Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/09/09/bbc_too_right_wing_says_bbc/
Don't tell the D-G! BBC-funded study says Beeb is 'too right wing'
Too many businessmen and not enough 'organised labour', reckons Marxist bookworm
Posted in Legal, 9th September 2013 08:03 GMT
A study funded by the BBC into editorial bias has concluded that it isn't Left Wing enough: it's too friendly to business, and far too hostile to the European Union.
The "voice of the licence-fee payer", the BBC Trust, commissioned the study, and gave the job to academic Mike Berry of the Glasgow Media Group - the latter a Dave Spart-like critic of the capitalist media since 1976. Berry concludes from studying the airtime devoted to representatives that Conservative and business viewpoints are drowning out Labour and trade union views.
Private Eye's spoof Dave Spart would be furious
"On the issues of immigration and the EU in 2012, out of 806 source appearances, not one was allocated to a representative of organised labour," the study concludes. In coverage of the banking crisis "opinion was almost completely dominated by stockbrokers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and other City voices".
Cardiff academics also find that: "Civil society [what's that? - ed] voices or commentators who questioned the benefits of having such a large finance sector were almost completely absent from coverage."
"The evidence from the research is clear. The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda," we're told.
In 2009 former BBC DG Mark Thompson said the BBC has a "massive" bias on immigration, Europe and business, which editorial staff found "off limits in terms of a liberal-minded comfort zone". The Conservative writer Peter Oborne concluded that "rather than representing the nation as a whole, it [the BBC] has become a vital resource – and sometimes attack weapon – for a narrow, arrogant Left-Liberal elite".
The Ministry of Fun (aka the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) is holding a consultation into whether the BBC's dominant news share reflects sufficiently diverse viewpoints.
Happily the Cardiff study shows Thompson and Oborne's concerns are both completely unfounded. And now, having commissioned the study, the BBC Trust can be emboldened to instruct the executives to purge the remaining running dogs of capitalism from the organisation. As Mao himself wisely pointed out: "Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself." ®