Author Archives: Natalie

Michael Medved writes:

yet another example of BBC bias: link

The piece is titled “Hezbollah confirms Israel talks” and contains amongst the rest the following passage: “When Hezbollah captured Israeli soldiers in 2000, it took four years before talks succeeded and the soldiers were swapped for some 400 Palestinian and 35 Lebanese prisoners, our correspondent says.”

They conveniently forget to mention those were DEAD soldiers Hezbollah returned. Is it just an omission, or the internal wish of the BBC to see ALL the Israeli soldiers in this condition?

Another bit of information from this article: “The group has offered to exchange the two Israeli soldiers for Arab prisoners in Israel, but Israel has repeatedly refused.”

Perhaps my insufficient mastery of the English language plays a subtle trick on me, but I feel Israel is a villain in this sentence. Indeed, how dare they refuse to justify the hostages’ kidnapping?

Best regards, Michael Medved

Here is how the BBC reported that earlier swap. Back then, too, the BBC seemed to de-emphasise the fact that the Israeli soldiers concerned were dead. That article says, “Each side sent detainees to an air base in Germany, where identities were checked …” despite the fact that there was only one living Israeli “detainee”, the businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum. One does not usually speak of dead bodies as “detainees.”

UPDATE: The Michael Medved whose email sparked off this post writes, “I was (and am) often mistaken for the US talk show host Michael Medved, so I kind of got used to it :-)”

Some recent reviews (some of which, like this post, contain spoilers):

Chicken Yoghurt on Torchwood

The Sharpener on Torchwood

Dumbjohn on Torchwood

Behind the Sofa on Torchwood

Eric Lee on Tor… Spooks

After reading the three links about it above I had to remind myself that I had found Torchwood genuinely scary. (“Look at that mask, it’s like real teeth, honest- aaagh!“) Its biggest problem is that it is lazy. It’s billed as Dr Who plus sex. A sure-fire winning combination, you might think. Having thought that, Russell Davies and his team sat back and didn’t think much further.

I offer no justification for posting a few more of my observations about the programme on a website allegedly about the political bias of the BBC other than longstanding tradition, rights of co-ownership and a profound sense of social duty.

. Mark Thompson writes:

Judging by some of the headlines over the past week, there are people out there who think the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

Like all the best conspiracy-theorists, though, they don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. But let’s put the myths and rumours to one side and take a quick reality check.

A bit off, calling Andrew Marr a conspiracy-theorist like that.

Adloyada writes on the BBC’s treatment of quotas for faith schools. I’d noticed how the BBC has been framing the debate in terms of “the archbishop again denied…” and had began to think of writing a post about it. Adloyada beat me to it, and also looks at what I would call actual misrepresentation of the positions of the various branches of Judaism. For instance it gave a lot of air time to Reform Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a committed opponent of faith schools.

The BBC itself also repeatedly chose Rabbi Romain to interview throughout the week leading up to the final decision about the quotas. Neither they nor the BBC gave listeners any clue that Romain does not speak for the Reform Jewish movement– whose movement is currently expanding its provision of Jewish schools—or any other group of Jews.

The reason why Adloyada’s first sentence in the quote above speaks of “the BBC itself” is that she had just before that said that the BBC gave yet further coverage of Rabbi Romain indirectly, by quoting Kenneth Baker (inaccurately) implying that Rabbi Romain was typical of the Jewish view.

Lord Baker was quoted so often by the BBC in news bulletins and Ceefax that I had, quite wrongly, got the impression that his view was that of the Conservative party as a whole. I had jeered that this opportunistic reversal of previously held principles was just typical of them, opposition for opposition’s sake… Blimey this hurts. Me, having to admit that I was suckered by the Beeb.

The cherry on the top came in the form of who the BBC chose as an example of a happy product of cross-cultural schooling. If you don’t yet know you’ll have to read right down to the bottom of Adloyada’s post in order to find out because it’s not something you’d ever guess unaided. I don’t blame the school, I really don’t – these things happen – but, really, he’s not exactly going to feature on their list of distinguished Old Boys, is he?

The bandwagon is gathering momentum. Yesterday it emerged that a BBC executive, Ann Davies, has questioned whether the corporation should “help break the constraints of the PC police” after audience research found it was out of step with much of mainstream public opinion. Another BBC boss, Richard Klein, commissioning editor for documentaries, told staff it was “pathetic” for the BBC to pride itself on being “of the people”.

They’re all spot on. It’s high time the debate moved on from narrow notions of political bias. Far harder for the BBC to gainsay is that it has a liberal cultural bias, one that envelops pretty much all programmes, not just news and current affairs. If you want to find the most solid evidence of partiality, look at the BBC’s entertainment output – its dramas, comedies and arts programmes. This is where its guard is down, where the BBC editorial police are not watching out for “balance” weak points. And it’s also where, arguably, the partiality is far more subversive.

I wouldn’t know where to start in tackling the political correctness of BBC drama, but I think the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves would go to Spooks, BBC1’s flagship series about impossibly right-on MI5 agents. The series was originally praised (by the BBC) for its accuracy about the real work of the Security Service. So what did it kick off with on the first episode? A pro-life extremist bomber out to cause mayhem. Come on, you must know about them! No? Well, what about episode two, which tackled the equally pressing issue of racist extremists in league with Right-wing politicians plotting mass murder of immigrants? I lost interest in Spooks, but tuned in again a few weeks ago for the start of the fifth series. It was about homegrown al-Qa’eda terrorists taking over the Saudi embassy and murdering innocent people. Except that they weren’t British Muslims at all, but undercover Israeli agents. Once again, the villains are a million miles away from the ones you might expect, and top-heavy with the forces of reaction.

The Evening Standard reports on the views of BBC commissioning editor for documentaries, Richard Klein. (Hat tip to Jonathan Boyd Hunt. Read his comment here.)

Klein said: “By and large, people who work at the BBC think the same and it’s not the way the audience thinks. That’s not long term sustainable.”

“We pride ourselves on being ‘of the people’, and it’s pathetic…..Channel 4 tends to laugh at people, the BBC ignores them.”

His comments, reported in the corporation’s in-house magazine, come on the back of news earlier this week that a string of BBC executives and journalists have admitted that the corporation is institutionally biased.

And

Klein, who made his views known at an “audience festival” organised by the BBC last week to find out what its viewers think, admitted that the BBC’s liberal internal culture did not match that of the wider British public.

He said: “Most people at the BBC don’t live lives like this, but these are our licence payers. It’s our job to reflect and engage.”

And

Research conducted by the BBC showed that many viewers felt “gagged and alone” and also believed mainstream views were being driven underground.

Another reader reminded me that Nick Cohen had also covered the famous impartiality seminar in an article for the Observer on 7 October, discussed in this post by Laban Tall.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

• Little Bulldogs looks at the response in the BBC Editors’ blog to the impartiality seminar.
• Breakfast with Nanny: Johnathan Pearce on some of the assumptions behind the stories featured one morning on BBC breakfast television.
• Tim Worstall shared Ed’s low opinion of the piece about the EU accounts criticised below.
• House of Dumb. We at this blog are too modest to summarise this post.
• Oh, and I expect it is asking too much in this day and age for anyone to see anything worthy of comment in this:
  

  “The BBC’s David Loyn has had exclusive access to Taleban forces mobilised against the British army in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.”

  (Update: By “anyone” I meant “anyone” in the British Broadcasting Corporation. I just scanned our comments. Naturally this one had already been spotted by pounce and others.)

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Thanks to Henry and Richy in comments here, to Little Bulldogs, and to several anonymous commenters for the tip. Both the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard carry stories about how

“a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

The quote from Andrew Marr (“The BBC is not impartial or neutral … It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias”) might join the others on the sidebar eventually, including the earlier one from him (“Every time I ask people – show me a case of that bias … they seem to be unable to do so”). Compare and contrast, you might say. Another potential addition to the sidebar is the fact that Washington correspondent Justin Webb “said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to ‘correct’ it in his reports.”

Before we get into gloating, let us acknowledge that the fact that the BBC was sufficiently aware of the problem to hold the “impartiality summit”, an account of which has been leaked to the Evening Standard, is a good thing. It is encouraging that Mr Marr does now see what he could not in 2001. Mr Webb did better not worse than some others when he became aware of the problem and took steps to correct it.

Then we can – er, never mind.

Expect more on this story.

NB: Post expanded a little from the original version.