RIGHT WING BIAS AT THE BBC

I want you to imagine the following scenarios.

  1)    BBC Business Correspondent interviewing leading Trade Union official: “Well Mr Smith it seems you have increased your membership by 20% since last year, have successfully negotiated improved working conditions for your staff by threatening industrial action, and ensured extra payments for working unsocial hours. To what do you attribute your success?

2)    BBC Business Correspondent interviewing leading businessman: “So despite the fact that over 80% of your staff are paid the minimum wage, you are awarding yourself a bonus payment of over two million pounds, on top of your already generous salary package. Additionally your company has been heavily criticised for the fact that it pays virtually no corporation tax. How do you justify yourself to your workforce and the hard working taxpayers of this country?

The Today Programme
Not very realistic is it. Yet if you reverse the scenarios and replace the trade unionist with the businessman in scenario 1 you get an exact portrait of the tone of business reporting everyday on the BBC. The Today programme on Radio 4 is particularly notorious. If they want an expert on Tax they go to Price Water-House Cooper or some other tax avoidance outfit, who will, as happened in a recent example, be given plenty of uninterrupted space to propagandise on the ‘absurdity’ of returning to a 50% top rate.  Bankers are treated with levels of deference not seen at the BBC since political interviews of the 1950’s.

Compare this with the treatment of Trade Union officials, highlighted recently on the Andrew Neil programme The Sunday Politics. Before introducing him Neil describes the elected leader of a major trade union several times as a ‘Barron’ in semi derisory tones. During an exceptionally aggressive interview the man snaps back calling Andrew Neil, Neil. When Neil objects to this the reply is short and swift, “well I don’t liked to be called a Barron.”

“What about Mr Barron?” Neil responds.[1]

Now I don’t name the trade unionist concerns since he could be any one of a number of individuals, the important aspect here is the aggressive tone of the interview, which though on the more extreme end of the spectrum, is not untypical.
So tell me Mr McCluskey why do you want to hold the
 country to ransom? 

The Tory Party has done an extremely effective job of portraying the BBC as a nest of pinko’s, whilst gradually nudging the corporation, by intimidation and blackmail over the licence fee and Royal Charter renewal, ever further to the right.

Don’t just take my word for it this bias has recently been highlighted by research at Cardiff University, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-accused-ofpolitical-bias--on-the-right-not-the-left-9129639.html

There is a rather silly argument to the effect that if both the right and the left complain about the BBC it must be getting it about right. This might be true if we were talking about minor aspects of reporting, yet we are just emerging from the greatest financial crisis since the crash of 1929, a foreseeable crisis that the BBC, the most prominent news agency in the UK, with all its fawning at the feet of City fat cats and large financial institutions failed to report.

I am a supporter of the BBC, and you only have to spend 10 minutes watching the execrable Fox news to see what the Tories would love to put in its place. You do not however do a good job of defending the BBC by turning a blind eye to its serious failings or buying into the idea that it represents, give or take a few errors, a completely fair and balanced picture of the world. 



[1] I am aware that I have recently praised Mr Neil, and do not withdraw that praise, I am all in favour of subjecting those influencing our lives to rigorous scrutiny. I just wish Mr Neil was a little less selective.



Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.

Popular posts from this blog

NESRINE MALIK AND THE UNSUNG VIRTUES OF HYPOCRISY

Image
As I write this a 27 year old woman, Mariam Ibrahim, has just had a baby in a Sudanese prison, ‘the condition of the mother and baby is not known as Ibrahim's lawyer and her husband, a US citizen, had been denied access to her. Omdurman women's prison has a basic clinic, where the child is thought to have been born. Ibrahim has been shackled since being imprisoned.’ [1]   Mariam also has an 18 month old child who is also being held in prison with her. The ‘crime’ for which she is imprisoned is apostasy, for which she has received the death sentence. She has also been sentenced to 100 lashes, for the additional crime of having sex with her Christian husband. Although she has been a lifelong Christian her father was a Muslim, Sudanese sharia law forbids women to marry outside the Muslim faith, men needless to say can do as they please in these matters. Mariam Ibrahim and her husband.  Nineteen countries punish their citizens for apostasy, and in 12 of those countries
Read more

INTERVIEW WITH TOM VAGUE

Image
Tom Vague At the top end of All Saints Road there is a refuge, an enclave in which a local Bohemian culture retains a foothold, this is the Book & kitchen , a café/bookshop with adjoining terrace. Here the bustle of the nearby market gives way to conversation, conversation in the presence of images of the recent, and not so recent, past. The past of an area that has contributed so much to the life and culture of the city. I was there to meet local historian Mr Tom Vague a man intimately familiar with so much of this history. What Tom doesn’t know about the recent history of the area probably is not worth knowing. With Tom’s energy and effort Colville Community Forum, supported by City Living Local Life, recently held a gathering at The Book and Kitchen to celebrate this rich history. February 16 6-9 Pm, with Film Screening and Readings Exhibition February 16-26 2016. Featuring 30 Classic Westway Photographs and Posters. This represents one of a number of initiatives of t
Read more

LONDON BELONGS TO ME PART ONE

Image
. I. I have lived in London now just over thirty years, having moved here on 4 th July 1983 . I don’t know how long you normally have to wait to claim squatter’s rights but thirty years seems a good enough period to me. The glory of London is its parks and open spaces, you are rarely ever far away from a London park, common or heath. I am within fifteen minutes walk of Kensington Gardens or Holland Park , much closer to several smaller areas with grass and flowers and benches on which to sit, all maintained by Kensington and Chelsea council who also still believe in the value of trees. Those who would see what they call ‘the state’ shrink rarely mention such items in their calculations. What does it cost to maintain a tree? Too much by far for the likes of those right wing think tanks whom and I fear the phrase is soon likely to break under the strain under which it is now being placed, know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Holland Park is one of t
Read more