Remember this?
“I always think that impartiality is in our DNA – it’s part of the BBC’s genetic make-up.”
That was Helen Boaden, the then director of BBC News. It was 2011
And then today….
Helen Boaden, the BBC’s former news director, has admitted the corporation held a “deep liberal bias” in its coverage of immigation when she took up the role in 2004.
Oh my.
yes, maybe I’m being harsh as I browse the BBC UK news pages: I see that as the Labour party problems deepen suddenly we suddenly have new Madeleine McCann and James Bulger stories top take the headlines.
Can you imagine. If the Tories were responsible for a Falkirk style stich up it would have been heading up the 10 o’clock news days ago as it is its relegated to any other parish news
Boaden’s words ought to be preserved for posterity in the In Their Own Words section of this site.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for the director generalship.
Pity we can’t edit our comments. Boaden was passed over for Entwistle, hence her sour grapes attitude. “Now, if a woman had been DG…”
From ‘Independent’-
on BBC Trust report:-
“Prebble noted that the BBC’s College of Journalism website, a resource for all its staff, carried a lecture by the BBC’s former Environment Correspondent Richard Black ‘entirely devoted to sustaining the case that climate change is effectively “settled science” and that those who argue otherwise are simply wrong’. The BBC Trust author said that the piece should also reflect that ‘dissenters (or even sceptics) should still occasionally be heard because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate’.”
“Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys act like interview ‘prizefighters’, says BBC Trust report.
“Author compared interviews on Newsnight and Today to poorly-matched boxing contests.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/jeremy-paxman-and-john-humphrys-act-like-interview-prizefighters-says-bbc-trust-report-8685604.html?origin=internalSearch
I resent the use of the word “liberal”.
As noted by Bettina Bien Greaves in the Preface to Liberalism (Mises, 1985)
The term “liberalism,” from the Latin “liber” meaning “free,” referred originally to the philosophy of freedom. It still retained this meaning in Europe when this book was written (1927) so that readers who opened its covers expected an analysis of the freedom philosophy of classical liberalism. Unfortunately, however, in recent decades, “liberalism” has come to mean something very different. The word has been taken over, especially in the United States, by philosophical socialists and used by them to refer to their government intervention and “welfare state” program.
We should take back the word for its proper use. What Helen Boaden should have said is the BBC held a “deep socialist bias.”
“Now even the BBC admits it is biased to its very core”
By Ross Clark.
[Excerpt]-
“Only the BBC could have commissioned a man happy to describe himself as a “progressive liberal” to lead an investigation into accusations of liberal bias at the BBC.
“The report by Stuart Prebble, former head of ITV, published on Wednesday, bends over backwards to exonerate the BBC yet it can’t help but reveal an organisation that is steeped in a Left-liberal culture and which has contempt for the views of the majority of the licence-fee-payers who fund it.”
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/412637/Now-even-the-BBC-admits-it-is-biased-to-its-very-core?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daily-express-express-comment+%28Daily+Express+%3A%3A+Express+Comment+Feed%29
“Complacency at the heart of BBC bias”
By DAILY MAIL COMMENT.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2355223/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Complacency-heart-BBC-bias.html
Ms. Boaden’s outings into written explanation (especially on ‘The Editors’ threads) have often been illuminating, especially when word and deed do not tally. The Pollard Report is also a useful source for pearls of ‘left hand, even lefter hand’ foot in mouthism from this long term, side-stepping, still very well remunerated market rate ‘talent’.
One can only wonder at what unique process sees her still dining (if often forgetfully, come the next weekly inquiry she is called to) at the BBC top table.