I’m talking about the Labour leadership contest and the increasingly fractious tone of the competition. It must be so tough for the BBC. Comrade Corbyn is making the headlines and IF polls are to to be believed (and that is one huge caveat) may actually be in the lead. Remarkably HIS supporters on the social networks are claiming the BBC is biased against the Dear Leader. Do you agree? We’ve seen Blair saying his piece, we’ve now had Prescott rebuff that, and the latest suggestion is that Kendall MUST step down to allow Burnham or Cooper to overhaul Corbyn. The BBC seem perplexed about the whole issue and it’s clear that they, like Labour, don’t know what to do. Do they go along with the farcical Corbyn roadshow, and if not, who can they nudge along? It’s certainly NOT Kendall, the BBC are clear that Labour in 2015 is a cold house for anyone with even a vestige of Blairism about them. As Labour thrash about like a fish out of water, these must be tough times for the BBC. With no real meaningful opposition to Cameron (apart from that which sits on his back benches) and Labour looking to lose again in 2020, can the BBC survive a decade of Conservative type government?

Hi all. As you will have seen, we’ve been making a few changes. The purpose of this change is to make this site a better place. We seek to provide a forum for all kinds of views on BBC bias. We seek to allow beat between those who come here. And for clarity, I am quite happy if people seek to take issue with points raised here, to defend the BBC. What is not tolerable is allowing trolls to infest the site, post under various names, and indulge in ad hominem. That time is over and I would suggest trolls and stalkers go elsewhere as they are not welcome here. Hope you all approve. One of the things that struck me last week during the BBC license national debate was the sheer number of BBC people and political pundits who visit our site. I also welcome them here! This site has influence, I want to increase that influence further, and make Biased BBC a great daily visit.

Middle of the week and time for  new one of these. I see the BBC are enchanted by the news that few pages of a new Koran “may” have been found in Birmingham. So touching. Anyway, over to you…

The BBC are pushing hard to make sure that criticism of the BBC and any projected change is seen as dangerous meddling by vested interests both political and commercial.

This BBC article gives us chapter and verse on those who voice support for the BBC…BBC facing ‘root-and-branch’ review…and though published after the revelations of media manipulation by the BBC there’s no mention of Danny Cohen organising that Luvvie letter.

The BBC reports, quite often, the hyperbole of Tory Lord Fowler (isn’t he a politically ‘vested interest’ then, all Tories being anti-BBC?) about the Panel set up to look at Charter renewal, and Lord Patten (another Tory…more of those politically ‘vested interests’?)…

‘Special interests’

The panel was criticised by conservative peer Lord Fowler, who warned in the House of Lords on Tuesday that the BBC was “under unprecedented attack”.

“I must warn those who support the BBC that we have something of a fight on our hands,” he said.

“The cards are marked and somewhat stacked against us. The advisory group advising the Secretary of State clanks with special interests and past opinions.”

Speaking at the same debate, Lord Patten, a former chairman of the BBC Trust, called the government’s advisory panel “a team of assistant gravediggers” who would help the culture secretary “bury the BBC that we love”.

No need to comment on Tory wet Patten but what of those people who are ‘Clanking with special interests and past opinions’ on the review panel?  Fowler is not himself immune to such charges…and an additional one of hypocrisy with his own special interest and past opinions….he being a great fan of the BBC and its unbiased reporting….so why does he think his comments are untainted by possible bias whilst others are doing the satanic work of Rupert Murdoch?

Here he is in 2009….

One of the easiest ways of winning a cheer at this week’s Conservative party conference will be to attack the impartiality or extravagance of the BBC. The corporation has never been a conference favourite but over the last decade the Conservative view has not counted for very much.

One of the achievements of the BBC over the years is how it has resisted government interference and, above all, maintained impartiality in its reporting. [Fowler’s contention of no bias rests on the BBC’s attack on Labour over the Iraq War….but that is absolute evidence of its bias…against the war…a stance that has helped recruit Muslim radicals for Al Qaeda and now ISIS]
My advice then to the new ministers who are likely to take over is reject the Murdoch path of cutting back the BBC and concentrate instead on making it more effective.

Pretty clear where he stood in 2009….for the BBC.

Fowler back in 2012 said this…..admitting the BBC had massive political influence but you know what…it’s not really a problem… his real target is Murdoch…

 The challenge remains to devise a system where nobody – Murdoch or anybody else – has a disproportionate share of the British media.

What about the BBC with its plethora of television channels and multitude of radio stations and programmes? Surely the corporation has a massive political influence, for why else would cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers queue up to be interviewed on Today or Andrew Marr’s Sunday programme?

As it happens my own view would be that BBC reporting is some of the best in the world, but that is not how everybody sees it.  Any new rules on share of voice cannot be directed exclusively at News International. The BBC must come within the net as too must the other media giants like Google.

The BBC faces stiff competition on all its television channels. The same however is not true for national news radio. Today, World at One and PM have a far too clear run. That kind of radio programme cannot be supported by advertising, but of course the BBC has the licence fee. One solution here is to make a portion of the licence fee contestable so that a new provider like ITN or Channel 4 can be attracted in to compete.

Fowler demonstrates much confused thinking.  He tells us that Murdoch is bad for the Media landscape because he owned ‘almost 40% of national press circulation and a big chunk of a successful television company’…however ‘Now all that is changing. We are into the post-Murdoch era.’  So Murdoch’s not a problem now?  And yet he, and others, mention him relentlessly.

And yet Fowler has little problem with the BBC dominating the news with its ‘ massive political influence‘?

What of that Charter review panel? 

Is it really a hit squad specially picked to be the BBC’s  ‘grave diggers’?

You would have thought so from much of the rhetoric flooding out from the BBC’s defenders and the BBC itself.  Here’s BBC comedian Stewart Lee with some wit and wisdom….

The government’s witch-hunters are ready to reform the BBC to death. 

He tells us that ‘Due to its legendary nose for news, last week’s Sunday Times was first to reveal the “eight experts” chosen by culture secretary John Whittingdale to “help decide the BBC’s future”, the Murdoch empire barely able to wait to share its horror at the venerable institution’s latest humiliation.

And what a golden shower of talent Whittingdale has stitched together, a veritable human centipede of business-minded entities, in order to safeguard the nation’s cultural heritage.’

Naturally out of the woodwork crawls the man with no thoughts of his own, Jon Donnison, to applaud this public display of prejudiced stupidity and ignorance by Lee….(H/T Craig at Is the BBC Biased?)..

  Jon DonnisonVerified account ‏@jondonnisonbbc

Jon Donnison retweeted Chris Hamilton

Chapeau. 

Chris Hamilton @chrishams   In which Stewart Lee gives it both barrels re BBC debate – then re-loads & gives it a few more http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/19/stewart-lee-bbc-witch-hunters-reform-panel-culture-secretary …

The problem is that the mouth frothing and eye-ball rolling are somewhat wasted.  If they had the slightest intent of providing an intelligent and informed comment instead of scaremongering bombastic exaggeration they would have told you what the Government actually says and what others, such as ‘Broadcast’ magazine, which is very pro-BBC,  says about the panel.

Firstly is the Panel the sole source of information and reference for the government?  No.  The BBC itself, through Hall and his executives and via the BBC Trust, will be having a huge say in what goes on and the Trust will be gathering information and data to support whatever case it decides to proffer….

One of the creations of the last Charter was the BBC Trust – set up to represent the licence fee payer. The Trust will, in thisrole, also be consulting on proposals for the future of the BBC. We will take full account of the Trust’s work and work with them on a range of public and industry events to explore in detail the important issues in the coming months.

The Public and whoever else is interested and concerned are also invited to contribute their views and opinions…

Reviewing the BBC’s Royal Charter is not just a case of publishing a consultation. We want to engage with the public and with industry to make sure that all views are given proper consideration. This is why we are engaging with people across the UK in a number of ways to make it easy for everyone to respond.

Not only that but other experts will be engaged to provide comment and relevant expertise…

There are also some areas where studies, reviews and research are needed – to add technical expertise or independence from Government. We will be commissioning these in the coming months.

Not only that but as well as the eight people on the review Panel other people or groups will be asked to join the panel as when the situation requires it.

Hardly the cosy little stitch up by a government in hock to the Murdoch empire as excitedly claimed by Fowler, Patten and Lee & Co as they paint a doomsday scenario for the BBC.

The only stitch up seems to be that organised by the BBC itself knowing full well that the review process is a long and involved one using the knowledge and ideas of a wide range of people, the BBC itself not being the least contributor to that process, and yet they set out with a deliberate policy to whip up the rhetoric and exaggerate, if not invent, the ‘danger to the BBC’ in order to attempt to cause a storm of protest and antipathy towards the government position…trying to intimidate the government which know that the Public ‘loves the telly more than the Tories’!

Here is what Broadcast Magazine said of the panel…most are pro-BBC despite having some critical thoughts about it…they are broadly supportive by default, even Alex Mahon who worked for Murdoch.  Some of them have worked for the BBC, one has the ex-head of the BBC iPlayer as his company strategist, one is the head of the Arts Council who has provided reports on Music education for both Labour and Coalition governments, and bound to be a good mate or acquaintance of Tony Hall (from the Royal Opera House), another is head of ‘Diversity UK’ who tweets approvingly of BBC programmes and has an MBE for services to the creative industries.  Another was head of Ofcom and is now president of the Voice of the Listeners and Viewer.

This is what the chairman of the VLV said….’

“We welcome the opportunity the Green Paper will provide for the public to be involved in the debate about the future of the BBC. The recent licence fee settlement did not allow for any public debate and was an unacceptable raid on the BBC’s income to fund government social policy, namely free licence fees for the over 75s.

“The preamble to this debate has not been edifying, with leaks and political point scoring. The BBC is too important an institution to be a political football. Now citizens must have their voice.

.

Hardly sounds like a bunch intent on wrecking the BBC or its connections to the creative industries and educational services….it would seem a lot of their ‘vested interests’ are actually aligned with the BBC’s.

Lee moans that he isn’t on the panel despite his own, self-admitted, brilliance…

Like it or not, and I am not sure that I do, I am objectively the most critically acclaimed British TV comedian this century, and every one of my BBC series of the last decade has been either nominated for, or won, multiple Bafta, British Comedy and Chortle awards. Any panel on the future of the BBC that includes a phone app bloke over me is clearly not worth the beer mat it was hastily drawn up on.

Trouble is that ‘phone app bloke’ has created a billion pound company and it is his knowledge of how to exploit the internet, what the public like to listen to and in what formats, and how to combine the two, that the government wants to utilise in order to contemplate and predict what a future BBC might look like as it adapts to the new digital media landscape around it.  Don’t know if Lee has that knowledge but the phone number, email and snail mail address is on the government website...feel free to give them your considered opinion instead of taking the easy route, whilst taking a big cheque for your troubles, of using the BBC’s outhouse journal, the Guardian, to air your grandstanding uninformed whinges.

The comedians have had their say, now let’s get on with the job and let the people with intelligent, informed views have their say.

I notice the BBC reporting that  South Yorkshire Police child protection ‘needs improvement’ I doubt that many of us would take exception to this and it seems fair and reasonable that the BBC ask probing questions of what continues to go on in Rotherham and elsewhere in this region. However, I am surprised that the beady eye of the Beeb does not quite extend to the Council and whether it has managed to step up to the plate – given it’s utterly disgraceful failure to stand up for defenceless young girls being exploited by muslim rape gangs. Might this be anything to do with the fact this is a Labour heartland and thus beyond critical examination?  I think we should be told…!

It must be tough for the BBC. With Labour in sustained meltdown after their trouncing at the General Election, it’s clear that the BBC needs to find another conduit to conduct its biased onslaught against the Conservative Government and the left-leaning IFS provides such. This morning we read the BBC trumpeting the “news” that… “Poorest graduates ‘will owe £53,000’ after grants cut” The source of this claim, the IFS, is treated as if it were the oracle of Delphi by the BBC and never once as there any acknowledgement by the BBC that the IFS carries a left leaning bias. Contrast how they salivate and accept the findings of an IFS study with how they caveat the findings of any study by Migration Watch! Had the BBC the integrity it claims to have then it would ensure that IFS reports are caveated with the statement that it is a LEFT leaning body. Instead, they increasingly hysterical claims of the IFS are treated as Holy Writ.

BBC TV and Radio stations will be busy today as selected “British Muslims” are invited in to comment on Cameron’s to plan to tackle Islamist extremism, It will be interesting to observe how many VICTIMS of Islamic extremism the BBC chooses to invite. (In the interests of balance, naturally.) For more than a few years the BBC has colluded in the farcical notion that it is somehow “Islamophobic” to dare to criticise an ideology which has brought carnage to our streets at home and to those abroad. Cameron is raising this issue now – better late than never – but I suggest you will see the “Islamophibia” card being played as the day goes on.

BBC Radio Four Today doesn’t like the idea that Donald Trump may become a contender for the GOP nomination in the US Presidential race. So, around 6.45am this morning, Jon Sopel tried to do a demolition piece on Trump based on the fact that he had  – deep intake of breath – DARED to criticise Saint John McCain. Now McCain is the sort of Republican that the BBC like – namely a political loser – and when you contrast his limp views on immigration with those of Trump – the BBC reacts badly! In fact, Sopel went on to suggest that Trump was “a Nigel Farage” figure.

One thing Sopel said that was right was that the GOP “establishment” do not want a Trump in the race. Nor do the BBC. For that reason alone, I hope he does well.

On-time and awaiting your completion! A brand new Open thread to detail the bias! Over to you…

Jonathan Dimbleby is worried….the family inheritance, the hand-me down job at the BBC, is under threat…what will the young Dimblebys do to earn a crust?

He urges a public revolt, an uprising to save the BBC….to save it from what I’m not sure…

Jonathan Dimbleby urges public to rise up in support of embattled BBC

‘The veteran political broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has attacked the commercial enemies of the BBC for setting out to destroy it, and has urged audiences to rise up to defend the corporation.

“Even people within the BBC [who are] now beginning to stand up for it, fail to identify those vested interests. The Murdoch press is an enemy of the BBC for commercial reasons,” said Dimbleby, 70, in reaction to the release of the government’s green paper on the future size and remit of the corporation.

Making an unexpected intervention at a recording of Radio 4’s long-running current affairs comment show, Any Questions?, Dimbleby, brother of David and son of the BBC’s first war reporter, the late Richard Dimbleby, said the corporation’s opponents “have to be taken on by the BBC and by those viewers and listeners who own the BBC”. He added: “Go around the world, listen to what people say about the BBC, they think it’s astonishing we are having to think about whether or not it should survive.”

Dimbleby’s comments were not broadcast and are not included in the iPlayer version of the programme. His impassioned outburst was made over his radio microphone at the end of the recording in Leamington Spa, in response to a question from panellist and shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna and it came as the BBC Trust, the body that oversees the corporation, prepares to step up its information campaign.’

Ah it’s the usual suspects that are being lined up as the villains of the piece….criticism of the BBC or its reform are a machiavellian plot by Murdoch and his toady politicians…..and all in response to a question from a Labour MP…one too chicken to attempt to win the Labour leadership.

As the Guardian says the BBC Trust is also on the campaign trail…

‘A trust official said trustees were about to launch “the biggest ever version” of the research and public consultation work they regularly carry out. “There will be more intensive work than we have ever done in a single period and larger-scale research likely to reach more than 100,000 people,” he said. The trust was determined to broaden the debate and prevent a focus on perceived failings of the corporation.’

Astonishing how much effort and money they are putting into defending the BBC’s entrenched and very privileged position…money and effort they never put in before to discover the Public’s views….because they didn’t want to know them…on Europe, Labour’s economic policies, immigration or Islam.

The Guardian quotes another BBC defender…

Dimbleby’s sentiments were echoed this weekend by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer behind the most popular recent display of British cultural values, the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London.

“It speaks for the nation”….. ‘the “range of tones and ideas” embodied by the BBC formed a sense of national identity and provided the varied voice that politicians often claim Britain needs to defeat extreme ideologies and terrorism.’

No, it doesn’t speak for the nation, it speaks for a small group, a self-selected metropolitan elite that has no desire to listen to what the lesser mortals want or think, they only want to impose their own values and beliefs and to have to discuss or negotiate this with the Plebs is far, far beneath them.

As for defeating extreme ideologies and terrorism…has he never listened to the BBC?  Has he never listened to Nicky Campbell or Victoria Derbyshire pandering to Islamist callers on the phone-ins?  Has he never listened to the relentless drumbeat of anti-Britishness that blames everything from ‘carving up the Middle East’ after WWI to the Iraq War for Islamic radicalism…never once actually blaming the real culprits…the people who adhere to the Islamic religion and follow its commands to its inevitable conclusions.

The Guardian is in full-on save the BBC mode publishing article after article in its defence, however this one by Anne McElvoy has slipped through the net….

‘The BBC is not undergoing involuntary euthanasia’

‘[There are] howls of mawkish protest and rallying cries of “save the BBC” – before we’re entirely sure from what.

A collective protest letter from celebrities, which turned out to have been encouraged from within, has not helped. We should treat such confections with the scepticism we reserve for letters from self-interested business folk calling for Tory votes before an election. Deep breaths all round. The BBC is not really “under attack”, being “bullied”, nor on the brink of being replaced by a porn-funded network based in an offshore tax haven. But it is undergoing an exercise that it does not like – having to defend its funding model and growth of its services.

Neither is an unreasonable question to ask, which makes me think that it might be better to show an interest in the process and be firm and clear on what its red lines are, rather than adopting a “how very dare you?” one about the exercise.

Scope and finance are very much legitimate questions for publicly funded broadcasters. The BBC is big and has expanded rapidly from the 1990s. There are some good reasons for this – and some not so good. It is large because scale helped it achieve impact in a global media world and technology has enabled it to add services quickly. It has not, however, undergone much scrutiny for the impact of this on others. A serious radio competitor, for example, has never got off the ground, while newspaper websites are up against its prodigious online offering. Asking a group of people who have run other broadcasting bodies to advise the government on the BBC’s impact on media markets is not lese-majesty.’

A far more measured and reasoned tone….the BBC is not threatened with closure or very much at all in reality.  The review process has only just started and yet the BBC is firing broadsides at anything that moves trying to win the non-existent argument….or rather one, of a dire threat to the BBC, that it has concocted out of its own imaginings.

The BBC seems entirely unprepard to even contemplate the review….it may after all end up with the recommendation that nothing changes other than a few minor tweeks….and the likelihood is that the BBC’s funding will be on an even firmer footing with a simple subscription system or national tax and a charge for the iPlayer.  I fail to see how it will be prevented fom making all those programmes that the likes of Frank Cottrell Boyce say provide the UK with so much overseas influence….and even if they’re not made by the BBC they’ll be made by someone else….as with Top Gear, which will probably be resurrected under a different guise on ITV.  The real ‘soft power’, the ‘World Service’ will also still be funded and broadcast whatever.

The BBC is not under an existential threat.  Calm down and stop crying wolf.