BBC controversy

I doubt whether many journalists or commentators are entirely unbiased or totally resistant to influence - I'm sure we could dig up some interesting connections that might call some of your opinions into question. James Murdoch of course has something of a cheek talking about independent press at all considering the sphere of influence his father has created from his media power! Surely the most important aspect of this debate that gets mentioned only rarely is that the BBC should not be competitive - that is not what it is there to do. The role of public broadcaster means that it should lead the way and create the benchmark outside of commercial influence and pressure - this of course means it must try to be as transparent as possible - not easy when a government like the current one is in power and trying to push everyone around. I say let's stop BBC bashing and try to think positively how we can ensure it survives in the best of circumstances.

Posted by Tony Platt at 10:18am on September 14, 2009

The BBC strikes me as an organisation largely like the Civil Service. Does the Civil Service demonstrate a left- or right-wing bias? It seems that whatever political leanings the heads of the BBC might hold upon arrival, they are fairly swiftly converted to the BBC's 'world view' - that is the nature of the BBC, and it's not altogether a bad thing. I also believe that, given the BBC's stated - and lived - belief in impartiality, whatever the political beliefs of its correspondents, they will lean over backwards to ensure, as far as possible, the impartiality of their reports. Any bias is, therefore, a result of the cultural milieu in which they are working, rather than any conscious attempt at the expression of an opinion. Murdoch juniors' belief that only an organisation working for profit can produce unbiased news is clearly as ideological as any perceived BBC bias - in fact, rather more so. Should we receive our news from Friedrich von Hayek or from John Maynard Keynes?

Posted by Jess D at 10:54am on September 14, 2009

A couple of Murdock hacks claiming the BBC is biased, and all based on an assessment of the top management, as if these people actually dictated the content of programmes. The content should be judged on its quality, not on which rich and powerful man is being paid too much of our money to be the figurehead. I'll take the BBC any day before Murdoch sleeze and simplistic rabble rousing. Quite an orchestrated attack on the BBC is going on right across the media, interesting that First Post has had several forays into it as well; perhaps Denis Publishing is planning a pay as you read website, or would like to, and would benefit by the BBC being stopped from publishing its excellent web content as well as making the best programmes on UKTV. This pathetic little scribble makes no serious points. I doubt the BBC would employ such meagre talents as Cromwell and Edwards.

Posted by foolonthehill at 10:55am on September 14, 2009

"Richard Sambrook, the former BBC director of news, told the Independent before he retired..." Er, Richard Sambrook hasn't retired: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/biographies/biogs/executives/richardsambrook.shtml

Posted by Will Jordan at 11:03am on September 14, 2009

Let's keep bashing the BBC until they cave in and buckle at the knees. Their anti-Jewish bias led to them being banned from entering Israel about nine years ago, so they sponsored an external enquiry into the truth of the claim, and they were found guilty! So they invented a management post to look for anti-Israeli bias. Then there is the anti-clerical, anti-church, anti-Christian Atheistic Secular Humanism (ASH for short) that is the guiding light of their darkness. Then there is their ultra-left bias. Have they ever exposed the full evil of Stalin and co? Or explored the fact that Hitler led the National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party? Or ever given UKIP an even break in any election? Do they sound like a party-political organisation to you? Despite all Thatcher did (blessed be she), they came out as socialist as they went in.

Posted by michael jose at 11:10am on September 14, 2009

Its a pity the author uses Norman Finkelstein as a reliable commentator on Israel-US ties. Finkelstein is a self hating Jew. He mocks the holocaust and his views about Jews are so derogatory that he was refused tenure at his owm university. His views on the Mid-East cannot be regarded as valid or reliable. He is the most biased of all.

Posted by normtrub at 11:30am on September 14, 2009

This is feeble, unoriginal stuff. So, the BBC isn't impartial, isn't neutral. What a revelation. What insight. Not. As usual, Edwards and Cromwell explore the obvious in a cliched way. There's so much scope for fresh, new approaches to media analysis, but we keep getting this same tired old line from the Media Lens duo. Why does The First Post scrape the barrel with this stuff? It should be left to the Morning Star and amateur blog world.

Posted by BLM at 12:05pm on September 14, 2009

Journalists should swear an oath of ethics in the same manner as doctors (and uh lawyers). It might help rid us of the trash and biasd reporting that is proliferated by Murdock and the BBC etc. There is also the use of intimidation and abuse of power by certain sections of the media. Hopefully, (and this may be naive) the current trend of truly independent media sources on the internet will continue to offer us another option, other than that of the compromised big business and government connected broadcasting and print companies.

Posted by Terry O'C at 1:15pm on September 14, 2009

I welcome the chance to voice an opinion of the BBC. I was in Bangkok for 3 months this year and lived and moved in the area where the Red-Shirt demonstrators were active, namely Victory Monument and Siam Square. I also regularly watched the news bulletins on the BBC. What struck me as strange was the way the BBC was exaggerating everything. Small demonstration that took place in familiar side streets were being made out to be major disruptive events. According to BBC reporting anyone not actually in the area would have got the (false) impression that Bangkok was burning! One small example was when we tried to visit the Paragon shopping center but it was closed because a couple of 'hijacked' army tanks were in the street outside with some demonstrators. Apart from the inconvenience of not being able to shop, nobody paid any notice to any of this. My point is that if the BBC is exaggerating news items like this, how much to blame were they for creating the financial crisis that cost so many- so much? I myself lost 80 000 GBP in Lehman's failure and that was shocking for me, but it was the panic that followed that did the real damage to so many. I now believe that this Bangkok-style reporting was responsible for 80% of the financial losses from then on. By all means have better regulation of the financial institutions but first have better regulation of news reporting. Creating panic (as well as giving voice to terrorism) just to get a better rating should be illegal. Peter Jones Helsinki

Posted by Peter Jones at 1:44pm on September 14, 2009

As someone who lives in the Third World, I rely on the BBC. They are far less biased than CNN or any of the other American propaganda machines. Murdock is creating this campaign for his own personal pocket. I've reached the stage that if Murdock's name is connected to anything, I discard it.

Posted by suzann Dodd at 2:11pm on September 14, 2009

I too would take the BBC over anything Murdoch-generated, but that is scant praise. I just wonder why there is acceptance that Murdoch influences content but the BBC government-appointed trustees don't? I have read Newspeak, and it is very persuasive. before dismissing Cromwell and Edwards as "meagre talents you should perhaps have an in-depth look at their work. Their articles are well researched, painstakingly referenced (always a good sign) and usually quite compelling. And BLM, you seem to have a few ideas on how to conduct media analysis in fresh ways - care to share them with us?

Posted by Simon Coldrick at 2:26pm on September 14, 2009

@BLM: nonsense. You may have heard this stuff before, but I hadn't. As someone who has always believed in the legend of the Beeb, I found this piece fascinating and eye-opening. I will certainly listen more attentively to the way in which news is presented as a result of this piece. Good work.

Posted by Polsonby at 2:38pm on September 14, 2009

Well, Polsonby, I'm surprised that anyone web-literate enough to be reading The First Post hadn't already questioned BBC's impartiality. The idea that the BBC presents an establishment or "liberal elite" worldview has been around for a long time. Even the tabloids express this idea, but typically from a rightwing perspective. The right and left aren't so very different in their criticism of the BBC. They both focus on the notion of "impartiality" and on personalities (eg Marr). The "analysis" rarely goes beyond this. There's nothing new in the piece from Cromwell and Edwards. Like their rightwing reflections, they have a narrow set of criteria by which to measure the BBC's output. (In fact, George Monbiot has gone on record as saying that Cromwell and Edwards are "narrow" and "intolerant" in their approach to media criticism).

Posted by BLM at 3:38pm on September 14, 2009

The BBC is riddled with Common Purpose commissars and apparatchiks.

Posted by Stop Common Purpose at 3:44pm on September 14, 2009

It may be of note, in understanding Cromwell and Edwards's notion of journalistic impartiality, that they promote on their website the work of Ed Herman on the Srebrenica massacre. The ICJ found the massacre to be an act of genocide; Herman denies it even happened. He maintains: "This nice round number [of 8,000 victims] lives on today in the face of a failure to find the executed bodies and despite the absence of a single satellite photo showing executions, bodies, digging, or trucks transporting bodies for reburial." David Aaronovitch, Francis Wheen and I have explained at length how the methods of Srebrenica denial match those of the denial of the Nazi holocaust.

Posted by Oliver Kamm at 4:04pm on September 14, 2009

A fine article with a number of excellent points worth commiting to memory for the growing number of people who are sick of paying this highly politicised organisation a licence fee. The BBC had an internal inquiry a long time ago, supposedly investigating whether there was anti-Israeli bias within the corporation. In a House of Commons Parliamentary debate on anti-semitism last year, this was brought up by an MP who complained that despite repeatedly asking the BBC for a copy of the results, he was yet to receive one. To this day, I'm not sure if the BBC's report has ever been made public. The BBC belongs to the British people and we have an absolute right to know what goes on there in every detail. During this same debate, an MP posed the question as to whether it was possible to be anti-Israeli without being anti-Jewish. People will have their own opinions on this, but as a member of the BNP, which is sometimes falsely associated with anti-Jewish sentiment, I'd like to see the BBC hauled before a Parliamentary committee on this one and be held to account.

Posted by Jerome Peter at 6:05pm on September 14, 2009

Ah, but Herman is the author of the tome that inspired their project, and also one of its "Wise Men". Whether or not he believes what he writes is open to question (unlike Chomsky's view of Andrew Marr), but it's all part of a binary outlook rather well skewered here (in which we hype "their" lies to show how "we" "lie"): http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22349 Needless to say this got short shrift at Media Lens: http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1250783336.html One of the more warped features of their oeuvre is the adjective-laden dismissal of almost all reporting as uniformly awful, while relying on it for their factoids and inconvenient truths: http://danielsimpson.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/watching-the-watchdogs/ Perhaps if they focused more on framing (and the "now you read it now you don't" thing that Orwell called the memory hole) they might contribute something more than inverted distortions: http://danielsimpson.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/weve-been-framed/

Posted by Daniel Simpson at 8:46am on September 15, 2009

The BBC is a Stalinist rat-trap of Nu Labour goons which has long since lost any claim to being an impartial "news-provider", and offers a home to staunch pro-yankee neocon thugs to preach the Party Line. It's no surprise to see Oliver Kamm (above) failing to address the topic, and attacking (with his practiced intellectual dishonesty) material which doesn't even appear in the article. Frankly I'm amazed The First Post hangs onto this Euston-Group third-rater. Do you have *anything* to say about the outrageous pro-Labour pro-War pro-America bias at the BBC, Olly? No, I thought not!

Posted by Neil McGowan at 10:39am on September 15, 2009

Michael Jose, you're deranged. Quote: 'anti-Jewish... anti-clerical, anti-church, anti-Christian Atheistic Secular Humanism (ASH for short) that is the guiding light of their darkness. Then there is their ultra-left bias'. Israel hates anyone who reports the truth of what they are up to killing Palestinians, it's not anti-Jewish to do this, many do, including Jews. The Israeli state is anti-Jewish, it's fascist. But then you are a Thatcher worshipper, so must be expected to be as deranged as she. 'Explored the fact that Hitler led the National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party' ??? Are you for real? Or have you only just noticed that the Nazis used Socialist in their title? Dear me, were you even born when Thatcher was selling off the assets of the UK while destroying ordinary working people's rights? I always suspected UKIP was stuffed with Little Englander no-brains, lost and alone since Thatcher went gaga, who see the word socialist and have a hissy fit. Still, thanks for the laugh.

Posted by foolonthehill at 10:59am on September 15, 2009

Michael Jose - don't worry, you're not deranged. Peter Simmonds, poor deluded fellow, defends the BBC because it serves his agenda, and thus he unwittingly confirms your points. Peter Simmons is a self-confessed anarchist. In his own words, he is an "anarchist/environmentalist dreamer-photographer". He is vehemently anti-Christian, and his interests and agenda are wacky hippie Green things, climate alarmism, vegetarianism, and animal rights. How he must love the BBC! Take anything he says with a very big pinch of salt.

Posted by Kevin McGrane at 4:14pm on September 15, 2009

Thanks Kevin, I love salt. And for all those of the opinion that 'UKIP = little Englander', I must assert that I am a Big Englander and a Great Britainer.

Posted by michael jose at 10:15am on September 16, 2009

The BBC is biased. It along with other corporate media outputs have aided and abetted USA / UK's illegal bloodfest adventure in Iraq & Afghanistan. But I will say that it still is far superior to any American broadcasting rubbish (apart from FOX News of course - which is produced by mentally ill, & thus is not part of serious broadcasting).

Posted by Luigi Sasso at 3:15pm on September 16, 2009

The term 'Self hating Jew' is derogatory and offensive to many moderate Jews all over the world. (This issue was raised in Comments above, regarding Finkelstein). Why is it that any Jewish person who is decent, brave and principled enough to raise questions against Israeli terror be regarded as self hating. This is ridiculous and silly. Many American Jews and American Jewish organisations repeatedly question Israeli brutality against the Palestinians - NOT because they are self hating jews - but because they are pro-Israeli, and believe that Israel is damaging itself. Alisa Solomon, member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, (a group of religious leaders, professionals and community organizers.) in her New York Times article pointed out that mainstream Jewish leadership in the USA, misrepresents the people for whom they claim to speak. I assure you that healthy debate is still very much alive in the Jewish Community!! However, debate can often be stifled by Israeli lobbyists and the use of the term 'self hating jew' which is a device used to bully and mute the opinions of many moderate Jews who oppose Israeli apartheid. Finkelstein was refused tenure as a result of such intimidation by Israeli advocacy groups. Such intimidation was also described in the famous book on the Israeli lobby by John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The term 'Self Hating Jew', is therefore ignorant and should NOT be entertained by intelligent people.

Posted by Luigi Sasso at 4:03pm on September 16, 2009

Blimey! The Wheen-Aaronovitch-Kamm axis (call 'em the WAKs) hatchets the Medialens Eds. yet again. Clearly Davids Cromwell and Edwards have arrived, then. This is akin to Claud Cockburn's advice never to believe anything until it's been officially denied. In the same way, you can be confident that commentators on public affairs have some serious weight and penetration into what really happens in the world, and a serious level of intellectual honesty and honour, when the WAK-axis starts slagging them persistently. Same goes for Ed Herman, of course: a long-time collaborator of Noam Chomsky's. Together they have a list of ultra-heavyweight political commentary works to their names which small, toxic mediocrities such as the WAK hacks can't possibly match. Both Chomsky and Herman have been supportive of and complimentary towards Medialens and its Editors from the first. Should tell you who's opinion to take seriously in this attempted put-down by Kamm, then.

Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym at 9:42pm on September 16, 2009

Well, life moves on, so I have to make this my last comment here, but I am gratified to see that the BBC is such a subject of controversy. It would have been hard if not impossible to have this type of debate ten years ago - at least with this degree of range and intensity. In my experience the most disastrous BBC interviews occur when they get their own logic turned on the them. My favourite case was the ex-MI5 officer, who, asked by the ever-charming Paxman why his organisation merited over 1billiion a year of the public money, got shot down in one by the response, "Well its less than half of what the BBC gets". My second favourite was the BNP spokesman (I forget who), who, attacked in rasping tones by someone on Radio4 (I forget who again), with the generalised dark accusatory: "We know what your agenda is", came back equally grimly with "Well we know what yours is". There was a gratifying moment of stunned silence from Beeb. So much for the 'neutral and objective' mantra, they are about as neutral as battery acid.

Posted by michael jose at 10:24am on September 17, 2009

Sorry. Not 'who's' but 'whose'. Just noticed. Dozy old git!

Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym at 12:49pm on September 17, 2009

At last some critical analysis of this bastion of British freedom and democracy! Nowhere is the BBC's reporting more biased or skewered than in Africa. They do pretty well for India, so it is definitely not a 'third world bias'. What amazes me is that so many elderly Africans (Ghanaians particularly) swear by it! Their day is incomplete without listening to a barrage of denigrating comments about themselves from the BBC! Yolande M. Agble

Posted by Yolande Agble at 3:02pm on September 18, 2009