We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News

We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News

By SIMON WALTERS, Mail on Sunday

Last updated at 21:11pm on 21st October 2006



It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.'

In one of a series of discussions, executives were asked to rule on how they would react if the controversial comedian Sacha Baron Cohen
) known for his offensive characters Ali G and Borat - was a guest on the programme Room 101.

On the show, celebrities are invited to throw their pet hates into a dustbin and it was imagined that Baron Cohen chose some kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a Bible and the Koran.

Nearly everyone at the summit, including the show's actual producer and the BBC's head of drama, Alan Yentob, agreed they could all be thrown into the bin, except the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

In a debate on whether the BBC should interview Osama Bin Laden if he approached them, it was decided the Al Qaeda leader would be given a platform to explain his views.

And the BBC's 'diversity tsar', Mary Fitzpatrick, said women newsreaders should be able to wear whatever they wanted while on TV, including veils.

Ms Fitzpatrick spoke out after criticism was raised at the summit of TV newsreader Fiona Bruce, who recently wore on air a necklace with a cross.

The full account of the meeting shows how senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.

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.'

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive', about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'

Randall also told how he once wore Union Jack cufflinks to work but was rebuked with: 'You can't do that, that's like the National Front!'

Quoting a George Orwell observation, Randall said that the BBC was full of intellectuals who 'would rather steal from a poor box than stand to attention during God Save The King'.

There was another heated debate when the summit discussed whether the BBC was too sensitive about criticising black families for failing to take responsibility for their children.

Head of news Helen Boaden disclosed that a Radio 4 programme which blamed black youths at a young offenders', institution for bullying white inmates faced the axe until she stepped in.

But Ms Fitzpatrick, who has said that the BBC should not use white reporters in non-white countries, argued it had a duty to 'contextualise' why black youngsters behaved in such a way.

Andrew Marr told The Mail on Sunday last night: 'The BBC must always try to reflect Britain, which is mostly a provincial, middle-of-the-road country. Britain is not a mirror image of the BBC or the people who work for it.'



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

do you think this is the case, is it a good thing? recently the bbc also started a high court case to try and stop a report that their coverage of isreal and the middle east is biased

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.

The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.

The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.

The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.

Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

The High Court action is the latest stage of a lengthy and expensive battle by Steven Sugar, a lawyer, to get access to the document, which was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, in 2004.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for the workings of the Act, agreed with the BBC that the document, which examines hundreds of hours of its radio and television broadcasts, could be held back. However, Mr Sugar appealed and, after a two-day hearing at which the BBC was represented by two barristers, the Information Tribunal found in his favour.

Mr Sugar said: “This is a serious report about a serious issue and has been compiled with public money. I lodged the request because I was concerned that the BBC’s reporting of the second intifada was seriously unbalanced against Israel, but I think there are other issues at stake now in the light of the BBC’s reaction.”

The BBC’s coverage of the Middle East has been frequently condemned for a perceived anti-Israeli bias.

In 2004, for example, Barbara Plett, a Middle East correspondent, was criticised for revealing in an episode of Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent that she had been moved to tears by the plight of the dying Yasser Arafat. MPs said it proved that the corporation was incapable of presenting a balanced account of issues in the Middle East.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/15/nbeeb15.xml

to what extent if you watch the bbc and their coverage is biased are you effected by that bias in your view of the world

 

Privatise it.

 

I dont like having to pay for a tv licence even though I dont watch the bbc or have any respect for the organisation , I know that for years they have been censoring out opinions they dont like .

http://www.bbcwatch.co.uk/index.html

last week the daily star was going to run a spoof page of their paper called the daily fatwa but had to take it down because of the national union of jornalists

Ahmed Versi, editor of Muslim News, said that publication of the "Daily Fatwa" would have had major repercussions for the Star."This would have been like the cartoons issue. It would have created a huge, huge backlash and outcry. I'm quite sure there would have been huge demonstrations outside the paper by the weekend and internationally outside the British embassies because the paper would be seen as a British institution.""

now during the cartoon crisis we were told that muslims were mad at cartoons and blasphemy but they werent upset about piss taking , but it appears this isnt the case any tiny thing they dont like , and out comes the violence the threats .
www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003232.html

now to me giving in to threats like this is bias,and as a atheist I would like monty python father ted and every other lampoon of religion stopped if lampooning of religion is going to be carried out in such a biased way .
there is a issue of fairness this may be going off the topic slightly but the daily star story makes me mad too

 

Nice post!

 

Everyones biased.

 

The BBC is great

 

Er....
What newspaper was this piece from again?

I like how they make the really bad stuff underlined, bold and red. Spanish people are coming to blow up your public transport. And, you know, being in favour of multiculturism is tantamount to terrorism or covering your face when talking to Jack Straw.

Shock Horror, this is an outrage these lefty liberal types controlling the media. It's a judeo-muslim conspiracy against being english or something. They must hate freedom as well.

The BBC news is rubbish but I wouldn't say it was biased towards the left. Far from it. If someone asked me where I thought it's bias was I would have said Joe Public, dumbing down for easy inoffensive consumption by middle england who think they're a class above gmtv because they have detached houses.
This article, the BBC, the Dail Mail and the Torygraph all stink in my opinion. All of them are distorting the truth for some sort of gain anyway so don't bother with them. Of course the DM is going to say the BBC is biased if they are churning out views different to theirs. They aren't going to say they've been in the wrong the whole time eh?

Blah blah blah bullshit.

 

LOL

 

All this from the Mail on Sunday

One of the most right wing and biased papers in the UK

 

the mail on sunday is one paper, the telegraph is another, we have had press complaints council reports that Ive posted on this site in the past that have said that there is widescale pro muslim anti christian bias in the media generally in the uk and in the bbc in particular .

and tonight i watched half a debate on channel four and they asked the studio audience if they wanted in the interests of free speech to show the cartoons of mohammed, then they would come back after the break to give the results of the debate and I was thinking finally someone has grown some balls .

anyway they came back and 70 something percent of the audience wanted them to show the cartoons and john snow said now I have to open a letter from channel four and the letter said they wouldnt show the cartoons .

what was the point of that except to show their own cowardice and bias once again

to say its the daily mail therefore its wrong just because they report it or the telegraph reports it is Ad Hominem attack where you attack the person not what their saying

are you saying really balbus that the bbc is fair in its treatment if you are could you back that up with some form of argument

 

You are complaining about the BBC by citing something that happened on a Ch4 programme?

OK let me do what i want with the right wing biased papers and many of the satellite and cable channels and i'll let you have a go at the BBC.

 

well Im just pointing out that the media bias that exists in the bbc also exists in other media .

and I have a choice if I pay for satellite tv or buy right wing papers I dont have a choice if I buy a tv licence if I want to watch tv .

I could get socialist worker or the morning star or the el guardian if I wanted a leftwing newspaper

 

well Im just pointing out that the media bias that exists in the bbc also exists in other media .

You think all the UK media are too left wing, pro-Muslim and anti-Christian? Or that some parts are right wing and some left wing?

And that you as a right winger really dislike what you see as the left wing media?

and I have a choice if I pay for satellite tv or buy right wing papers I dont have a choice if I buy a tv licence if I want to watch tv .

And I have the choice to donate money to political groups and vote for political parties that would spend the taxes I pay differently rather than spending so much money on futile wars. (it is a tax we don’t all get to choose what our taxes are spent on)

I could get socialist worker or the morning star or the el guardian if I wanted a leftwing newspaper

And you could set up a political party or try and change the policy of an existing party to turn the BBC into a commercial organisation.

**

The thing is that it seems to me that any organisation that gets attacked from the left as being too right wing and from the right as being too left wing cannot be all that bad.

**

Anyway Radio 4 is worth the licence fee on it’s own, hell man the Archers is worth the licence fee alone.

**

 

The daily mail and the telegraph?????????
Are you mad ???

They are fascist rags that dont even deserve the creditation of being news - forget it this is obviously some right wing attempt to get trendy in forums or something

A bit like your dad trying to dance at a disco and pick up a cool chick

ROFLMFAO

 

its interesting that you dont address the story just whose telling it , which is a debating fallacy.
if you were to come up with something from socialist worker, morning star.
I wouldnt just dismiss it by saying commie paper, looney left fuckwits , I would actually look at what they say and see if its true or not .

balbus I think most british media is too anti-christian pro muslim in that not one of them ran the mohammed cartoons and generally they treat islam with a respect it doesnt deserve . I think the bbc is pretty much as the first article said which would be ok if it didnt use public money or call itself a national broadcaster

 

Why do you think they call the telegraph "the Torygraph" ? and unless you really are round the twist you cant fail to agree that the daily mail is is totally insidious and has been discredited many times for its outlandish and outrageous fascist viewpoint - theyre not even tories at the mail, the are rank fascists fuckwits and the only reason this story came into the open is because the conservatives have found another looser to propose as a candidate for prime minister - I dont believe anyone with any intelligence at all would credit this story - it holds no weight and the mail is always twisting facts and the torygraph is just for dead-head conservative voters
it steals its stories off the mail and waters them down with a bit of hibrow debate I cant believe someone would debate anything those two papers print

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/webguide/scotblog/articles/1035378867.shtml

http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2006/10/this-piece-by-observers-nick-cohen-may.html

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

note the right-hand pane in that last webpage

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1686504,00.html
and these are the idiots that posted those stories about bbc bias at the telegraph- they dont like the fact that cameron is about as politically adept as a horses arse

Like I was saying - you cant trust them twats at the mail and telegraph theyre failed BBC material

 

Then why force people to pay for it?

Good heavens, a Tory leaning paper? What an outrage. Kind of hard to understand where the Telegraph becomes a "fascist" newspaper though.

 

Please read on this is a funny story, I promise that. Germans pay about 19$ a month if they own a television. This fee was introduced right after the war to make it possible that state independent tv stations would be able to run without receiving money from the state. There were only those stations after the war and it made sense at this time. Nowadays you have dozens of tv stations but you still pay the money for those state independent ones (all other stations don’t see a dime of that money).

The funny thing about this tax is that you have to pay if you own a tv, it does not matter if you are actually watching the stations that get the money. So, even if you would use your tv exclusively for DVDs and video games you would have to pay the 19$ a month.

It was decided a few years ago to charge everyone who has a pc with an internet connection as well which means if you do not have a tv you still have to pay if you have a pc with internet connection (who does not ?) because you could view the very limited streams that those tv stations offer on their website.

It begins to get funny right now. If you run a business you have to pay for private and business use which means you pay for a private tv and for your pc with internet connection at work. You would also pay for your mobile if it is capable of that. Oh, did I mention that you also pay if you run a dedicated server somewhere ? Yeah that is right, you pay those fees because the dedicated server is connected to the internet.

It does not matter that you do not have physical access to the server nor that there is no monitor to watch the streams if you would make it into the secured server room.

The most disturbing aspect of this internet tax is that you have to pay because you could watch the streams on the internet pages, you do not pay because you do. Does anyone else think this is kinda weird ?

What is happening in your country, do you have similar experiences ?

 

Why dont you do some research about its history since the 1950's and the editors and reporters it employs and their "off the record" things they say - no good looking at the print thats just a watered down version of what they really think - to comply with British laws on publishing
also I notice you say nothing about the bias of the toryville press mogul Randall who was basically sacked by the BBC - this is his revenge tactic

and proves what I'm saying that Cameron doesnt do it for the tories so Randall is doing it for him !!!!! Also the telegraph has a grudge against the BBC

usa in decline said

yes its the same in Britain and I absolutely garauntee that the stations in Germany and Britain are of a far far superior quality to TV in the USA
You miss the point slightly though - the reason this is done is so that TV does not become a mere opportunity to sell - it has to promote certain standards and a certain level of value for money. There is no advertising allowed on the BBC for example and the last time I looked a TV license in Britain was about £110 a year but that was about 3 years ago - and anyone who recieves pictures by the BBC who is a resident in the UK must pay a licence even if you use a computer to view those images - thats how BBC copyright is paid for. It enables British people to watch not mere entertainment but educational programmes too - there is a definite value in being taxed to pay for better programming - I definitely support it