Bias at the Beeb? By Stephen Hopkins

Just spotted this article from 2007 on the web and thought I would draw attention to it. Do go and read the whole piece but here are a few extracts:

"I have never thought of the BBC as overtly biased, although it is perfectly true that the arts section of society has a reputation (which it may or may not deserve) for being left-wing. While Auntie might not be permitted to recruit on the basis of political or cultural outlook to redress the balance, all employees, regardless of their own background and outlook, must be aware that many of the people they are supposed to be serving have views, backgrounds, ways of life and opinions that do not conform to what some critics call its own ‘comfortable consensus’.

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Concerning the Make Poverty History campaign, the BBC was said to be an active cheer-leader rather than a disinterested observer. Among other things, the BBC One comedy The Vicar of Dibley promoted the campaign by giving undue coverage to television footage connected with the event and having the vicar urge her parishioners to support it. Now, there’s nothing controversial about watching Geraldine watching the telly, but we don’t usually see what’s entranced her. It must have been, of course, entirely co-incidental that Richard Curtis, a writer on The Vicar of Dibley, was also a campaigner on behalf of the cause.

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One of the problems facing the BBC, if what Andrew Marr says is correct, is that the Corporation is “a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large”. Translation: the people (and their attitudes) who work as skilled craftsmen or manual labourers, read The Sun or the Daily Mail, are middle-aged to elderly, or are middle-class rural, slightly socially conservative voters, are not adequately represented by the Corporation.

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The Corporation employs thousands of very talented and able staff, and I do not for one second think that there is any policy (official or unofficial) of endorsing or giving air-time to some groups or opinions at the expense of others. I have no reason to doubt the integrity of the BBC and its personnel, and I am sure the staff believe themselves to be impartial. However, I think that without an even spread across the political and cultural spectrum, there isn’t the plurality of opinions that would help to prevent one world view becoming entrenched as the accepted norm. The consensus among the majority of the staff becomes the political centre, and notions such as “left” and “right” are interpreted relative thereto. The fact that the “centre” might be no such thing doesn’t cross anyone’s mind.

What you’re left with, in the words of Mr Marr, is “an innate liberal bias inside the BBC.” Jeff Randall, the BBC’s former business editor who’s since joined Joshua Rosenberg, another ex-colleague, at the Daily Telegraph, put it thus: “It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat. If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.”"