Nick Cohen on the BBC:
Although it is impossible to generalise about such a vast organisation, the bias charge has enough truth in it to stick. If you doubt me, research one opinion outside the liberal consensus. Read up on the arguments for making Britain a fairer country by giving trade unionists more rights, for instance, or saying that abortion is murder or that Tony Blair’s foreign policy is correct in its essentials.
You don’t have to believe it, you just have to convince yourself that serious people can hold it for good reasons. You will then notice something disconcerting about most BBC presenters. Although they subject opponents of, say, abortion to rigorous cross-examination, their lust for ferocious questioning deserts them when supporters of abortion come on air. Far from being tested, they treat upholders of the liberal consensus as purveyors of an incontestable truth.
The way out for the BBC is not to swing to the right - it is not an advance to replace soft interviews for Menzies Campbell with soft interviews for John Reid - but make a tactical withdrawal from the opinion business. Less airtime should be given to talking heads and celebrity interviewers in London studios and more to reporters who leave Television Centre to find out what is happening in the world.
Read the full article here.
1 comment:
An occasional theme on this blog is whether the BBC is inherently biased against Israel. My impression is that some of us agree with Melanie Phillips that it is, while others believe it is trying, and succeeding on the whole, to be balanced. Following the BBC's decision not to broadcast the Gaza Humanitarian Aid concert what are the rest of the impdecers thoughts on BBC bias now?
By the way, Alexi Sayle said this about the BBC's decision:
"People don’t really think about the Israeli propaganda machine, which is swift and remorseless and well connected. They [the BBC] have done us a favour in that they’ve shown that at work."
Leaving aside the fact that Sayle is himself Jewish, is this statement anti-Semitic? It most definitely raises the old caricature of a Jewish conspiracy and Melanie Phillips thinks it is, but is it?
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