Why is the BBC considered leftist??

[T & P]

For a right-winger, anything near centre will be left-wing.

Quite.

Also for a Zionist, any station that dares to simply report anything unsavoury IDF and the Israeli government have done must be a Jew-hating anti-semite organisation full of Nazis.

It's all so fucking boring, predictable and laughable.

 

[Error Gorilla]

I think any criticism of the BBC that includes right-wing hatchet job Janet Daley as one of its witnesses is somewhat flawed anyway. Isn't Jeff Randall mates with Rupert Murdoch as well? Hardly an unbiased perspective from those two then.

For a right-winger, anything near centre will be left-wing.

My girlfriend's Telegraph-reading, Tory-voting, curtain-twitching mother once informed me that she much prefers Mr. Murdoch's Sky News to the BBC, because of all the socialism the latter continually pushes. I suspect my fingernail marks are still visible on the dining table. Although, astounded as I was by this curious disconnect from reality it was nothing compared to the time she told me in passing that Norman Tebbit lives in the village. It didn't so much begger belief as bugger it senseless.

 

[London_Calling]

They seem to upset people on the right and on left, does imply balance?

The BBC promotes that cliche so much you have to think they want you to believe it very badly.

It's the News and Current Affairs preferred slogan, isn't it - the thing you can all stand behind, as long as you don't think in any depth about what it actually means.

 

[.r.u.i.n.e.d]

Well, within their own terms, they're balanced.. except when they get specific orders not to be.

 

[brixtonvilla]

Note that those who think the BBC is left wing have to ignore an hour of business news before the breakfast programme, which itself features regular reports from a little fat capitalist at the Stock Exchange throughout its three hours of advertising what's on BBC One that evening.

Then they've got to ignore the morning output, which is essentially several hours of property programmes (the worst of which is a vile exhibition of hateful little fuckers expanding their property empires via auction). If they want to continue this theme they'll have to keep their eyes shut and the volume off when Thatcherite bastard-fest The Apprentice is a mainstay of the schedules, as will they with the equally prominent Dragons' Den.

Bet you're a fucking riot at parties...

The BBC may have liberal leanings, but it is, more than anything, anti government, and that has to be a good thing. Every goverment in recent memory seems to hate it, from Thatcher's "Bastards Broadcasting Communism" to Alistair Campbell's daily hectoring phone calls to the Today programme. The fact that they think it's a pain in the arse makes me think it's doing a pretty good job.

 

[obanite]

I hate the "Have Your Say" forums. They make it seem like they're representative of British opinion, but they're picking and choosing to show what they want to show. It really stinks, moreso than any biased reporting, because at least with biased reporting you only have to decide if what one person's saying is 'fair and balanced'...

 

[danny la rouge]

The BBC is part of the UK state. Impartial my arse.

Indeed, but not in the way DF is pretending to think you meant.

It's biases are pretty clear: it supports the British establishment. It is disproportionately staffed by former public school pupils and Oxbridge graduates. It defines newsworthiness, and the parameters of public debate, as lying within boundaries acceptable to the establishment. It is, in short, middle class.

Its agenda appears to me to average out as centre right. If American broadcasters think that is leftist, it says more about them than it does about the BBC.

 

[danny la rouge]

Every goverment in recent memory seems to hate it

That's because it is always avoids favouring any particular Party. Many people confuse allegiance to political parties with politics. If you suffer from that confusion it is easy to see how you might think refusing to openly support your party means they support the other party. Bernard Ingram suffered from that confusion.

 

[London_Calling]

I think any criticism of the BBC that includes right-wing hatchet job Janet Daley as one of its witnesses is somewhat flawed anyway. Isn't Jeff Randall mates with Rupert Murdoch as well? Hardly an unbiased perspective from those two then.

I'm critical of the BBC in many respects, but the above is a mistake a lot of people seem to make.

On the one hand there is News and Current Affairs - about which the BBC likes to promote it's objectivity.

On the other is the BBC's mandate to provide public service content for every cultural/social group paying the Licence Fee, including business people.

Jeff Randall isn't Jeremy Paxman, he's more Jeremy Clarkson.

 

[Ned Pointsman]

Every goverment in recent memory seems to hate it, from Thatcher's "Bastards Broadcasting Communism" to Alistair Campbell's daily hectoring phone calls to the Today programme.

FFS man, it's the oldest trick going, no one REALLY believes that US media outlets which are subsidiaries of huge corporations are 'liberal' but limbaugh et al (and their little followers) know if they throw around accusations of bias than these outlets will move even further right and that's all it is here, a study done at cardiff university proved that the bbc were the most pro invasion of all british media (in some instances they were more pro invasion than abc,) most sane people knew this, alastair campbell definitely knew it, he also knew that if he could paint the bbc's rabid pro line as 'anti,' he could redefine what 'pro' actually meant.

 

[brixtonvilla]

FFS man, it's the oldest trick going, no one REALLY believes that US media outlets which are subsidiaries of huge corporations are 'liberal' but limbaugh et al (and their little followers) know if they throw around accusations of bias than these outlets will move even further right and that's all it is here, a study done at cardiff university proved that the bbc were the most pro invasion of all british media (in some instances they were more pro invasion than abc,) most sane people knew this, alastair campbell definitely knew it, he also knew that if he could paint the bbc's rabid pro line as 'anti,' he could redefine what 'pro' actually meant.

My point is historical, looking at more than one government and more than one issue. You're concentrating on one (admittedly pretty major) issue. The study is interesting, but I'm not sure you can extrapolate "proof" from a three-week analysis of media coverage when the war has been going for three years and there was a build-up of at least a year. The study also seems to have taken place after the invasion had started.

FWIW, (and I do appreciate it's anecdotal), I used to know someone who was a producer on the Today programme in the lead-up to the war, and believe me, there was NO love lost between Millbank and Wood Lane. Apart from anything else, doesn't the idea of getting into a major, bitter public spat with your most fervent media suporter to shift the terms of the debate seem a little... counterproductive? Bit Machiavellian, even for Alistair Campbell.

 

[JTG]

Because it's stuffed full of left-wingers and Labour supporters. It's also overtly anti-Israeli.

nice to see the seperation of 'left wingers' and 'Labour supporters' there

 

[Error Gorilla]

Bet you're a fucking riot at parties...

The BBC may have liberal leanings, but it is, more than anything, anti government, and that has to be a good thing. Every goverment in recent memory seems to hate it, from Thatcher's "Bastards Broadcasting Communism" to Alistair Campbell's daily hectoring phone calls to the Today programme. The fact that they think it's a pain in the arse makes me think it's doing a pretty good job.

Leave out the personal stuff, it's just silly eh?

I'm not going to add much to Danny and Ned's comments, because they seem to sum up pretty much what I think is wrong with the BBC and they go some way to explain the motives behind those who continually accuse the BBC of being too liberal.

 

[Ned Pointsman]

My point is historical, looking at more than one government and more than one issue. You're concentrating on one (admittedly pretty major) issue. The study is interesting, but I'm not sure you can extrapolate "proof" from a three-week analysis of media coverage when the war has been going for three years and there was a build-up of at least a year. The study also seems to have taken place after the invasion had started.

FWIW, (and I do appreciate it's anecdotal), I used to know someone who was a producer on the Today programme in the lead-up to the war, and believe me, there was NO love lost between Millbank and Wood Lane. Apart from anything else, doesn't the idea of getting into a major, bitter public spat with your most fervent media suporter to shift the terms of the debate seem a little... counterproductive? Bit Machiavellian, even for Alistair Campbell.

Three weeks is definitely too short a time to draw absolute conclusions, though many would say its more credible than the opinion of two pretty far right governments, there was another study done more recently though, which seems to show the bbc began to adhere to some sense of reality after a while.

You may have a point about campbell but he's nothing if not very good at his job and its not really a slick, calculating manoeuvre, even mentally phillips is at it, she's well aware which way the bbc leans yet her and her ilk continually blather on about the 'Beirut broadcasting corporation,' to force it into leaning even further, the above study only looked at ongoing events at the time, stuff like deir yassin are no goes (though in fairness there was a good R4 program a few months ago that looked into the irgun plot to blow up the houses of parliament.)

 

[brixtonvilla]

Leave out the personal stuff, it's just silly eh?

Fair enough - was being a bit facetious, but I can see it didn't come across that way. Apologies.

 

[jim70]

Much as I would describe the BBC as historically a force for the maintenance of the nation state, it is significant that the British right (by which I mean ideological Thatcherites like Daley or the Telegraph and cultural conservatives like Melanie Phillips and Roger Scuton) seem to have given up on the concept a national broadcaster altogether. I accept the historical criticism of the BBC as right wing in that it was Reithian, paternalist and pro-establishment, but are today's right wing prepared to defend that cultual one-nation conservative ground rather than throw the whole set-up to the lions of the free market? It seems the only people left defending the BBC today are in in fact more likely to be Blairites and liberals than Tories.

 

[Kaka Tim]

As DLR the says - the BBC is essentiaully the voice of the establishment. It consistantly fails to quesiton establishment voices unless these criticisms are coming from within the establishment itself (i.e like spats between the major poitical parties).

When the UK is at war it routinely regurgitates whatever the MOD and government feeds it without question. This was true in the Falklands, Gulf War 1, Kosovo, Gulf War 2 and throughout the Northern Ireland conflict.

One could also point to the BBCs woefully uncrtical promogation of the police POV in any serious public order situation - from the 1981 riots to the miners strike (anyone mentioned the BBCs stalinist distortion of the battle of orgreve yet?) to the Poll Tax riots to Genoa in 2001.

'objectivity' in a news reporting is a mirage - the news, and the debates that stem from it, are constructed and framed in the terms of whoever is reporting it, that doesn't make it inaccurate but it means that notions of 'balance' and 'impartiallity' are essentailly worthless.

channle 4 news is far far better than bBC news in that they will ask searching quesitons of powerful figures of their own initiative.

 

[marksl]

AL jazeera is entertaining if anyone has watched it. i found it to be surprisingly honest for a news program offering different perspectives. They also have top names from the bbc who crossed over.

 

[Error Gorilla]

Did the BBC ever admit to editing the footage from the Battle of Orgreave? I had been under the belief that they had, but I was defeated when I tried to find proof of this online.