http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...lean-Left.html
BBC admits to left-wing bias during the Thatcher years
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...eptics-as-mad/Quote:
BBC Director General Mark Thompson has admitted the corporation was guilty of a 'massive' Left-wing bias in the past. The TV chief also admitted there had been a 'struggle' to achieve impartiality and that staff were ' mystified' by the early years of Margaret Thatcher's government. But he claimed there was now 'much less overt tribalism' among the current crop of young journalists, and said in recent times the corporation was a 'broader church'. He claimed there was now an 'honourable tradition of journalists from the right' working for the corporation. His comments, made in the New Statesman magazine, are one of the clearest admissions of political bias from such a senior member of its staff.
The BBC has long been accused of being institutionally biased towards the Left, and an internal report from 2007 said it had to make greater efforts to avoid liberal bias. That report criticised the BBC for coming late to several important stories including euroscepticism and immigration, which it described as 'off limits in terms of a liberal-minded comfort zone'. Speaking of the time when he joined the BBC, Mr Thompson told the magazine: 'In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [as a production trainee, in 1979] there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the Left.
'The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher. 'Now it is a completely different generation. 'There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC.'
BBC offically regards eurosceptics as 'mad'
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/fi...lorpearspm.jpg
If the excellent Lord Pearson is mad, so are 55 per cent of us
Well hardly suprising as Lord Pearson does run Global Britain which tracks and follows BBC bias. I myself have seen in numerous times on the television whilst watching BBC news such as the time when I saw the reporter who was reporting a UKIP conference somehow felt the need to bring the BNP into the report when the BNP has nothing to do with the conference. The BBC is also funded by the government (of which left wing governments are naturally good at, handing out our money) and more importantly; it is funded by the European Union.Quote:
There’s a fascinating snippet in Rod Liddle’s column today (secured behind the fastness of the Times paywall). He writes of being summoned to see his boss at the BBC following a complaint about the Corporation’s bias against Eurosceptics. The complaint had been made by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, then a Tory peer. Rod writes:The [BBC] panjandrum listened to my nervous musings and then held aloft Lord Pearson’s latest letter and said: “Rod, you do realise that these people are mad?”See how the concept of insanity has been redefined by our state broadcaster? Malcolm Pearson was, and is, the most decent of men. Instead of raging publicly against the BBC, he had set out, politely and patiently, to convince it that it could do better. To this end, he employed a professional firm to monitor all BBC current affairs programming over a period of six months.Its methodology was thorough and empirical. It measured, to the second, how much airtime was given to enthusiasts for closer integration, how much to soft sceptics, and how much to opponents of EU membership. It looked at the background clips, and at the remarks of presenters. Its conclusion – as I well remember, having been involved with the project – was inescapable. The BBC was consistently biased against Eurosceptics, not only in the sense of rarely inviting them on air but – more insidiously – in the sense of casting them as eccentrics.
Malcolm was perhaps naïve in believing that his findings would be enough to induce a culture shift within the Beeb. But “mad”? If so, then the 55 per cent of British voters who, according to the BBC’s own opinion poll, want to leave the EU, must be dribbling loons. To be fair, the BBC did start to include anti-Brussels voices in its broadcasts after the Pearson exercise – whether because it genuinely recognised that it was in the wrong or, as Rod’s anecdote would suggest, simply to get us psychotics off its back. But anyone who thinks that the Beeb is now neutral on the issue of European integration need only compare its coverage of UKIP and the Greens. Most bias takes the form of opinions being presented as fact – a process which is, almost by definition, unconscious. If you begin from the belief that EU membership is vital to Britain’s prosperity – if you regard this as a datum, rather than an arguable proposition – your coverage of the European question is bound to seem biased to the 55 per cent who disagree. They, in turn, will strike you as people who cannot accept objective reality – in other words, as mad.
It is high time the license fee was scrapped and all news corporations should be free from the government - and if the news corporations wish to be biased then they should be allowed to - however people should be given the choice what channels and broadcasters they pay for and more importantly; people should be told the truth when it comes to neutrality and impartiality.
Thoughts?
