Pause for Thought

Alan at Biased BBC has written a couple of thoughtful posts, perhaps prompted by our discussion about Steve Rosenberg's Today report on Russian attitudes to the fall of the Berlin Wall. I very much appreciate them, especially their tone - which was much better judged than mine. (Sorry Alan.)

I think we're still going to have to agree to disagree over that particular Steve Rosenberg report, but Alan's point about how BBC journalists can become too close to the subjects they are supposed to  be reporting on (with careful, clear-eyed dispassion) is a well-made one and one that made me think. (Hence this post).

It is certainly a potential risk that having spent so much of his life in Russia among the Russians Steve Rosenberg might have imbibed some of their way of thinking (perhaps without even realising it) and is now reflecting that way of thinking back without sufficiently engaging his professional cynicism. I'll have to listen back to other Steve Rosenberg reports to form a judgement about that.

Still, by citing Jon Donnison and Jeremy Bowen as examples of reporters who have become too close to the subjects they are supposed to be reporting, Alan has proved the possibility of his point by showing it as an actuality. Jon Donnison, especially, seems to identity so closely with the Palestinians that he has come very close to open pro-Palestinian activism. (That doesn't seem to have happened with the Ozzies yet, about whom he seems, if anything, to be excessively cynical). 

Lyse Doucet's commitment to the idea that BBC reporters have to show compassion in their reporting (though I can see why she thinks it's desirable) probably brings that risk even closer. Place an emotion like compassion at the heart of your reporting and you risk toppling into emotive sob-stories and shroud-waving. 

Alan also discusses the Media Lens critique of BBC reporting, conceding certain of their points and disagreeing with them over other of their points. 

It's an important argument for blogs like ours to contend with because the Media Lens perspective has become ever louder in recent years. 

The days when it was only the political Right which objected to BBC bias have gone. Polling evidence from a year ago suggested that as many people think the BBC has a pro-establishment/pro-government bias as believe it to be pro-Left. Social media is full of people accusing the BBC of being a tool of state propaganda.

Media Lens used to be the exception that proved the rule among BBC-bias-related blogs. It was the left-wing, anti-Israel one-off among a sea of right-wing and/or pro-Israeli ones. Now there are loads of them out there. You may not have come across them but I can assure you they're out there. We've had some interesting comments here at Is the BBC biased? from people who think in that kind of way, some of whom run such blogs. 

It's a perspective that puzzled me when it first impinged upon my consciousness. The idea that the BBC acts like an arm of British foreign policy was one I'd not really considered. In my teens the BBC's perspective on issues like Falklands War, the Reagan administration's military campaigns (and our support for them), the British government's policy towards South Africa, etc, appeared (to me) to be less than supportive - to put it mildly. The BBC didn't seem overly supportive of the First Gulf War either. Or of our ally, Israel. 

And when I first came across Biased BBC it was in the wake of the Iraq War - the example Media Lens cites as being a prime example of BBC pro-state bias. I didn't find the BBC to be pro-that-war at all (as Media Lens and those who think like them believe it was). Hugh Sykes' reporting, Orla and Fergal, John Humphrys' questions on Today, the proven dislike of many BBC reporters for Bush, the Blair government v BBC battle culminating in the Hutton report and the resignation of Greg Dyke - those are just some of the things I remember, and they aren't (to me) evidence of the BBC being propagandists for the Iraq War. 

And what of more recent conflicts? Did the BBC support the government over the Libyan intervention? Did the BBC back the government's push for intervention in Syria? Is the BBC supporting the government's reluctance to give in to MPs' demands to recognise 'Palestine'? Is the BBC backing the government's opposition to President Putin's actions in Ukraine? Is the BBC supporting the government's military action against Islamic State? Does the BBC back the government over EU renegotiation? Media Lens types think 'yes' to all of those. I would give qualified 'yeses' to some, clear 'noes' to others, and a couple of 'maybes'/'don't knows'. 

This view that the BBC has a pro-establishment bias may be fairly widely held but those same polls from a year ago showed far less support for the idea that the BBC is right-wing. In the past Media Lens tended to go after the BBC, Guardian and Independent so hard because it saw them as liberal media outlets betraying the Left by being much less left-wing - and 'truthful' - than Media Lens. Only recently has there been a sudden upsurge in claims of right-wing bias at the BBC, from the likes of far-left academic/campaigners at Cardiff University and Owen Jones (and Robert Peston). And Twitter has now taken such claims up en masse (see my previous post for fresh evidence of that). What with the anti-Israel brigade and the pro-SNP battalions massing their tanks on the BBC's lawns, the ranks of the unjustified protestors against the BBC are swelling. 

Media Lens thinks the BBC suffers from groupthink. Like Alan, that's the point at which I agree with them. 

The groupthink in question (in my opinion) is precisely where Media Lens used to (still does?) locate it - in the same area (roughly) as the Guardian and the Independent: socially liberal, economically centrist, pro-EU, pro-immigration, obsessively 'politically correct', vaguely anti-war, pro-urgency on global warming, unsympathetic to Israel, horribly fascinated by UKIP, ultra-fearful of offending Muslim sensibilities (though not especially bothered about offending other religious sensibilities), etc, etc, etc. 

The problem remains the way the BBC has recruited its staff over many, many years. Radical surgery is needed to change that, and the BBC isn't into that when it comes to itself.

Well, that's my thoughts on the matter. If you care.