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In today’s Telegraph Charles Moore has an excellent summary of what is wrong with the BBC, its deeply entrenched institutional bias and its undeserved influence:
It seems to me that the BBC today is the enemy of conservative culture in Britain. This is not immediately obvious, because elements of the BBC’s output, particularly on radio, are justly loved by many conservative-minded people. But it is nevertheless the case. The few glorious programmes are used as the camouflage behind which political correctness can advance.
How does the BBC approach subjects such as American power, organised religion, marriage, the EU, the Middle East, the actions of the Armed Forces, the rights of householders to defend their property against burglars, public spending, choice of schools, or any perceived inequality?
Who will be more politely treated – Gerry Adams or Norman Tebbit, a spokesman for Hizbollah or Paul Wolfowitz? If someone appears on a programme described as a “property developer” with someone described as a “green activist”, who will get the rougher ride? If a detective drama features a feisty lesbian and a chilly aristocrat, which is more likely to be the murderer?
And when it comes to a war – it applied both in the Falklands and in Iraq – the BBC takes a pride in being what it calls “even-handed”, which means inventing moral equivalence between the forces of our country and those of aggressive dictatorships.
None of these attitudes is unique to the BBC, but what is unique is the BBC’s power to impose them. In order legally to have a television in your home, you have to pay the BBC £116 a year. This allows it to dominate virtually all forms of broadcast media, many of which have nothing to do with any idea of “public service broadcasting”.
Out of the deference that this power instils, senior BBC executives are paid more than anyone else in the entire British public service. Greg Dyke, the now ex-director-general and editor-in-chief who seems to have been too busy to edit, got £464,000 last year. BBC executives are like the princes of the Church of England before the commutation of the tithes. They are rich and powerful, and no doubt they mean well, but there comes a time when non-conformists get fed up with paying for their sermons and their privileges.
That time is surely near. We must find a way of abolishing or hugely reducing the licence fee while reviving the core of public service broadcasting. How half-witted of Tory Britain to hand this chance to Tony Blair, instead of claiming it for itself.
Apologies for such a long quote but apart from a tiny disagreement about the license fee – it should be scrapped, not just reduced – I have nothing to add.
The Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has now resigned.
Mr Dyke’s decision to step down came 20 hours after BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies resigned following the Hutton Report.
An emotional Mr Dyke told BBC staff at their central London headquarters: “I don’t want to go. But if in the end you screw up you have to go.”
What with Gavyn Davies gone and now Mr Dyke, the corporation will hopefully be a bit less ‘hideously white’.
I am just watching the evening news that reverberates with the release of the Hutton report . It exonerates the government of lying about their 45-minute claim and pretty much damns the BBC.
- Editorial system at BBC was defective in allowing Mr Gilligan’s report to go to air without editors seeing a script
- BBC management failed to make an examination of Mr Gilligan’s notes of the interview with Dr Kelly
- There was a defect in the BBC’s management system relating to the way complaints were investigated
- BBC governors failed to investigate Mr Gilligan’s actions properly
Channel 4 were gloating relishing that the BBC is in “disarray”, “deep crisis” and words to that effect. They read extracts from the letter by the BBC Chairman who acknowledged that the trust the viewers had in the BBC had been undermined. I’d say! And add that it is not due to the Hutton report but by institutionally engrained bias and arrogance that one comes to expect from public institutions with no accountability. The BBC governors are admitting that the ‘procedure failed’ and are considering resigning en masse. Oh, the Chairman has already resigned. I think we will get over it.
Now Andrew Neil a BBC presenter, is complaining that Lord Hutton is an anti-journalist judge. Oh yes, the BBC never errs. And the government is not right either – look they still haven’t found any WMD!!!! The report favour the establisment, he keeps mumbling. I expect any minute they are going to lead him out to meet nice men with a lovely long-sleeved jacket.
The political impact of publicly unveiling just how political and biased the BBC is will be considerable. I am not sure that the result will be to our liking. The government is not going to disband the BBC but will call for a full-scale regulation and the license fee will become an even less conspicous form of taxation.
Update: This is such major news that I have been wondering whether any other news have been ‘buried’ today. I think I found it.
Journalism is a dog-eat-dog business these days. Lack of talent is no longer enough. No, you have to do something truly original and spectacular in order to get noticed.
Take, for example, Osama Bin Laden. After years of fruitless struggle (and the customary mound of polite rejection letters) he has finally been rewarded with his own column in the Guardian:
The west’s occupation of our countries is old, but takes new forms. The struggle between us and them began centuries ago, and will continue. There can be no dialogue with occupiers except through arms. Throughout the past century, Islamic countries have not been liberated from occupation except through jihad. But, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the west today is doing its utmost to besmirch this jihad, supported by hypocrites.
Employing him was clearly the right decision. Who else can boast such an enticing combination of political commentary, history and anti-Western rhetoric? This is sizzling stuff. Looks like the Guardian has landed itself a new champion of social justice and the environment.
There’s a curious use of a word to be found here, or there is now, as I concoct this, at about 4.40 pm on Sunday afternoon, London time. Maybe it will change soon. I refer to the little heading which leads to this story. The story itself is headed “Blair praises UK troops in Basra” and I have no problem with that. But the bit at the main website that leads to this story says, on the left, just under where it says “NEWS”:
Blair rallies UK troops in Basra.
Rallies. Yes, you read that right. Evidently some twit at the BBC thinks that Britain’s army has just suffered some sort of defeat.
Please understand that I am not in any way blaming Blair for this absurd word, merely the fool who put it up at the BBC website, and as I say it may soon vanish.
These people are starting seriously to believe their own bullshit.
There were big anti-terror/pro-democracy demonstrations in Baghdad today. Glenn Reynolds points out they were noticed grudgingly, when at all, by the ‘professional’ ‘media’. A few years ago this would have meant the story didn’t exist.
Times change.
Greg Dyke, the BBC director general, attacked American reporting of the war in Iraq and derided news organisations that were prepared to bang the drum for one side or the other. Mr Dyke, who was speaking after collecting an honorary award at the International Emmys in New York on Monday night, said the Iraq coverage illustrated the difference between the BBC and US networks:
For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility. They should be balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other. If that were true in Britain, the BBC would have failed in its duty.
He cited research showing that of 840 experts interviewed on US news outlets during the war only four opposed the conflict.
Yes, unlike the BBC that has accomplished what we would call a pervasive bias, an affliction where the reporters cannot even tell just how loudly they are banging the drum for one side. This is the news outlet that regarded the Iraqi Minister of Information a source on a par with the Command Centre. Oh, and whose reporters kept insisting that there are not US troops in Baghdad when the rest of the world were watching their tanks moving down the streets of central Baghdad.
I came across an interesting report by River Path Associates that looks at the BBC Reporters’ Log and examines evidence of bias in the BBC’s reporting during the Iraq conflict. They chose the Reporters’ Log since it is immediate and reflects assumptions of the reporters themselves. (I would argue that the more pronounced bias was at the editorial level, it was interesting that some reporters who posted to the Reporters’ Log complained that their raw reporting was given a rather different spin by editors in the UK.)
The report analyses all 1343 posts to the BBC Reporters’ Log. The majority of posts contained factual statements or accounts of reporters’ personal experiences. Others discussed strategy, Coalition and Iraqi claims, and the progress of the war. The authors focused on these latter posts, allocating them to 8 different categories:
- Praise for Coalition strategy
- Criticism of Coalition strategy
- Praise for Iraqi strategy
- Criticism of Iraqi strategy
- Coalition successes
- Coalition setbacks
- Scepticism over Coalition claims
- Scepticism over Iraqi claims
They concluded, among other things, that:
A quantitative analysis of entries in the Reporter’s Log indicates that most reports are factual in nature, and do not contain comment or speculation on the nature and progress of the war.
- Reports that do include comment and speculation, however, are likely to be critical of Coalition strategy and to report Coalition setbacks. Reporters are also more likely to be sceptical about Coalition claims than Iraqi claims. This provides some evidence of bias.
- It is notable that many of the more provocative reports are made by the BBC’s most high profile journalists, especially by those based in Baghdad. While most BBC journalists concentrate on objective factual reporting, others habitually adopt a more confrontational role. On occasion, this leads to exaggerated, speculative or incorrect stories, which seldom receive any correction.
- These findings call into question BBC attempts to try and originate more stories, in order to set the news agenda. Questions arise over whether the BBC can ‘create’ the news, while holding to the standards of impartiality and independence which its Director General sets for it.
There you have it. And for more juicy evidence there is, of course, Biased BBC, which, by the way, has also something to say about Mr. Dykes arrogant comments about the US media.
I received an email from Dave Winer who is fighting a battle for an Internet free from interference from Big Media pointing to a post on Harvard Law School blog*. Here is the message:
I would love to see their candidates [ed. Clarke and Dean campaigns] make an impassioned plea to keep the Internet free of interference from the entertainment industry. I would welcome this for two reasons.
1. First, I’m part of a constituency, like many others, who are looking for a candidate to vote for who supports our primary issue. Nothing unusual about that, easy to understand.
2. But as important, it would signal that the candidate is not beholden to the media companies. I would happily give money to candidates for ads that warn that the media industry is trying to rob us of our future, and explains how important it is to protect the independence of the Internet. Use the media industry channels to undermine their efforts to the control channels they don’t own, yet.
…
If you agree, pass this idea on to each of the campaigns and to other voters. Let’s use the Internet to keep the Internet free, in a positive way. Make a clear statement, I will only vote for a candidate who supports a free Internet. And it’s a open source idea, Bush, Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt, Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, Sharpton, et al are welcome to use it.
“Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet.”
Although I could not give a flying f*** about political campaigns and presidential elections, I am very much concerned about the Internet remaining free from political intereference. Dave Winer is correct in drawing attention to this pointing out how the symbiotic relationship between politicians and the media can spell danger for Internet as we know it today. Quite apart from the argument about the impact of pundit blogs on political discourse in the traditional media, Internet is undeniably changing balance of power in many areas in ways mostly unpalatable to politicians and the established media.
*There is a disclaimer that points out that he is speaking for himself and not on behalf of Harvard Law School or the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society.
The BBC has appointed a “Middle East policeman” to oversee its coverage of the region amid mounting allegations of anti-Israeli bias.
Malcolm Balen, a former editor of the Nine O’Clock News, has been recruited in an attempt to improve the corporation’s reporting of the Middle East and its relationship with the main political players. Mr Balen, who left the BBC three years ago, will work full-time with the official title of “senior editorial adviser”.
Another way to describe this is the expression ‘putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound’. Yeah, that will fix it.
An article in today’s Fox News contains an interesting numerical statement, one of those ‘gee whiz’ comparisons we so often see:
Compounding Aziz’s information, U.S. intelligence agencies have been going over millions of documents — 9 1/2 miles’ worth if laid end to end — left behind by Saddam’s government after its sudden collapse around April 10.
There is just one problem: their math is wrong. There are 5,280 feet in a mile; and 12 inches in a foot. Since Fox is an American news outlet, the paper size can be assumed as 8.5×11 inches. So we have, using the archaic system of measurements based on lengths of a long dead English Monarch’s appendages:
9.5 miles x 5,280 feet/mile x 12 inches/foot = 601,920 inches.
If we take ‘end to end’ literally, we get:
601,920 inches / 11 inches/sheet = 54,720 sheets.
This falls a few short of millions. Oh well… let’s try again. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and line the pages up side by side instead of end to end:
601,920 inches / 8.5 inches/sheet = 70,814 sheets.
Either there are only .07 million pages or someone can’t handle simple math.
Any engineer who grew up using a Pickett (sliderule) would have immediately seen the unreasonableness of the statement.
Our Man in Basra (now back in the UK) has some thoughts on the difference between how the media reported Gulf War 1991 and how they reported Gulf War 2003 and why that matters.
During the Gulf War of 1991, media reporting went something like this: About a month of showing pictures, entirely controlled by the US military, of Allied airplanes flying over Iraq, followed by the announcement by General Schwarzkopf that the war was over and we had won.
Although they had their suspicions, none of the journalists, all kept behind the lines in Riyadh, knew that Allied troops had crossed the border into Iraq until three days after the ground offensive had started, the Republican Guard in Kuwait had been virtually destroyed, and Schwarzkopf announced victory. This severely limited the opportunity for the media to criticise the conduct of the ground war.
The above is a simplification, but it covers in essence the way the media war was fought in 1991 – by the journalists out there, by the military out there, and as it was seen by everyone else on their TVs. Naturally, the military regarded this as a great success. Equally naturally, the media regarded it as a disaster. The viewing public generally seemed satisfied, bar a few dedicated peaceniks, who wanted pictures of military screw-ups.
Two factors therefore set the context for the reporting of Gulf War 2003. First, the media were determined not to allow the military to keep them away from ‘the story’, the way they were kept away in 1991. → Continue reading: The media in the Gulf
‘Our man in Basra’ is back in the UK, with some first hand stories and a different perspective on what is going on both in Iraq and in the media. His first post (out of three planned so far) is about his view of the media and why they report the events in Iraq the way they do.
Most people have an implicit, nebulous, and generally unthought through understanding of the media and what their job is. It has to do something with getting the facts and reporting the truth or at least the reality to the best of their abilities. The media is a sort of civilian intelligence agency. This is how the military, in particular, view them and when the media are not reporting the facts, they are seen as failing in their job.
The media do not see their job in this light at all. Their job is to find and sell stories. Of course, these should not be completely divorced from the facts, but facts are merely the raw materials of the stories. More importantly, the media do not feel obliged to report all the facts, especially in a place like Iraq, where there is either very intense competition among reporters and therefore not much time to investigate the story in detail. Alternatively, the interest is fading a bit, so it is not worth investing the time. Either way, the result is the same.
What has become obvious to me while in Basra and helped me understand the media better is that they have now decided what their story is in Iraq. They have signed up this story as their product before they even arrive. They are not there to research ‘the facts’ – they are merely looking to illustrate their story. → Continue reading: The media story
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