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Right-wing bias and the BBC

Sunny highlights an interesting article in the recent New Statesman, by Mehdi Hasan, which argues that far from being biased towards the Left, the BBC is pro-Establishment.

What Sunny doesn’t highlight is the ‘twin’ of this article, written by Peter Hitchens, which attempts to refute the contentions of Hassan, asserting instead that of course the BBC is left-wing, though BBC bigwigs are unlikely to notice it, having never questioned their own assumptions in their journey from Oxbridge junior common rooms to White City.

Because the Oxbridge universities are such a bastion of socialism. Beyond such absurdities, however, I think the Hitchens article is much more instructive than its Hasan counterpart. The Hitchens article is mostly waffle, rarely reaching for examples which can be said to encompass the whole of BBC political, social and cultural coverage – whereas the previous allegiances of people like Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson probably do have an effect on coverage – but to dismiss Hitchens is to miss an incisive and important point.

“What troubles the BBC is not a party bias. (…) It is a set of potent cultural, moral, social, sexual and religious assumptions, which touch on all topics from cannabis to the EU, and which affect everything from the plot-lines of The Archers to the use of the metric system on nature programmes.”

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EasyJet Councils – pushing inequality

The Guardian newspaper yesterday carried a story of the Tory borough Barnet pushing the EasyJet business model

As such, the council will provide a basic no-frills service, a reduced-sized bin or for those who require adult social care in Barnet “budget on whether to have a cleaner or a respite carer”. EasyCouncil it shall be called.

Seems modest enough, but to me there remains a major alternative to the revolutionary approach by Barnet. Namely, the idea of sensible public service spending can be achieved by a reallocation of funding rather than the EasyCouncil way.

Reallocation for the local government allows for a renegotiation of necessities; say if it is vital to employ 24 hour wardens in care homes this should be prioritised over building a new welcome centre in the local natural park.
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The world’s most expensive cover-story?

At an estimated $400,000 it may be the most expensive cover story ever. Investigative journalism, as newspapers are forever trying to remind others, cannot come cheap.

But this expensive?

Nieman Lab reports:

In this case, [writer Sheri] Fink was paid $33,000 plus $10,000 in expenses for her Kaiser fellowship, according to Steve Engelberg, her editor at ProPublica, where she’s been for 14 months. Engelberg, who was kind enough to go through these figures with me, said, “Fourteen months of salary plus benefits for us easily gets you north of 100 plus, 100, 150 or something.” He threw in another $20,000 to $30,000 for travel expenses, in addition to three months of editing and lawyering at ProPublica and the Times, which also spent $25,000 to $30,000 on photographs, he said.

The end result was a cover-story for this weekend’s New York Times Magazine – a 13,000-word investigation of the New Orleans hospital where patients were euthanized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The NY Times investigation is here.

The article reports on:

how more patients than was previously known were injected; how some were not on their deathbed at the time of the injections; exactly what was injected into some of the patients; [and] which doctors were involved and how they came to their decisions…

And even though The Times didn’t pay the full price for the feature, it still is an amazing piece of journalism which would be difficult to replicate in most media organisations around the world.

Evidence BBC biased towards conservatives

The charge that the broadcasting corporation is left-wing has been repeated so often that it goes almost unchallenged. If anything, Mehdi Hasan argues, it is a bastion of conservatism, he argues in this week’s New Statesman magazine.

His main charges:

• In November 2005, [Andrew Neil] delivered the 14th annual Hayek lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs, in which he called for “a reorientation of British foreign policy away from Europe . . . a radical programme to liberalise the British economy; a radical reduction in tax and public spending as a share of the economy; a flat tax . . . the injection of choice and competition into the public sector on a scale not yet contemplated . . . excellence in schools with vouchers for all”.
• Neil is on air roughly four hours a week, presenting Daily Politics, Straight Talk and This Week – where one of his co-hosts is the former Tory defence secretary Michael Portillo. Neil and Portillo often gang up, ideologically, on the soft Labour lefty Diane Abbott. Here is the legendary BBC “balance” in action.
• Much has been made in the right-wing press of the comments by the Telegraph’s editor-at-large, Jeff Randall, on the BBC’s “liberal” bias – “It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society” – during his four-year stint as the corporation’s first business editor. The bigger question is: what on earth was an outspoken free-marketeer doing as the supposedly neutral BBC business editor to begin with? So much for Auntie’s “Marxist” attitudes towards business and enterprise.
• The BBC is constantly accused of anti-Americanism, but three of its most recent correspondents in Washington – Gavin Esler, Matt Frei and Justin Webb – have all since written books documenting their great love and admiration for the United States. Esler even used the pages of Dacre’s Daily Mail to eulogise Ronald Reagan after the latter’s death, claiming that he “embodied the best of the American spirit”.

And there’s plenty more. Read the full article.

Fay Weldon, the only real feminist?

Fay Weldon is plugging her latest book. Shock horror in the Mail and Telegraph, this ‘feminist ‘ is saying women should just accept men need looking after and don’t challenge them too much.

Well its not really a shock, she has been coming out with this crap for a while now. As the interview in The Guardian points out:

She was vilified for her assertion in an interview in 1998 that being raped wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a woman, and a few years ago she complained that feminism had undermined men too much. In her book What Makes Women Happy she advised faking orgasms. Did she feel part of the feminist movement?

“Inevitably, but I never wrote propaganda because it all seemed so evident. It became obvious that you had to be a feminist because it was such a ridiculous state of affairs.” Her contemporaries, she says, “usually come round to my way of thinking in the end. I’m probably the one, the only feminist there is and the others are all out of step.”

Well arrogance aside that she is the only real feminist, it seems that by most criteria she seems pretty out of step.
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Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes: hypocrites

Yeah, we fell for the spoof on the Mayor of Baltimore, as did many others including The Spectator, the Guardian and Baltimore Sun – people who are paid to do more research, you know? And I updated the page as soon as I heard about it, as should be the practice.

But now Iain Dale has gone off on a bizarre rant about churnalism and being caught out on spoofs.

Let’s get this straight. Iain Dale has never been caught out on a spoof has he? Really?

Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes have never taken a press release and regurgitated it as a blog post. Like this or this, for example. No, they’re far too professional to do that. Hypocrites.
Update: And Fawkes always checks his sources too right? (thanks Carl)

Only 8,000 ask about ID cards in Manchester

Only 8,000 people in Manchester have enquired about ID cards in Manchester following a trial in the city, the Manchester Evening News reports.

The number of people who will sign up is likely to be much less.

A MEN story reported:

During a live webchat at the M.E.N offices, Lord Bill Brett, the minister responsible for the introduction of the ID card scheme, admitted only a small percentage of the population had asked about the voluntary scheme.

The cards will cost £30 and contain biometric details of holders.
…
He said he foresaw the cards becoming ‘the accepted form of ID in the UK’.

But a poll on this website revealed 81 per cent would not be taking part in the trial.
…
Lord Brett stressed the government had ‘no intention to make ID cards compulsory’. Asked why Manchester had been chosen for the pilot, he said: “Manchester is a major city, with a large young population, a large university and major airport.”

Times rebukes Hannan on Enoch Powell

The Times newspaper today published a rebuke to Dan Hannan for praising Enoch Powell.

A leader column said:

When asked for his heroes in an internet interview by Reason TV he first named the American libertarian author Ayn Rand, the economist Milton Friedman and the great thinker Friedrich von Hayek. Finally he added: “Enoch Powell”.

This has caused controversy, and rightly so. Mr Hannan, as he has made clear on other occasions, does not share Powell’s views on immigration. His other heroes, after all, are libertarians who believe in the complete free movement of labour. But the MEP is wrong to accord Powell hero status. Powell’s most important contribution to public life — his speeches on immigration — were incorrect and inflammatory.

Even though Mr Hannan may admire Powell’s speeches on sovereignty, he appears to be suggesting that these outweigh the destructive nature of Powell’s intervention on immigration. They do not.

It’s worth pointing out though that the names of Rand and Friedman were never cited by Hannan himself. Those were mentioned by the interviewer. Daniel Hannan went straight on to cite Enoch Powell as one of his greatest influences.

What’s really worrying about Tory health plans

The more I think about Tory health plans, the more they worry me. And I’m not talking about Daniel Hannan.

Hannan does worry me, of course, because there’s clearly something wrong with him (a case study in the dangers of under-funded mental health services if ever there was one). But he will, at least, be a very long way from anywhere he can do any real damage.

The people who’ll decide the fate of the health service in any Conservative administration will likely be David Cameron and Andrew Lansley. And what they’ve decided, it seems, is to keep throwing cash at the NHS.

That is what worries me.
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The right to criticise union leaders

If your boss sacks you for wearing a crucifix to work, you may have a case the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. Clock on clad in a hammer and sickle lapel badge, and she can freely tell you to pick up your P45, you dirty commie bastard. Or so I had assumed, anyway.

But shortly we will find out whether or not Trotskyism is deemed legally equivalent to religion, after the decision of Socialist Party members Brian Debus, Onay Kasab, Glenn Kelly and Suzanne Muna to take one of Britain’s largest trade unions to an employment tribunal under these very regs.

All four have been banned from holding office in Unison for between three and five years. Mabledon Place says that is because they are racists; the four activists say they are being singled out because they are Trots.
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