Duncan Smith hits BBC with catalogue of bias
By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor
(Filed: 11/05/2003)
Iain Duncan Smith is to make a formal complaint to the BBC, accusing the corporation of deliberately discriminating against the Conservative Party "all the damn time".....
....As reported by The Telegraph last week, senior Conservatives were infuriated when the BBC incorrectly reported that the party was enjoying only marginal success on May 1. In fact it gained 565 seats.....
....The BBC's election-night coverage "wasn't just an aberration", he said, citing criticism of the corporation's treatment voiced by Rod Liddle, a former editor of its flagship Today radio programme.
"He says it is not just by accident, it happens all the damn time," said Mr Duncan Smith. "They set their mind about how they perceive you and report you and do nothing but report in that light. They should be news-led."....
dailytelegraph.co.uk
Anti-Americans are really against liberal democracy
Daily Telegraph, UK - 21 hours ago
If you watch the BBC for any 24 hours, you see institutionalised anti-Americanism. When Mayor Ken Livingstone told schoolchildren that President George Bush was "everything repellant in politics… venal... corrupt" [report, 10 May], the BBC's commentary was concerned only with how badly this would affect tourism in London - as if there was nothing substantially wrong in the remarks themselves.
....When BBC World News presenter Deborah Mackenzie faced American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Falcoff, she found him insufficiently contrite about American unilateralism. "Doesn't world peace depend on international organisations?" she demanded, as if he had just pronounced two plus two equal to five. When Falcoff appeared unmoved, she turned very grumpy. "So, are you happy for the US to play judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner?" she countered, at last abandoning any pretence to objectivity.
The BBC has no idea that it has a bias. But in its anti-Americanism, as in its stand on a number of other issues (ranging from abortion to membership in Europe or the moral equivalence between the actions of suicide bombers and those of the Israeli army), there is nothing in its mind to be decided. If a dissenting view has to be presented, it will always be put in a defensive position.
The canard of choice among those voicing anti-American views is to claim to distinguish between Americans and the administration of George Bush, suggesting the latter is unrepresentative of the people. Every BBC interviewer relies on this, as did Drabble, Astee and Livingstone. But Mr Bush enjoys a popularity rating of more than 65 per cent among his countrymen.....
opinion.telegraph.co.uk
Liddle lashes out at 'arrogant' BBC
Jason Deans
Thursday May 8, 2003
Former BBC Radio 4 Today editor Rod Liddle has accused BBC television news of "institutionalised political correctness" in its coverage of the Iraq war and last week's local elections.
Liddle claimed this political correctness led to certain assumptions becoming part of BBC TV's coverage of the war and reporting of the local election results - even when they were not backed up by the facts.
On local election results night, these unsubstantiated assumptions included the Conservatives doing very badly, when the party ended up the largest in local government in England; and that people voted for the BNP in Burnley for reasons other than simple racism, according to Liddle.
"The compelling thing about the BBC's election night programme was that almost every assumption made by its producers gave the wrong general impression or was irrelevant," he said, writing in the latest edition of the Spectator.
"The programme was written before the results came in. It was based on the assumption that the Conservatives were bloody useless and would perform badly. And it was insufficiently flexible to change when reality did not meet its expectations," Liddle added.....
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