourists”
BBC 1, 9 pm –
“Declan Lawn reports on how ‘health tourists’ are obtaining free NHS treatment they should be paying for – at a cost of millions to our health service. Panorama goes undercover inside a black market where NHS access is being bought and sold, and finds an NHS practice manager taking money to register health tourists. Declan also discovers how easy it is for foreign nationals to get free treatment – with many hospitals across the country not making the required checks.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nbryp
And on Monday, ‘Daily Mail’ had this about the wonderful NHS:-
“Just one GP for 500,000 patients: The true scale of crisis in out-of-hours NHS cover revealed”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210221/Just-GP-500-000-patients-True-scale-crisis-hours-NHS-cover-revealed.html#ixzz28G0UKKtc
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
I don’t understand the use of the word “secret” in the title. I think it is a deliberate attempt by the “Britain Bashing Corporation” to sex up its mostly dreary Panorama.
When anyone goes to register with a GP, have they ever asked for identification? No.
So, you could land at Heathrow at 7 am in the morning from anywhere in the world and be at a GP surgery at 10 am & seeing an NHS doctor for free. If you instead transited at Heathrow to Scotland or Wales, you could do the same & even the medicine is free.
That’s how screwed up the NHS is. But then again everyone knows this. That’s why all politicians want to throw £120 billion & more each year into it. TRAGIC.
They had the solution: National Identity Card. Labour spent millions failing to deliver it, Stupid Tories abolished it because it was anti- anything Labour did. That is why we are in the sh*t we are in. The BMA claim it is not the doctors job to test entitlement. Its no ones job, hurrah!. They are all totally useless, giving away our precious resources to any one that ask for it. I really despair, we are governed by donkeys. Chief Donkey, Eey haw Cameron.
This is a big problem within the NHS; I hear reports of “patients” arriving in airports on drips requiring dialysis whom cannot be turned away. Similar patients would not be allowed to fly outbound, but would not need to..
Once on the books then treatment is limitless.
I would like to retire to Spain but fear they do not offer the same as the NHS and this influences my viewpoint