Fine and entirely justified attack on continuing BBC bias by Michael Gove in the Times. Actually, bias is too inadequate a word to express the systematic collapse in our public service broadcaster of any understanding of what objectivity actually is. Gove's ire this time was aroused by a discussion on Iraq which featured two speakers against intervention and one in favour. This is normal, in my experience, over a range of subjects where it simply doesn't occur to the BBC that it is loading the issue because its producers and presenters believe that the position they themselves support is actually the norm, and any opposition is deviant and 'right-wing'.

As Gove puts it, those 'who share their broad, left-of-centre, Americo-sceptic approach are regularly deployed as “detached” experts who can provide “independent” analysis. But they are nothing of the kind — experts they may be — but they are also partial observers with very particular prejudices.'

He goes on, quite rightly, to single out BBC Radio Four's Today programme for broader censure:

'Just as there is a Chatham House Version of world affairs which pretends to objectivity while being strongly biased, so there is a John Humphrys Version of the world which seeks to present itself as brusquely independent but is, in truth, deeply partial... On the Iraq war, Humphrys is a more than vigorous partisan. Critics of the action such as Menzies Campbell are treated with all the politeness of a vicar dropping in for tea. Defenders of the coalition, such as Jack Straw, are treated as though they were, at best, dupes led astray by the wicked Americans or, more likely, knaves whom no sane listener could properly trust...

'The Middle East peace process is treated as an entity, almost like the Virgin Mary, which is beyond reproach. “Threatening it”, as Israel is accused of doing most days, is the gravest charge that can be laid against someone. But what we call the peace process is just one, of many, ideological responses to the challenge of the Middle East, and so far it looks to many of us to be just another singularly unsuccessful exercise in appeasement. In the Humphrys Version of the world, however, the vigorous exertion of force by a Western nation in its own defence is assumed, almost reflexively, to be a mistake. The aggressive manner in which Mr Humphrys questioned American actions in Fallujah recalled, for me, the hysterical, and under-informed, journalistic attacks on Israeli actions against terrorists in Jenin.'

One day, our descendants may look back on the insanity of the west at this time and conclude that the BBC had much to answer for. That is, of course, if there is still a west, which the BBC world view is doing so much to undermine.

Posted by melanie at April 21, 2004