Excellent video.
Which bits are incorrect?
Was there really a “Bushitler” cartoon in the newsroom?!

“It’s not a conspiracy. It’s visceral. They think they are on the middle ground”

Jeff Randall, former BBC Business Editor, in The Observer, Jan 15th, 2006

http://www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com/

So the basis of this whole video is that the Guardian is the most left wing paper in Briatin (it isn’t), one person having a cartoon on their wall (which doesn’t in any way represent widespread views) and some scary music and Trojan Horse claptrap.

Complete nonsense.

“Political pundit Andrew Marr said: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’ ” 21 Oct 2006

(I know it’s from the Mail, but I assume he did actually say it.)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=411846&in_page_id=1770

Just looking at the site.

http://britainandamerica.typepad.com/

I see it’s brought to us by those lovely types at ConservativeHome. Probably looking for funds for another shot at toppling Auntie, because 18 Doughty Street came so close.

;o)

Sorry, I’m just being a bitch. 18DS was essential viewing if you had a plastic plant fetish. Ooops, there I go again. LCTV can’t be far away, can it? Sunny?

(Samuel Coates? Surely not the Sam Coates who writes for the Times?)

Very good video. Certainly by US standards, the BBC is a left-wing broadcaster, as well as being “socialized TV” (because even those who aren’t interested in watching it have to pay for it).

It has, like cjcjc says, a culturally liberal bias (http://www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com/ covers this well) and also a pro-big state bias (Biased BBC doesn’t cover this so well).

Biased BBC is a very entertaining site, with a great mix of perfectly valid points alongside the absolutely barking mad (eg they recently extrapolated from two BBC employees having some drug convictions/admissions to the whole outfit clearly therefore being a drug-addled Babylon…though who knows, perhaps it is!!)

I agree that by US standards the BBC is left wing, but by US standards, every politician in the UK is left wing, so that’s not very helpful, is it?

Er, it is if you’re discussing a video that is aimed at a US audience.

“Biased BBC is a very entertaining site, with a great mix of perfectly valid points alongside the absolutely barking mad (eg they recently extrapolated from two BBC employees having some drug convictions/admissions to the whole outfit clearly therefore being a drug-addled Babylon…though who knows, perhaps it is!!)”

If only it was cjcjc! That way it would be less likely to support knee-jerk legislation against perfectly legally created pornography. It is not the “liberal” bias that I find so troublesome about the BBC but the other ideologies that get sneaked in under that label, including authoritarian feminist and socialist ideology that get far more of an airing than they deserve.

Oh, the trolls are here I see. According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Imperial Life in the Emerald City, the British in the Green Zone had a poster on their wall with “Yeehaw is not a foreign policy” on it. Presumably they’re culturally and liberally biased as well.

I’m not sure going by quotes, one that I think Andrew Marr deeply regrets, and the other from Jeff Randall who continues to work for the BBC but is about as openly a right-wing individual as the corporation has ever employed, apart from perhaps Andrew Neil, is the way to go about damning the corporation.

“…one that I think Andrew Marr deeply regrets”

I bet he does. Doesn’t mean its not a rare example of the truth slipping out, though, does it?

Excellent video.
Which bits are incorrect?

Several actually. The report on BBC impartiality has been twisted out of context.
See mroe on BBC bias here:
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/1383

Secondly, just because one or two reporters say think there is a bias doesn’t mean its true for everyone. Note, those who accuse it of bias are BBC staff, so clearly they’re right wing. And Andrew Marr was political editor. Now we have Robinson, who was previously head of the Young Conservatives. Is that too left wing for you?

If a BBC staffer said its economics coverage was too right-wing, would you take their generalisation at face value or accept its a stupid generalisation to make for 1000s of producers?

OK, joking aside (hopefully it was obvious that my last post (#12) was flippant)…

…Of course, just because some members of BBC staff say there is a bias doesn’t mean there is one. At the same time, just because others deny that there is a bias doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

I consider that there is a statist bias (e.g. <a href=”http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2008/02/20/hes-at-it-again/#comment-3007″Link), a socially liberal bias (Biased BBC is full of examples).

Even absent those considerations, I would still oppose the BBC because I disagree with having to pay a £100 per year subscription fee for the privilege of having your TV sets broadcast the transmissions that you do not wish to watch.

Arse. That should have been “…statist bias (e.g. Link).

Socialist ideology? That’ll be ‘Red Nick’ Robinson, the ex-Young Conservative, perhaps?

Back in the land of logic, what about the neocons who get an easy ride on Radio 5 programmes? In fact, what about Radio 5 full stop, from its ranting right-wing morons given airtime on the morning phone in to Peter Allen in the evening giving the benefit of the doubt to every establishment figure who comes across his path?

The BBC is essentially biased in favour of the establishment, end of story and since the establishment is currently reactionary, authoritarian and right wing, so is the BBC. Hence the unargued truths that underpin a lot of its output – British troops are always a force for good, even in a bad cause, there’s no problem that can’t be tackled by legislation, people want reassurance rather than explanation and powerful people’s words are worth more just because they’re powerful people’s words (example: the Heathrow climate change camp where the frame was ‘camp full of dirty hippies’ followed by asking a politician why the dirty hippies were wrong).

Sadly there’s not a lot left to learn from the shell of a once great country across the Atlantic, apart from how to spot pathetic propaganda and an awful lesson on why you should never let go of your country. My grandfather’s generation in Ireland looked west to the US for the future. Seventy years later, we’re looking south and east.

Ian – There are far too many examples of right-wing bias on there too.

Matt Frei slavishly flirting with George Bush a week ago is another good example.

The difference is, leftists get angry at such BBC coverage but aren’t obsessed about it to turn it into a conspiracy theory.

Clearly, other people have too much time on their hands.

I think they’re biased, but they seem to be biased both ways. The trouble with the BBC is they get a story, they act like a tabloid and run with it. They alter the facts they got wrong in retrospect and they frequently don’t balance their stories. Sometimes this means a left bias, others it means a right. All in all the BBC is shoddy when it comes to news reporting but that’s just about where the bias ends.

Unless of course you count modern Panorama programs, in which case it’s biased against people with an IQ over 80.

What have I been missing?

That Mad Mel gets on the TV should be reason enough to dismantle the BBC.