- Let’s be honest. There’s a clear link with Islam (£) by David Aaronovitch, The Times
- Intellectual property is an innovation killer by Joshua Lachkovic , KernalMag
- Dumb Idea Hall of Fame by Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy
- Nadine Dorries threatens Cameron's Party Leadership by Nadine Dorries, Daily Mail
- Boris set for party leadership? by Traci Watson, USAToday
- Anti-Israel students deface Star of David at student conference by Jonny Paul, Jerusalem Post
- Jihadist Videos on University Facebook by Rupert Sutton, Huffington Post UK
- Skintland: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose by Alex Massie, Spectator UK
- Green tax on conservatories by James Slack and Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail
- Saudi princess: What I'd change about my country by Staff writers, BBC
BBC bias is a national disgrace and a global menace
As the second senior BBC presenter this year slams the BBC for politically correct bias, it is now time for the Western world’s most powerful media outlet to put its house in order, or face the prospect of its eventual abolition.
For two decades, Peter Sissons, was one of the most visible faces of the BBC. Prime time news presenter, prime time interviewer, prime time moderator, prime time everything in sight. Safe to say, then, that he knows a thing or two about the organisation he used to work for. Here is how he recently characterised the culture that pervades it:
“By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent,” he said. “Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’”.
Violating the party line is clearly dangerous, and heaven forbid that you might be seen in possession of anything signalling an awareness of the views of the political right:
“If you want to read one of the few copies of the Daily Mail that find their way into the BBC newsroom, they are difficult to track down,” said Sissons, “and you would be advised not to make too much of a show of reading them. Wrap them in brown paper or a copy of The Guardian, would be my advice.”
A former employee with a grudge? Hardly. The man made millions out of the BBC which also cemented his reputation as one of the most celebrated journalists of his generation. And it’s not just Sissons. To the horror of senior executives, another BBC megastar, Michael Buerk, has just come out in broad support of his appraisal in a review of Sissons’ recent book on his life and career in the latest edition of Standpoint magazine. “What the BBC regards as normal and abnormal,” he said, “what is moderate or extreme, where the centre of gravity of an issue lies, are conditioned by the common set of assumptions held by the people who work for it.”
Precisely. And if all you ever read are the opinions of left-leaning commentators there is no mystery about the form that that BBC groupthink is inevitably going to take.
This is all in evidence on a daily basis when one considers the style and substance of the BBC’s reporting on three of the great litmus test issues in international politics: The United States of America; The State of Israel; and climate change.
America is largely characterised as a brutish, avaricious exploiter of the global and domestic poor: a country that will leave you to bleed to death in the road following a traffic accident if the ambulance team can’t find the appropriate health insurance card in your wallet. Admittedly, things are a little better now that the country has a president who, unlike his predecessor, is not mentally retarded, and at least has the good graces to appear thoroughly ashamed of everything America has ever stood for.
Israel, of course, is an international outlaw which takes delight in bombing and strafing Palestinian primary schools and health centres, while the Palestinians themselves are helpless third world victims of a pitiless war machine financed and equipped by America’s military industrial complex.
As for climate change, it’s literally gospel. The only questions worth asking are about the timing of the world’s appointment with Armageddon: will it be when Bangladesh disappears into the Bay of Bengal, or will it be when the last arctic polar bear cub succumbs to the tropical heat as its ice float finally melts into the bubbling stew that by then represents the ocean beneath it?
Unfortunately, the hierarchy at the BBC doesn’t see the problem. In fact they seem totally oblivious to the fact that there might be anything wrong at all. Referring to the salvo fired at it by Michael Buerk, an unnamed BBC spokesman was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying the following: ‘While Michael is entitled to his opinion, it has been some time since he has worked for BBC News so it’s interesting he feels in a position to comment. We certainly do not recognise the picture he has painted and nor would his colleagues. Impartiality is critical to our success as a news broadcaster and is always at the centre of what we do.”
No. Being a state funded monolith is the critical element in their “success”, and since a critical mass of the BBC’s editorial staff appears to regard the Guardian – Britain’s most ideologically charged newspaper – as a paragon of truth and objectivity it is hardly surprising that most of Michael Buerk’s colleagues are so utterly clueless about what the word “impartiality” even means.
But, if you’re hoping for change, don’t hold your breath. Guess who has just been appointed chairman of the BBC Trust, the BBC’s governing body. None other than Chris Patten, former Commissioner for External Relations at the European Commission who in 2010 became president of a charity called, wait for it, Medical Aid for Palestinians.
It is tempting to just shrug one’s shoulders and walk away. But as the most powerful media outlet in the UK and, via its website and its world service television and radio platforms, the most influential broadcaster in the world, we can’t. So, what to do?
Three possible strategies come to mind: work to reform it; work around it by pressing for a freeing up of the regulatory environment so that a robust competitor can be established in the private sector; or work to abolish it.
The first has been tried. That is no reason not to try again. But the rot runs so deep that we may have to face the prospect that the BBC is simply unreformable. The second is a good idea regardless of what the BBC does. In an open society it is deplorable that the state should dictate who can say what in the public domain. The airwaves should be free.
Looking to the long term, the third is a less remote possibility than it might currently appear. While today’s political establishment is largely supportive of the BBC, there are significant strands of opinion taking shape within it that have grave misgivings about the way things have been going.
But the key dynamic here is technology. As the internet continues to develop at breakneck speed, web-based “television” is surely set to explode. As more and more channels appear in an environment which is all but impossible to tax, regulate, or make subject to a television license it will become increasingly difficult to explain why one particular channel should get state support while others do not. When that day arrives, a sustained campaign for abolition, drawing on the growing ranks of the BBC’s critics, may yet be strong enough to deliver a fatal blow, or at least to shrink it to a pale shadow of its former self.
That would be a shame since, particularly in the fields of drama and the arts, much of the BBC’s output is exemplary. It is also a huge global brand which Britons should be able to be proud of. But if they won’t play by their own rules on bias and objectivity in politics and current affairs, they will leave us no choice.
Whatever happens, we need to say loudly and clearly that the current state of affairs is unacceptable. If the BBC eventually goes down, it will have no one to blame but itself.
Robin Shepherd is the owner/publisher of the Commentator. His most recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, is now out in paperback
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You have clearly never worked in a newsroom yourself or you wouldn't be writing such superficial, polemical, one-sided claptrap. Clearly you are blind to the fact that the BBC is the single most impartial news service we have, admired and respected the world over.
If it is indeed the case that "in the fields of drama and the arts, much of the BBC’s output is exemplary" it should have little problem finding a market for that product. Give it a few years to restructure itself such that it will be self-sustaining, then pull the plug.
Great piece Robin, and good luck with the new site.
I notice Victoria above doesn't identify what it is about what you wrote that is superficial, polemical, or one-sided claptrap. Since you were largely quoting 2 previous long term employees of the BBC who were stating what they experienced while there, that would show the BBC is anything but an IMPARTIAL NEWS SERVICE, but one with a clear selfish agenda, I would have to say she prefers to live in denial.
You have a right to do that Victoria, but I wouldn't bother writing in forums if you can't substantiate your claim.
@Victoria
Sadly, I agree with Robin. For example, every morning on the Today programme, the government's activity is introduced and then a Labour MP is interviewed. That's hardly balanced. Cuts are misrepresented, etc etc etc.
The biggest surprise of all right now is that the most balanced current affairs show on TV is Channel 4's 10 o'Clock show. As David Mitchell said last week in the context of the Japanese Nuclear Reactor, "A PHd with 20 years specialist safety experience is balanced against a random ignorant perception". Who'd have thought...
I am banned from BBC World Have Your Say radio program with audience of 150 million because:
1. I have invented a fraud proof voting system for the Third World
2. My own (British) government tried to scare me and/or eliminate me December 2007 by sending hit squads to Guinea Conakry, Beirut, Aleppo, Kigali and Nairobi
So - yes - BBC has bias - but it is NOT simply a left-wing bias - they also do everything (I mean everything) which MI6, FCO, and No10 dictate. Mind you, the media ban has extended to all British newspapers except the Kilmarnock Standard....
Will the Commentator publish this and also pursue the story? Are you technocrats/journalists or simply Bias of the Right?....
Alex Weir, London and Harare
Perhaps the BBC could be re-badged as 'Gramski's-Vision'. It's buddy the Guardian could be 'The Tele Gram'.
Nice site, I will re-visit daily.
Unlike the BBC website.
I stopped paying the TV Tax 3 years ago in protest at the institutional left wing bias at the BBC.
It has become so bad across its multiple & global platforms that I now fear it is beyond redemption & only shutting the whole edifice will suffice & cure it.
The BBC receives £3.4 billion pounds a year from British taxpayers - under threat of prison if they refuse.
Well I do refuse - & others like me are refusing to pay for an increasingly out of control & global left wing political organisation that cannot fulfil its own charter.
Great post, completely agree.
Its not as though Guardianisters have any idea of real socialism. It all reads and sounds like some spotty little middle class kid.
Time the BBC dumped its champagne socialists
I would also make a bet that Victoria is 1) Pro-Labour 2) Pro-EU 3) Pro-Immigration 4) Believes Mankind is largely responsible for 'Global Warming (or Climate Change, depending on the weather in any given year) 5) Not religious, but believes Islam means peace. 6) George Bush was the devil, and Obama is a saint. 7) Israel are evil land grabbers, and Palestinians are a poor unnecessarily repressed people who only want to live in peace.
Ask yourself Victoria, if I've ticked YOUR boxes, how did I know?
For 13 years the Labour Government announced more and more public spending on just about everything. I never once heard the BBC ask where the money was coming from, in fact the question was always 'why don't you spend more on this and give more money to that'. The BBC supports all public spending all the time. All cuts are bad. Just watch any BBC news program. Since all Government spending is paid for by taxing or borrowing the BBC supports high tax and more borrowing. That is not an unbiased political position.
Well said Teddy Bear!! WE squirm for the BBC's appalingly immmature bias. Victoria sounds as if she has a vested interest in the BBC. What blikered rubbish she spouts. First class article by Robin Shepherd
Teddy Bear: I'd add an eighth box for Victoria to tick: she works for the BBC.
the really incredible thing is that the circulation figures for the Guardian are tiny, i think around one tenth of those of the mail and sun and one third even of the express and yet journalists from the guardian are probably represented on BBC programmes, especially radio5 in a proportion closer to one out of two journalists.
can they not see that there is a distinctly large "conservative" public who CHOOSE to buy right of centre papers compared to those who buy left of centre papers and perhaps this should be reflected in the representation.
Excellent piece. I must keep reading this site. I am trying to work out whether Victoria Evans is a joke or really means what she has written. The BBC is and always has been in my lifetime (I am over 70) a propaganda organ of the far left. The only time it criticized ghastly Blair or the even worse Brown was for not being sufficiently left.
Like some of the other comments, I am not sure if Victoria Evans is a joke, or really believes what she has written.
Would rather trust CNN than the BBC. I have to agree with David that the BBC has always been a left wing propaganda organ.
Only now it can be compared to other news groups, and that makes me wonder how much longer we must pay for non jobs for these people.
One point you rarely see made: The anti-Israel and anti-US bias of the BBC's reporting helps to legitimise part of the world-view of British Islamists plotting attacks in the UK. The BBC's skewed reporting gives completely unwarranted credence to the Islamists' grievances.
It is therefore in the interests of everyone in Britain, whether or not they are interested the Arab/Israel dispute, and whatever they think of the US, to insist on impartial reporting by the BBC.
James - I think Victoria Evans must be a set up to get people to engage in this blog - she cannot be serious.
I listen to Radio 5 Live and without fail Victoria Derbyshire will constantly interrupt anyone with a right wing view but panders to the left constantly.
What's worse is the fact they get unqualified individuals and put them up against professionals.
For example when the hogwash over the false assertion that the MMR vaccine was harmful they had a medical doctor up against a woman with no medical training running a group called JABS.
The BBC is a shambles and why people in this country continue to accept being taxed to own a TV is beyond me...
A good article.
Recently, because of events in Japan (tsunami) and the Middle East (attempted revolutions), I have paid more attention to the news programmes available by satellite. These include Sky News, NHK and AlJazeera. I have found them a refreshing change to BBC News and, to my surprise, more informative, more in depth, more ready to provide a floor to people who seem to know what they are talking about - and without the constant interruption and point scoring that disfigures so many BBC programmes.
In consequence I watch the BBC less and less. It needs to raise its game.
Tron is right - just listen / watch when a BBC interviewer uses the dreaded word "profit", their voice tone and nose wrinkle like a bad smell wafted past. The poor interviewee always has to justify why they make a profit at all, let alone one higher than last year. Profits make pensions, unless you work for the Beeb where the licence payer forks out.
If the BBC is as great as it thinks it is how about moving to a subscription model and testing its popularity on the open market, rather than with the threat of prison or large fines.
@Tron: What gets up my nose is the way the BBC parroted and treated everything Labour put out as gospel with no in-depth questioning or analysis over the 13+ years; But the moment the Labour lost, the BBC now question and study everything issue in minute detail.
Nowadays any policy issue will result in the BBC interviewing the workers concerned, a union rep, concerned lefties on the street, a Labour MP and a left-wing Labour loving singer, comedian or actor.
Years ago, all you would get from the opposition would be a short 30 second message from a Tory MP and that would be it. There certainly wouldn't be a line of 2-3 opposition voices to the then Labour point of view.
If i hear that bloody precursor "Alassane Ouattara the internationally recognized winner blah blah blah"one more bloody time i will scream,and why is the BBC reporting Laurent Gbagbo's plight with open hostility bordering on contempt,(nothing to do with Alassane Ouattara being a follower of the religion of peace is it)and how long has the bloody U.N. had an airforce.Rant over, for now.
Victoria, defend yourself! Silence? You read like the authentic voice of the metropolitan liberal elite, heard echoing around the dinner tables of Chiswick or Islington, or maybe out with the proles but a daily injection of misinformation from the Guardian or Independent to keep your moral compass firmly bent 90 degrees to the Left.
The BBC is admired and respected only by people who are looking in the mirror and see in it just their own ideological reflection.
Victoria, defend yourself! Silence? You read like the authentic voice of the metropolitan liberal elite, heard echoing around the dinner tables of Chiswick or Islington, or maybe out with the proles but a daily injection of misinformation from the Guardian or Independent to keep your moral compass firmly bent 90 degrees to the Left.
The BBC is admired and respected only by people who are looking in the mirror and see in it just their own ideological reflection.
Victoria Evans
Peter Sissons HAS worked in more than one newsroom for a great many years. He doesn't agree with you that the BBC is impartial.
And neither do millions of us here in the UK AND abroad who don't share its left wing worldview.
Great piece Robin. Interested and delighted to hear about your new site - I have been following you on your own site for some time now and wish you and The Commentator much success.
The BBC has been described to me as the broadcasting arm of the Guardian, which just about sums up what you have written above.
They are no longer a public service broadcaster but more and more, the mouthpiece of the left, and if that is so, I see no reason why they should be paid out of the public purse. Now that Patten has joined its trustees it is an excellent time to press for the institution to stand on its own two feet and survive just on its ability to attract paying subscribers, or close down if it can't.
The BBC bias made me think I was loosing my mind. Thought I was alone. Thank goodness for the changing shape of media. This old BBCiorasaurus needs to adapt or die.
To the Victoria's of this disbelieving world:
Remember that the BBC has spent millions of our money fighting court cases to keep secret the report on the BBC bias over Israel-Gaza reporting!
If this is not official (and expensive) acknowledgement that the BBC is biased and knows it is biased, then I do not know what is!
I grew up trusting the BBC but now find it incredibly patronising and down right ignorant of the facts in many instances. It appears to take as read, the pronouncements (read press releases) of it's sanctioned hobby horse special interest groups, without ever questioning the scientific integrity of their claims.
The BBC glory days are long behind them, at least 15 years behind.
We in the UK are forced, by law, to fund the BBC if we possess any sort of equipment capable of receiving TV broadcast, whether by terrestrial or sattelite technology. At the moment this costs about $236 dollars per household per year, whether you actually watch the BBC output or not.
This gives the BBC an extorted income of about $5 billion a year. This massive guaranteed income distorts the market and lets them ride roughshod over public opinion.
The BBC is the greatest threat to democracy in Western Europe.
The only people who thnk the BBC are biased are folk who otherwise bury their heads in very right wing / very left wing media, such as the Daily Mail or Morning Star. To them the BBC is biased because it has the cheek to not parrot the right/left wing propoganda they are used to. Watching bitter old men, who were let go by the BBC, slagging the organisation off is plain sad. However, to treat their rantings as 'objective' analysis is delusional.
BBC News has inevitably gone the same way as the Guardian, in that it produces outputs mainly for the people who produce it (lefty, metropolitan media types or those who aspire to that)It doesn't represent normal people (nor do they want to) even though we are forced, by law, to pay for it.
The difference is, that the Guardian has very low cirulation due to competition and is propped up by it's clever tax avoidance schemes :-)
The BBC has every houselhold in the country forced to pay for it and is watched and listened to in great numbers because of limited competition and a long cultural habit amongst the middle-classes, therefore making it, by far, the most influential news organisation.
This article is an accurate reflection of the BBC bias. Hopefully the Internet will be the demise of this left wing organization. Fortunately as an ex Citizen I am not forced to pay the license fee in order to watch its dumbed-down news programs. The sooner the BBC is left to live or die by its own commercial efforts and the Tax Payers money is put to better use, the better
Two lovely quotes
"The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?"
August 2007 Jeremy Paxman - The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture
"People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago"
January 2007 Jeremy Paxman - BBC hypocrisy over environment
Of course the hierarchy see the problem as they are a major part of it. Labour overly promoted bureaucrat manager Mark Thompson, and installed Labour Councillor, Lyons, to ensure the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corp culture stayed firmly left. BBC radio 4 with The Toady Programme and World at One are rampantly left. Activists are under orders to attack any form of reasonable or right wing blog - hence Victoria Evans was first. This new government does not seem to have the balls to address the BBC. Putting Chris Patten in place is laughable - he has as much experience of corporate restructuring and culture change as Mark Thompson - none.
Victoria is a troll from the spectator, always hanging around melanie phillips' blog, commenting innanely.
every post she writes more or less says "i hate jews, i want every one of them killed, and i want israel wiped off the face of the earth"
I am 73 years old and follow these matters closely and have done all my life. The BBC is unquestionably a nasty 'leftie'anti-Semitic organisation who garner their employees from the employment pages of the Guardian. 'Ethnics' and women are hugely over represented in BBC middle management. I have complained about their specific policies and approaches to sujects innumerable times only to receive anodyne responses (what to you expect?) I was seriously hoping the the new 'Conservative' government would at least try and deal with these people and at least threaten to sell off parts of this monolith. No such luck....why am I not surprised?
Before the 2005 election,the IMF issued a warning that the UK was running up too much debt. (I believe that the OECD, European Central Bank, and the World Bank had said the same things) All the BBC would report was the official Labour Party line, that Gordon Brown was the best chancellor ever, and that the economy was doing fine. BBC wrong, IMF right. More BBC bias, but they won't admit that they were wrong not to report the IMF findings, far too embarrasing.
"...they seem totally oblivious to the fact that there might be anything wrong..." I think not - their reaction to the Balen Report, and to the many complaints they receive on a daily basis, shows that they are aware of what they are doing, but believe that they are right. Like all those with an ideological conviction, they are blind to truth, reality, and facts, or the opinion of anyone else. However, much BBC output is very good and should be kept - perhaps their news and current affairs sections could be formed into a separate division, charged for separately and optionally, and required to stick to their charter - i.e. be impartial.
It's what they don't report that's telling. It's pretty clear that those working for the BBC know they are biased and every day take care to slant the choice and order of news stories to push their agenda (ie, leaving out story angles that would favour the government). But not to make it so obvious they can be pulled up for it. The constant cuts as lead/second or third story on Radio 4 news, even if we're talking cuts to the bloody arts, is so biased it's unbelievable. Those Radio 4 'comedy' shows that only feature lefty luvvies slating the government and anyone who's 'posh', even when they've all been to public or grammar schools themselves, make me want to hurl.
Even my mother thinks BBC journalists seem as though they are brainwashed idiots when talking about Climate Change, and she is no expert on Atmospheric Physics or Solar Astronomy, Buerk and Sissons both had the curiosity and intelligence to do there own scientific investigations. After making an unsuccessful complaint to the BBC Trust on behalf of the Space special interest group of the high IQ society Mensa, I was made aware of a book called “Can we Trust the BBC” by Robin Aitkin, and also a website for the many scientists and thousands of other people who have stopped paying there licence fee on principle due to this and other issues. www.bbcrefuseniks.co.uk
i can't believe people still pay their fee to the bbc, it's nuts. why support a network that brainwashes you to the point up is down. don't pay the fee and when you get to court request your right to a more balanced media, it's insulting to the open minded.
It is an absolute injustice that those of us who oppose the Guardianista political line of the BBC should also be made to pay for it. I wish 'The Commentator' all possible success.
STOP PAYING THE LICENSE TAX IF YOU DONT YOU ARE GUILTY OF SUPPORTING ALL THIS FILTH STOP PAYING THE LICENSE TAX AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS NOT TO AS WELL
BBC... biased propaganda machine It's partners in the USA NPR and MSNBC
BBC... biased propaganda machine It's partners in the USA NPR and MSNBC
It means Israel has won. The BBC & Guardian could not compete without reducing themselves to the lowest form of garbage for the lowest dumbs. People must seerate BBC News from quality documentaries - these are not the same crowd.
The burqa, and covering the head and the entire body are not koranic prescriptions. In Europe they set Muslim women apart and help male terrorists escape detection and the country. This is, like the refusal of many Muslims to converse in English, a sign of an unwillingness to be assimilated and a goal of obliging us to comply with their mysogyny and obduracy. Who forces them to live in a place so obviously uncongenial to them?
I think the BBC is beyond reform in news and politics, they have an institutional statism that permits no deviation from the Taxes are good, Tories are bad themes. Just stop paying the TV tax, there is no gulag big enough to lock us all up. Anyway, they can't control the message on the internet (they have tried) and that is the beginning of the end for them.
The BBC is the broadcasting mouthpiece of everything that is leftie-trendy.
They have the arrogance to tell us what is good for us, what music we should listen to and what to think. And they have the cheek to pick our pockets in the process.
The only thing that has not changed throughout BBC history is that if you complain they will always tell you why you're wrong. That is the arrogance that being in their privileged position produces.
No-one has mentioned the BBC's Anglo-phobic stance, though other broadcasters are also guilty of it too One only has to watch tosh such as 'How God Made The English' to realise what some of us have always known about the BBC's thoughts on the English. It is our own unique identity, yet the BBC is hell bent on de-constructing it and making it into something of their own choosing - i.e. that we're a myth of our own making, only existing as a mere word and only acceptable in terms of a civic identity. No other people has to endure such a crass, sustained attack on their identity - not the Welsh, Scots, Irish or any other identity you can think of - and cretins at the BBC, if asked, couldn't show me one example of where they have done so. The BBC's 'factual' output (try not to laugh) is akin to being beaten over the head with a rolled-up copy of the Guardian.
It sounds like Victoria would love Tehran. She should go there and see how long she lasts. As for defending herself, she has no defence. You can't fix stupid.
I see a future where the we can, and will, crush the BBC's extortion of the British public, their malfeasance, their revolting anti-semitism and eugenics support (stop people breeding? Seriously? That's evil, just plain evil).
Personally I'd like to see the BBC go down in flames and disappear forever, sod their pathetic drama/"comedy" output. It's ALL left-wing/commie bias. It's a cancer.