The nature of BBC bias
Mark Thompson, head honcho at the BBC, has admitted that the BBC has had a left wing bias. Progress.
While refreshing to hear Mr T say what the rest of us have known for years, to fix the problem, it is important to grasp the nature of the BBC’s inbuilt prejudices.
The BBC does not tilt to the left in a partisan sense. It’s coverage of political parties tends to be pretty fair and balanced. Rather, it is the BBC's outlook - the unconscious presumptions of their producers and reporters - that often makes them seem so leftist.
When examining a public policy problem, BBC reporters almost always appear to presume that state action is the solution. Too many folk drinking too much booze? New laws to decree minimum pricing for everyone, rather than existing laws to enforce individual responsibility. And how many items on the Today programme boil down to a vested interest of some kind demanding state intervention or favour?
I’ve often heard BBC news reporters ask government officials questions based on certain assumptions about the nature of equality. I cannot ever recall hearing a BBC reporter challenge government intervention on the basis that it might be morally wrong to violate someone else’s property rights.
Have you heard a BBC journalist challenge officials on the basis that it might be morally wrong to restrict an individual’s freedom to earn a living? No, but I bet you’ve heard lots about government action to protect jobs. Fair and balanced reporting would point out how the later very often has consequences for the former.
When a private company makes a whopping profit by providing willing customers with a product they want, far from greedy, the company is likely to have done something extraordinarily good. Yet how often does BBC coverage reflect the virtues of the free market?
Free markets provide sixty million Britons with food each day – without which we would starve. So why does the subtext of almost every BBC news item about public services imply that we need the state to ration public services the way it once rationed food?
Perhaps the BBC’s bias is innate. Being a big, bureaucratic corporation funded through public money, the BBC’s instincts will always favour big quangos, corporatism and lots of public spending.