Report BBC bias say Tottenham Tories - 'Beebwatch' launched 09/09/03

Time to watch the BBC bias that costs each of us £116 a year
By Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph
(Filed: 09/09/2003)

The Kelly affair may lead some people to think that the BBC cannot really be
politically biased. The usual accusation is that it is biased against the
Conservative Party. But this is a saga of a row between the corporation and
a Labour government.

"Look," the BBC may say, employing one of its favourite locutions, "we're
getting attacked from both sides - we must be doing something right." In
fact, though, BBC bias has very little to do with political parties.

On the whole, the BBC is careful to fulfil its obligations to balance
air-time for different parties. Indeed, if it were only a party dispute,
there would be little reason why we, the general public, should worry
ourselves too much about it.

No, BBC bias is not a piece of partisan trickery - it is a state of mind. So
strong is the state of mind that a great many of the acts of bias, perhaps
the majority of them, are quite unconscious. It is time to delve into that
unconscious. Hence our Beebwatch, which starts on the opinion pages today.

The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are
that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the
Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn't, that the war in Iraq was
wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise
it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is
good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that
a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is
"judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business"
is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should
spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when
he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that...
well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help.

Now, none of the above beliefs is indefensible. The problem is that all of
them are open to challenge and that that challenge never comes from the BBC.
Fine, for example, to make a documentary about the sufferings of people on
death row in the United States, but why is there never a documentary made by
someone who believes that the death penalty cuts crime?

If the BBC puts on a play about GM foods, you just know that it will be
against them (the recent offering in question was by Ronan Bennett, a
supporter of Sinn Fein/IRA, and Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the
Guardian).

During the first Countryside March, the Archers managed not to mention it at
all, but mentioned the Gay Pride March instead. It is a question of who is
being put on the spot, of where the BBC stands in relation to its chosen
subject.

Turn on at any time and you'll see what I mean, particularly where foreign
affairs are concerned. Yesterday, just after Yasser Arafat had torn up the
road map by ousting his prime minister, I heard James Naughtie asking an
Israeli spokesman why his country wouldn't give the Palestinians more
concessions.

On the same programme (the famed Today), I heard an interviewer asking an
Islamist, virtually unchallenged, to expound his belief that the men who
killed thousands in the World Trade Centre were doing the will of Allah.
Imagine such respectful treatment for some white fascist who thinks God
wants black people dead.

A few days earlier, I heard a strange Radio 3 drama in which a crazed
huntsman tried to have his "dogs" (the author meant hounds) tear the hero
apart because he was urban and opposed to foxhunting. I heard a trailer for
a programme about how the Attlee government built the New Jerusalem.

I listened to an item on Today where a businessman from the North was
castigated by a Green because he had agreed to take from America some old
ships that needed breaking up: no one challenged the Green's facts, or
whether she might not be damaging British jobs.

When I took part in Any Questions on the first day of the war with Iraq,
more than 60 per cent of the studio audience opposed the war (the opposite
of the proportion in the opinion polls), and all the questioners who were
called opposed it. The jury, or rather, Lord Hutton, is still out on
precisely what Andrew Gilligan did with the words of Dr Kelly, but there is
no doubt of Gilligan's view of the attack on Iraq. He said that now Baghdad
"is more deadly than under Saddam".

And here is the much-respected BBC world affairs editor, John Simpson,
analysing American policy towards Libya last week as moves to end sanctions
approached culmination:

John Humphrys: "Has there been a real fear in Libya that the Americans would
attack them?"

John Simpson: "Very strong indeed. You see, they really suit the pattern
that George W Bush has established - it's a weak country with a bad
reputation. Now, most people don't realise it's weak; it's a bit like Iraq
in that sense, [an] easy target to hit if you know what's really going on,
but it looks big if you just watch the morning television programmes in the
United States: built up as something terrible, whereas in fact it's small,
weak, and it can't do anything very much to defend itself. That's why
President Reagan hit it so hard in 1986, because he knew he could get away
with it, and I don't believe that even the Americans thought that it was a
major sponsor of state terrorism..."

Note a) the assumption of the stupidity of the American public; b) the
assumption of the dishonesty of US Republican administrations; c) the
instrusion of an extraneous point about Iraq; d) the condescension of the
phrase "even the Americans"; e) the failure to spend time on the behaviour
of Libya itself, the country responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. In
short, a locus classicus of BBC bias. You can find one virtually every day.

This is what our Beebwatch sets out to do. Three times a week, The Daily
Telegraph will offer brief reports culled from the airwaves. Our own team is
helped in gathering information by Minotaur, a media monitoring unit that
will study all relevant bits of the BBC output, television, radio and
electronic.

Readers are warmly invited to point out examples, but please make them
specific and give the name of the programme and the date on which it
appeared, and send them to beebwatch@telegraph.co.uk.

Why are we bothering? Because anyone who wants to watch television in this
country must by law pay £116 a year to the BBC for the privilege. It is like
compulsory tithes to the Church of England in the 18th century. You may be
interested to know what sermons your money is paying for.