Redstate

Jolly Bad Show, Chaps

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Stop the presses: There is bias at the BBC.

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded.

The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased - and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

It warns that celebrities must not be pandered to and allowed to hijack the BBC schedule.

After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation's coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial.

But it says coverage of Live 8, the 2005 anti-poverty concerts organised by rock star campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono and writer Richard Curtis, failed to properly debate the issues raised.

Instead, at a time when the corporation was renegotiating its charter with the government, it allowed itself to effectively become a promotional tool for Live 8, which was strongly supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Geldof, Bono and Curtis were attempting to pressure world leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, which was taking place at the same time, to help reduce poverty in developing countries under the banner 'Make Poverty History'.

Mr Blair said the campaign was a "mighty achievement". The huge Live 8 concerts across the world were its culmination and the BBC cleared its schedules to show them, with coverage on BBC One, Two and Three and Radio One and Two.

Around the same time it also screened a specially-written episode of Curtis's popular sitcom The Vicar of Dibley that featured a minute long Make Poverty History video and saw characters urged to support it. And it aired another Curtis drama, The Girl in the Café, in which Bill Nighy falls in love with an anti-poverty campaigner - even giving Gordon Brown an advance copy.

The BBC also ran a week long Africa special featuring a series of documentaries by Geldof and a day celebrating the National Health Service, prompting Sky News political editor Adam Boulton to tell a House of Lords select committee it was in danger of peddling government propaganda.

The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

It reads: "There is a tendency to 'group think' with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone."

Read on . . .

I would certainly argue that commentary by the likes of Jeremy Paxman has been exceedingly partisan and partial. I recognize that there is value in being a devil's advocate when asking guests--famous guests at that--questions during a news show, but people like Paxman regularly go above and beyond the role of devil's advocate and indeed endorse an approach that constitutes partisanship of the most fervent kind.

And what's more, people in Britain have to pay a license tax to fund the BBC's service so they can get reporting that is skewed towards a particular point of view. Utterly remarkable.