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| Britain |
| "Telegraph" gears up to watch BBC, comment on bias |
| 2003-09-09 |
| Opinion EFL/FU The Kelly affair may lead some people to think that the BBC cannot really be politically biased. The usual accusation is that it is biased against the Conservative Party. But this is a saga of a row between the corporation and a Labour government. On the whole, the BBC is careful to fulfil its obligations to balance air-time for different parties. Indeed, if it were only a party dispute, there would be little reason why we, the general public, should worry ourselves too much about it. BBC bias is not a piece of partisan trickery - it is a state of mind. So strong is the state of mind that a great many of the acts of bias, perhaps the majority of them, are quite unconscious. It is time to delve into that unconscious. Hence our Beebwatch, which starts on the opinion pages today. The BBC’s mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn’t, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is "judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business" is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that... well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help. None of the above beliefs is indefensible. The problem is that all of them are open to challenge and that that challenge never comes from the BBC. During the first Countryside March, the Archers managed not to mention it at all, but mentioned the Gay Pride March instead. It is a question of who is being put on the spot, of where the BBC stands in relation to its chosen subject. "Yesterday, just after Yasser Arafat had torn up the road map by ousting his prime minister, I heard James Naughtie asking an Israeli spokesman why his country wouldn’t give the Palestinians more concessions. On the same programme (the famed Today), I heard an interviewer asking an Islamist, virtually unchallenged, to expound his belief that the men who killed thousands in the World Trade Centre were doing the will of Allah. Imagine such respectful treatment for some white fascist who thinks God wants black people dead. Readers are warmly invited to point out examples, but please make them specific and give the name of the programme and the date on which it appeared, and send them to beebwatch@telegraph.co.uk. Why are we bothering? Because anyone who wants to watch television in this country must by law pay £116 a year to the BBC for the privilege. It is like compulsory tithes to the Church of England in the 18th century. You may be interested to know what sermons your money is paying for. Read it all. Don’t have to comment on this - the article does enough itself. If even the BRITS are getting upset with the Beeb, maybe something will change. Best thing to do is to force the BBC to enter the marketplace as a private corporation, and try to survive without its government subsidy. The knife would cut deep in many, many places. |
| Posted by:Old Patriot |
| #2 Which Telegraph reporter gets this tit assignment? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-9-9 7:54:40 PM |
| #1 "If even the BRITS are getting upset with the Beeb, maybe something will change." Yes, one of 2 changes. Now, either the Beeb more balanced, or else the Beeb goes out of business. |
| Posted by: Katz 2003-9-9 3:47:17 PM |