Samizdata

It made me chuckle when I received a cheque for £50 ($85) from the BBC for my recent appearance on BBC News 24. It is rare that I get both the satisfaction of responding to a question pertaining to the Kilroy-Silk affair on live TV that, to paraphrase, “Surely this was not objective journalism by Kilroy-Silk” by saying “Surely you are not going to claim that the BBC itself is purely objective and does not take editorial positions in issues?”… and then to get paid by the BBC for saying it!

But then it dawned on me that £50 is less than half of the TV tax I am forced to pay annually to fund that monstrosity… and in any case they were only giving me back my own damn money. Oh well.

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.

1. Editorial system at BBC was defective in allowing Mr Gilligan’s report to go to air without editors seeing a script
   
2. BBC management failed to make an examination of Mr Gilligan’s notes of the interview with Dr Kelly
   
3. There was a defect in the BBC’s management system relating to the way complaints were investigated
   
4. 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.

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:

1. Praise for Coalition strategy
   
2. Criticism of Coalition strategy
   
3. Praise for Iraqi strategy
   
4. Criticism of Iraqi strategy
   
5. Coalition successes
   
6. Coalition setbacks
   
7. Scepticism over Coalition claims
   
8. 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.

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.