But surely if BBC impartiality meant anything, we would have balanced our story by emphasising the growing banking, oil and electronics industries.
Instead, we constantly lamented the closure of shipyards and fretted about the ailing Ravenscraig steelworks.
Is this guy an idiot? Good news is no news, of course they emphasised the closure of shipyards,
because that's a fucking story. "People get jobs in banking sector" isn't news.
John Major had little opportunity to enjoy his success; within months, Sterling was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism and his Government never recovered.
The BBC mounted a barrage of negative coverage on everything from the NHS to sleaze.
I mean, for fucks sake, here's the media reporting the
bad things that happen. Again. IMO, it's the media's job (especially the publicly funded media) to be relentlessly positive about the government and not report their flaws. Y'know, like they are in China, or Cuba.
Within the BBC, opinion ran strongly against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Most staff felt war was unjustified; feelings intensified by their contempt for President George Bush.
On Today we occasionally allowed the case for war to be made, but the prevailing tone was doom-laden. Arguing for a better balance was a thankless task: at one meeting I said our coverage was too anti-war; the editor's response was brusque.
Amongst the population in general, of course, there was nothing but support for the war.
One presenter described the sense of superiority that working at the BBC confers on its staff.
"It's the whole thing that 'we know best' and it's our responsibility to educate the poor unfortunates beneath us in how things should be."
Yes, none of that to be found at the Daily Mail I'm sure.
What a ludicrous peice of journalism. I have no doubt that the people who work for the BBC are mostly left of centre, they're creatives, creatives tend to be liberal. I'm not convinced by the idea of a left wing bias however. As mentioned above, a study was done where a pro-Israeli bias was decided on, the government is hardly getting an easy ride etc etc. But if the right scream loud enough, people will believe it. See the US for an example of where we're heading.
20 %
20 %
60 %
- By Tubby Isaacs
- By Samanfur