Sometimes this quest for impartiality makes for some strange viewing. Let's say you have a front page story – a man's been caught having sex with his goats. Well you can bet that the next day BBC will have some spokesperson from the Foundation for Animal's Rights to Marriage (FARM) putting forward the case for bestiality in the name of a balanced debate. It can mean that some strange and infrequently held views are given inappropriate airtime. A good example is climate change – despite a tiny minority of scientists disputing anthropogenic climate change, the BBC are compelled to invite on some smug, populist sceptic to wave his arms and say it's all a conspiracy. Here James Delingpole laments the BBC's ignorance for siding with "scientists". Pesky scientists, with their "evidence". Another strange situation is that "balance" requires not taking sides in the Israel-Palestine troubles, despite the fact that the crimes have been overwhelmingly perpetrated by Israel. The BBC is generally criticised as being unreasonably pro-Palestine, as this 2006 article by Michael Gove shows.
Ukip are a right wing party, it might not surprise you to hear, and recent darlings of the BBC (and many other media outlets). There's even a website, (IsNigelFarageOnQuestionTime.com) dedicated to informing the curious viewer whether Nigel Farage is on Question Time on any given week. Since 2010, the pint-swilling populist has been Question Time's joint-most-frequently-invited guest along with Labour's Caroline Flint.
Still, the BBC get a lot of verbal excrement thrown at them by the right for being a Stalinist propaganda arm of the state. Read any number of right wing newspapers for this attitude. Peter Hitchens is a great example. He complained about the Radio 4 program What the Papers Say giving him a silly voice. They do that to all the journalists they imitate, the only difference with Peter is that his voice is silly in real life. Was Peter a little offended, perhaps? Maybe a little political correctness in the BBC is in order, hmm, to stop them satirising poor lowly irritant toffs such as himself, maybe. He also complained about the BBC misrepresenting an article he wrote about Ukip, and then he made out that the fact that they apologised made the BBC even worse.
One wonders if Peter and his ilk might have some interests at hand. Like perhaps organisations that criticise the BBC might have something against, say, the principle of public ownership in general. Well the Daily Mail's not exactly one to champion public ownership, owned as it is by the shifty Lord Rothermere who doesn't believe in paying taxes on this profits, and hence doesn't. And what about Murdoch's papers? No surprise that News Corporation is no fan of its big British rival – it can't even stage a take-over. The Centre for Policy Studies enjoys a good BBC bash. Founded by Margaret Thatcher and a few other neoliberal greedy-types, it promotes free markets. The BBC is public and – deep breath – regulated.
The uniting criticism is that the BBC is run by a 'liberal elite', and these critics want to swap it with a conservative elite. But the accusation of left-wing bias doesn't really ring true. The Greens, despite having an MP, are vastly outweighed in coverage by Ukip, and Trade Unions, despite being the largest democratic organisation in the UK, are outweighed by representatives from business – union member's bosses. BBC News's bigtime interviewers – Andrew Marr, Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman (now gone), Nick Robinson – are all Tories to some degree. We hear a lot about growth in the economy, but no critique of what growth amounts to, and we get a lot of cheap shots at Ed Miliband (granted, Ed makes himself a target by being pretty useless).
This article from a Cardiff University lecturer shows the stats. It reports that research shows "the BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda."
It then signs off with...
"The funding for some of the research discussed in this article was provided directly by the BBC Trust."
Oops!
But of late I'd say that the analysis is pretty accurate. The BBC failed to report a huge anti-austerity march last week, except for (eventually) this piddly little post-it note of a report. Then I saw Andrew Marr on Sunday having a great old jolly with his breakfast time pal, Foreign Secretary William Hague, signing off by thanking him for the little chat. "It's been a treat," he said before blowing him a subtle kiss.
Then today I listened to Radio 4's Analysis. It's one of those slow, thoughtful radio shows that you don't get many places. It tends to go a little beyond the trite pie-slinging political soap opera that's curated by Nick Robinson and friends on BBC News. It was called Tories: Nasty or Nice? Now, no surprises for guessing where I stand, but I'm always up for hearing the other side of the argument. The problem with this episode, however, was that there was no other to the other side. It was presented by Tory supporter Robin Aitken, and he didn't try and hide his political persuasions.
So, I wrote to Feedback –
---------------------------------
I listened to this week's Analysis, a show which is often pretty good. I understand that this episode was exploring the question of whether the Conservative Party are nasty or nice and it was delivered by a Tory supporter. I don't have a problem with the presenter's political leanings, but I would have thought he would have to adhere to some form of political balance for the sake of the show. This wasn't the case. While he was exploring how the 'nasty' label had come to be, and putting the case forward for 'nice' – with the aid of the Right-wing philosopher, Scruton – there was a complete lack of challenge to his thesis. By my recollection, there was one guest who thought the Tories were 'nasty', yet she still found time to congratulate them on their foreign aid budget. There was no response from a representative of the Left to the accusation that in fact it is they who are 'nasty', never mind any detailed exploration into the damage that Tory policy has caused, or the financial interests that effect many Tory's judgements. Need I remind Aitken that it's not just Tory words that are so offensive, but their actions too.
Aitken's conclusion was that mending the electoral prospects of the Tories is a PR excersise, and after hearing this episode (and with the absense of coverage of the recent anti-government protests fresh in the mind) one wonders how involved the BBC is getting in providing that PR.
-------------------------
I also sent a link of the programme to http://biasedbbc.org/. They're obviously a paranoid anti-left bunch, but bias is bias, right? I'm sure their hatred of Labour, Europe, climate science, Obama, etc., won't get in the way of a their duty to seek out bias and put it right in whatever form it be! Right?
What I said to them was...
-------------------------
Hi, I noticed some recent bias that I think you'd be interested in.
This week's episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Analysis, had a complete lack of balance.
For your interest, here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047ws86
Keep up the good work!
-------------------------
At least I'm nice hey. In conclusion, I don't think the BBC is as-a-rule conspiratorially left-wing or right-wing. Thankfully, the BBC's set-up involves so many editorial pigeonholes that they'd make a really incoherent propaganda organisation. Unfortunately that leads to some aggressive accusations when they slip up. The difference between where the accusations come from, as I see it, is that where the Left generally support the BBC and are concerned when it seems to be parping the government line, the Right are happy to criticise anything because destroying the BBC is the ultimate aim.
Some say that the BBC generally align themselves with the government of the time, being nice in order to save the license fee. That wasn't the case in the 80s when the BBC was happy to give Thatcher a hard time, and we hope it's not the case now. The fact that both Left and Right seem to have an endless amount of ammunition is probably a sign that the BBC isn't drifting too far either way, overall. (I'm referring to party-political leanings here rather than social politics, for which the BBC is a little to the left – in line with dominant social attitudes – or economics, for which the BBC is to the right – in line with dominant economic discourse.) But to dispell the accusations of pro-gov bias, they better start holding the government to account for some of its work, reporting the mass anti-government movements, and stop snuggling up all cosy-like with despicable politicians on Sunday morning sofas.
No comments:
Post a Comment