Yes, we are biased on religion and politics, admit BBC executives | News | This is London — Here’s your British journalism at its best. And against the countryside?!? In England? Yikes. Can these people even be British?
BBC executives have been forced to admit what critics have known for years – that the corporation is institutionally biased. The revelation came after details of an ‘impartiality’ summit called by its chairman, Michael Grade, were leaked. Senior figures admitted that the BBC is guilty of promoting Left-wing views and an anti-Christian sentiment. They also said that as an organisation it was disproportionately over-represented by gays and ethnic minorities. It was also suggested that the Beeb is guilty of political correctness, the overt promotion of multiculturalism and of being anti-American and against the countryside.
During the meeting, hosted by Sue Lawley, executives admitted they would happily broadcast the image of a Bible being thrown away – but would not do the same for the Koran.
found by our London Correspondent Sergio Gasparrini
Helen Boaden, editor at the Beeb, has put out a blog entry answering this report.
Read it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/bias_at_the_bbc.html
Brian.
How funny. So much power and they choose to throw a hissy fit with it.
“WAH WE WANT MORE ATTENTION!”
BBC biased, say it isn’t so. I could have told you this years ago. I’m sure the same could be said of some news organizations here in the US. That is why I always get my news from several sources instead of being brainwashed by one.
Yea, not to mention anti-semitic. However the news service does offer relatively informative world news coverage, if you can read between the lines.
I have known about there bias for years and I’m very glad about it.
Someone has to wake up the empty heads
Keep up the good work BBC
🙂
What else would you expect from a company that gets its money by force from all British citizens with a TV? Of course they’re going to support more government power.
#3 “I’m sure the same {bias} could be said of some news organizations here in the US.”
We have a new winner for “Understatement of the year”!!!
“SOME” news organizations in the U.S.?
More accurate would be almost ALL news organizations in the U.S.
Steve
In the US you have the anti-bbc foxnews 🙁
“In England? Yikes. Can these people even be British?”
Are you aware that Britain/British and England/English are NOT the same thing?
That the BBC is biased should come as no surprise, but the real meat of this story is that it effectively acknowledged being guilty of every straw man argument that’s seen heavy rotation as a GOP talking point in the last six years. It is also no surprise to believe that the ersatz-liberal, PC progressive dark matter equivalent of the kind of neo-con social conservatives that have brought so much grief to republican political philosophers exists.
I won’t offer a count-down until the first partisan effort to use this as an over-generalization to derail these subjects because it’s long since happened before I could finish typing this sentence.
I’m just curious… anti-christian seems to be the politally safest of the anti-religions, in the ways that media would mock christianity before any other religion… and I’m just curious… why is that? seriously…
(troll, sarcastic, and cutting remarks will be ignored)
Hey my first post.
GASP! say it isn’t so!!! I never would have suspected a news agency of having a bias. As for being left wing, last time i checked the British parliament had more than just two political parties.
#12 I guess its because the christian religion Isn’t a minority in the “western world” and people are concerned about comming off as close minded jerks to the rest of the world.
I have been reading bbc and watching it on the “teli”, and they are not biased, I would know, becuase i am very biased, but they have not been, and this is obviosly some ploy by the republicans to get people to stop listening to international news, becuase they might realize how many people really hate us.
I’m disappointed. Not that the BBC is biased, but because during a discussion with apparently quite a few people, single sentences were used, often from unnamed people, to ascribe the entire organization. That is disingenuous and not very professional. It is too easy to lose the context of the conversation and think that one person’s attitude is now corporate wide.
I don’t know British journals and news reporting enough to pass judgment, but this report is lacking in the very professionalism it is calling the BBC on.
#9. What are the odds that “fair and balanced because we say so” Fox will have an ‘impartiality summit,’ and admit that they are the Republicans’ Pravda?
Lessee… if I dust off my trusty old Enigma machine. Okay, entering B – that’s an N. Another B – that’s a P. And now C gives us an R. Egad – another revelation! NPR is also controlled by communists! Let’s see what other blatantly obvious discoveries we can make. It appears that the sky is a hue that we’ll call ‘Blue’ and John Lennon is still dead.
The bias of BBC is and has been known for many years. But as someone above stated, they do provide excellant International coverage, you just have to keep their well known bias’es in mind when watching or reading the stories.
They are blatently anti-christian and anti-semitic(actually anti-Jewish), and very much anti-American. As to being overly full of homosexuals and athiests, well, thats probably true of any media group, from Hollywood to Ballywood.
The thing is, that these *revelations* won’t harm them at home, because as a people the British(and especially the English) are the same. I noticed that anti-Jewish bias is very prevelant in London and other large cities in England, and any reading of English history will show it goes wayyyyyyyyy back in their history. And I had to endure a great deal of anti-Americanism when I was there, even though I was anti-war, and went out of my way not to act like an American jerk overseas, as many of my fellow Yanks are when living or going to University there.
The fact that the BBC is a state funded network makes what they do more intolerable than what some of our networks here do. Because not watching them dosn’t have any effect on their way of operating, since they get funded no matter what, unlike here, where if you lose your audience, you sink.
one more thing –
“During the meeting, hosted by Sue Lawley, executives admitted they would happily broadcast the image of a Bible being thrown away – but would not do the same for the Koran.”
the thing is, the two religions do not consider their texts equivalent. To a Muslim, a Koran – the book itself – is actually the Word of God. It took a fatwah out of Constantinople in the 18th Century to allow the printing of a Koran with a printing press. Christians do not consider the Bible to be the same thing. Even fundamentalists who consider the Bible to be literally true, every word, do not venerate the actual book that it is printed in. Defiling a copy of Good News for Modern Man would not perturb a Catholic, but doing the same to a Koran would greatly perturb a Muslim. as was noted in Gitmo.
I have XM radio just for BBC, love the BBC. The source of this story, the Evening Standard, is know for their Fox-News Fair-&-Balanced crapola – see here for an example of their sorry photoshop skills – http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/evening-standard-crowd.htm
How is the BBC anti-jewish? That seems like a real stretch.
doug that’s all well and good about the various levels of holiness of each book as a defense as to why one is flushable by the BBC and one isn’t. It does show the different level or respect that the BBC is willing to show each religion and it’s pretty clear that christianity is afforded much less respect. Is it because they hate christianity? Is it because they are afraid of the savage reaction to anything seen as against Islam? Probably both. And this crap about the ‘holiness’ of this book or that book reminds me of the hue and cry about how the United States couldn’t perform any military operations during the ‘holy days’ of Ramadan. Yah right, they’re killing each other in greater numbers during their ‘holy days’ It’s selective outrage.
Most artistic and creative people have liberal leanings, and are also less likely to be devoted religious followers. In America nearly all politicians claim devoutness because they know they can’t get elected without those votes. Hell, people don’t want to know the truth anymore. They prefer fantasy.
#22. Even if, on some level, the BBC folks dont realize the respective holiness of both books – multiculti liberals (as opposed to libertarian liberals, such as myself*) tend to reflexively stand up for religious/ethnic minorities as opposed to the majority. This means they are more inclined to stand up for Muslims (a minority in the UK) as opposed to Christians (the state sanctioned religion in the UK).
As I recall, the whole thing about Ramadan was pretty short-lived, once it was pointed out that Muslim armies have always fought during Ramadan. US military operations have been dictated more by sand-storm season than by religious holidays.
—
* the difference is easy. Should the Nazis be allowed to march in Skokie? A multiculti liberal is censorious in favor of minorities and will say no. A libertarian liberal, standing up for the right of even the most odious speaker to speak will say yes.
#21….named…..I’m not going to go over an 80 year history of a broadcasting company to show you. I will however suggest you carefully read stories from the BBC palestine desk, you will notice the difference in the coverage. No matter what the story is about, the Jews are always going to be wrong or bad in some way and the Arabs will be the opressed unfortunates.
#25, joshua
When I watch CNN’s John Robert’s in Jerusalem, I don’t think he reports impartially about Palestinians. His reporting is very heavy in favor of the Jews, especially since he is reporting and quoting Israeli leaders.
You also favor the Jews and Christians and anything negative will be taken as biased, true or not. If I’m a member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, could I claim the media is biased because all their reports put the Hell’s Angels in a bad light. (please, that is an analogy, not a comparison)
My experience is that western democratic government owned / controlled media is generally more neutral then privately owned. Outlets such as the BBC in Britain, CBC in Canada, and NPR in the US all bend over backwards to be fair to all sides. Maybe it isn’t bias, it is the truth.
I was almost concerned by this until I saw where these reports came from. The Mail and the Express are well known for there righ-wing anti-everything leanings. They have no credibility at all with me.
BBC actually stands for Buggers Broadcasting Communism.
That the BBC is biased is NOT news – all journalism has a bias and everyone should remember that.
I guess what is news is that the BBC are admitting it, probably after pressure applied by the LABOUR government
This story is a hatchet job, based on a “secret meeting” that was streamed over the web, and yet sourced anomously anyway. Clearly someone had an ax to grind here, and used an honest attempt at self-appraisal by Beeb execs to club them over the heand with.
The BBC has been one of the few places the public – across the world – can go to and get the uncomfortable truth regarding many topics – world hunger, climate change, international affairs, etc … To the extent they come across as ‘liberal’ (and I am beginning to loath the baiting use of that word), it is only b/c in this day and age so many other large media outlets are either blantantly ‘conservative’ OR so feckless as to say “Sky: is it blue or red? YOU decide.”
IMO the conservative elements of society have been wrong on so many things lately, that any honest reporting of the facts relating to those things is by definition going to appear to be ‘left-friendly’. Using the above analogy, I could just as easily be accused of being a ‘blue-lover’ simply for saying what color the sky really is. These days it wouldn’t even matter if my personal preference is red and I’m simply calling it like it is – the fact that I crossed ‘party lines’ would immediately earn me an unfair label.
I think this is what’s happening here. The BBC isn’t perfect – no news outlet is – but to the extent that I have found them to provide more honest reporting on the important issues in the world today, they are one of the least ‘imperfect’ sources of information operating today.
As Helen Boaden put it above: “What really counts is not what a group of BBC executives and VIPs [the ones who did this self-assessment] think, or indeed what a few columnists [the ones now criticizing that attempt at self-assessment] believe. The important thing is whether or not our audiences think we are biased. And on that the evidence is robust. Asked recently which of the four main broadcasters they would term “trustworthy”, nearly two thirds – 60% – cited the BBC. In contrast, 26% said ITV, 16% mentioned Channel 4, and 14% Sky [the UK’s version of FOX News].”
Hear, hear. Keep up the good work Beeb.
so when is dvorak.org going to come out from closet?? no seriously, personally i think its the job of journalism to balance a population culturally with a counter viewpoint of alternative thoughts, ideas. but at the end of the day if a culture is a healthy one, no bs pumped out by an effete, elitist org like the bbc makes any difference. ya government lies but so does the press… everyone likes to think they are lying their way to the truth… but the bbc has made it a great art form for sure right up there with the clintons and the bushes.
Everyone lies. No one can be trusted. Not the BBC. Not Fox. Not CNN. Not Bush. Not Clinton. Not you. Not me. Not our mothers.
Seriously, do any of you guys ever get tired of being ultra-cynical about everything?
The BBC has a liberal bias? Well, set aside that the article is debunked and obvious bullshit, so what if they are? If they are liberal, what that means is that they are concerned about justice, liberty, and ensuring that all of us get a fair shake. Liberals would advocate that if you are sick, we try to make you better… if you are hungry, we try to feed you… and so on…
I only wish all news outlets were liberally biased. They SHOULD be.