More On the Beeb

An Insider in the BBC reports on its Corporate Culture in the UK's Daily telegraph:

Politically, I would call myself a conservative social democrat in Irish terms: I loathe the IRA, have a lot of time for David Trimble, and wanted to smash Saddam Hussein's regime. Yet I am forced to approach any appearance on current affairs programmes for the BBC as an appearance before a hanging judge. From start to finish I know the only way to survive is to accept that I am among enemies.

As I am usually going on to attack a terrorist organisation, defend a decent man like Trimble, or to support a war against a gangster like Saddam, you would think I could feel myself among people who, though they might want to put tough questions, basically shared my assumption that the IRA is morally delinquent, that Trimble is trying to do his best, and that Saddam should be shot on sight.

You would be wrong. By and large, the researchers and reporters I will meet in any branch of the BBC find these beliefs revolting.

That is not surprising. BBC current affairs is pretty much a closed cultural system. Peer groups tend to recruit people of similar political views. And if the odd conservative or social democrat scrapes in he either has to stay silent or succumbs to the Stockholm syndrome, by which the hostage comes to love his captors.

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Let me make it clear that I am not accusing the BBC of anything so minor as not giving adequate air-time to the Government. BBC bias works by agenda- setting, by angle of approach and by ideological attitude. All you have to do is decide to do a daily update on, say, child casualties in Iraq, and put on a compassionate voice, and no number of government spokesmen and no amount of airtime will wipe out an indelible public image of dead children.

A culture of political bias cannot be countered by counting minutes of airtime. It is not susceptible to internal change because it is the ambient air that broadcasters breathe.

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The BBC's antipathy to the war in Iraq is as palpable as its softness on Sinn Fein. At one point the sailors in Ark Royal asked for BBC broadcasts to be stopped so they could watch Sky. Far from wanting pap, soldiers and sailors hate propaganda and have a huge appetite for the truth and a profound sense of fair play.

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The BBC is the big issue in the Iraq dossier affair. Like Iraq itself, it needs to be liberated from fundamentalists and ideologues and returned to those who love fair play - which includes the free play of ideas.

There's a danger in Blogging of suffering the same intellectual incest. But with greater power comes greater responsibilities. And the BBC has a charter that forbids such bias. It must be reformed in accordance with its charter, or the notion that it is anything other than a politically-biassed media group should be formally abandoned, and the charter ripped up.

Is it beyond repair? Probably. Despite such excellent reporters as John Simpson. A man who has been accidentally bombed by the US armed forces, and still managed to give a factual, unspun report of their tragic blunder. Compare and contrast with the usual medley of spin-doctors.