Author Archives: Hugh

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

A few of the other blogs have also picked up on the Beeb’s treatment of Osborne:

Iain Dale points out that Osborne hasn’t actually broken any rules, and wonders why the BBC Business Editor is taking such an interest in what looks like a politics story.

Guido thinks he has the answer to that.

And Melanie Phillips at the Spectator really seems to have had enough.

Happy reading!

UPDATE: As a JBH in the comments points out, Stephen Glover also has a piece in the Mail today questioning the Beeb’s coverage, and The Sun also picks up on the complaints about bias.

Is the loathing of Bush’s Republicans so firmly established in the minds of all right thinking people that the BBC, as with global warming, has abandoned even the pretence of impartiality? Here’s Peter Marshall’s Newsnight blog following in the steps of Justin Webband the rest in this review of Oliver Stone’s film ‘W’:

Indeed Stone’s Bush is remarkably similar to the “hollow man” I identified in the 1999 election campaign, a characterisation which so annoyed the then Texas governor that for a while he refused to speak to the BBC. He is a man with a drink problem who’d failed in various ventures, reached 40, found God and resolved to join the family business: running the country. At the time it was gratifying for one’s critique to be noticed by the candidate – and also rather worrying. If he were to be so distracted by a foreign correspondent’s personal analysis, how would he cope with the slings, arrows and barbs that inevitably befall any inhabitant of the White House? Well now we know. He can’t take criticism and, in a politician, criticism is part of the climate

And here he is on Condi Rice:

But my favourite character is Condi Rice (Thandie Newton). Somehow she plays her as a cyborg, ultra-loyal to W because that’s how she has been programmed. She has no doubts, no opinions and her only emotions revolve around serving her mentor. It rings true.

It’s worth reminding ourselves, again, that the Beeb’s guidelines on impartialityapply just as much to blogs as elsewhere. In particular: News and Current Affairs staff should not:

• advocate support for a particular political party
• express views for or against any policy which is a matter of current party political debate
• advocate any particular position on an issue of current public controversy or debate

Of course, the BBC’s commitment to impartiality is so fundamental that it doesn’t actually bother monitoring it, but even so how hard can it be to see this piece has no place in its output?

To be honest, I don’t think the the BBC should be publishing opinion pieces, but since it does, do they all have to be so crashingly predictable? Here’s the review they’ve decided to run on the Jewel of Medina, the fictional account of Muhammad’s child bride that’s caused a stir. Based on your knowledge of the BBC see if you can guess whether it’s supportive before clicking through.

If the BBC did want a piece on this that would fulfill its charter obligations, was this blogger really the obvious choice? Apart from the naked partisanship, here’s a sample of the level of intellectual honesty on show: ...parts of the media who wanted to stir things up said Muslims wanted it banned. So, in order to find out what the (manufactured) fuss was about, I found myself spending 12 dreary hours reading this cringe-worthy melodramatic prose.

The fuss hasn’t been entirely “manufactured”, though, has it?

And here she is on the thorny subject of Aisha’s age (nine): I lost count of the references to “child bride”. Even till relatively modern times, marriage for women in their early teens was completely natural and common in parts of the world, including Europe.

If the Beeb is so sure of the knuckle-dragging tendencies of its audience that the only way it thinks it can safely cover issues like this is to quite so comprehensively patronise its Muslim and non-Muslim audience it really shouldn’t bother. I wish it hadn’t.

James Forsyth has a good post over at the Specator’s Coffee House. Here’s the opening:

If Coffee Housers missed it, I’d thoroughly recommend watching Kirsty Wark’s interview of George Osborne on Newsnight. It could easily be mistaken for a parody of BBC bias. Wark starts off by suggesting that the Tory governments of the 1980s are to blame for the current crisis; even Gordon Brown hasn’t attempted to claim this…

Wark, of course, has some formwhen it comes to accusations of pro-Labour bias.

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

So Newsnight decided to “debate” Mandelson’s return with a panel made up exclusively of Labour supporters: first Minister Liam Byrne on his own; then the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee and the Independent’s Steve Richards. Now, why does this ring a bell? That’s right! They did the same thing when he resigned (the second time) – which even the governors admitted was biased. Some things, it seems, never change.

Thanks to dave fordwych in the comments

This time, it’s spot the bias in this piece of free association by Matt Frei. I mean, I know it is biased because… Well, because it’s by Matt Frei and is, as far as I can tell, about American politics. But what the hell does it mean?

…the latest opinion polls suggested the public was selling Palins and McCains and buying Obamas and Bidens. It was not a rally. But gambles are out and caution is in. The numbers were looking terrible for the Republican candidate … Novelty and shrillness almost induce an allergic reaction. The most reassuring thing that has happened all week is that Warren Buffet, the sage of Omaha, has decided to sink a cool $5bn into a revamped Goldman Sachs. I bet you many Americans are wondering if we cannot just outsource government to him until the storm is over. The campaign has been transformed…

It doesn’t get any better. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what Frei was on when he wrote it.

Guido has a good post on Newsnight here, taking in its inability to report the markets (“pathetically bad”, he says); a harsh comment or two on Crick’s pointless Place that Face, which even Paxman seemed embarrassed by; and a note on our favourite Trotskyite, the programme’s economics editor Paul Mason. He also links to this piece by Iain Martin at the Telegraph which he argues it would be better just to scrap the programme. Well worth a read.

Iain Dale has an amusing insight into how the Beeb “balances” the panel on Question Time. He reveals that UKIP’s Nigel Farage was bumped off the panel in preference to the CBI’s Richard Lambert, the former FT editor who famously got the newspaper to back Labour in the 1992 election (although he seems less keen on them now):

So why don’t you bump Janet Street Porter instead, pleaded Nigel, pointing out that he has many years experience of in the City of London. No, we can’t do that, said the person from Question Time. “We need to keep our gender balance.”