It's all Greek to...everyone

It's a curious thing, but I really don't think that bloggers or commenters who post about BBC bias have ever quite got to grips with the seemingly endless Greek debt crisis. 

I've rarely seen posts at any of my favourite haunts laying out an in any way convincing case against the BBC's coverage, vis a vis bias.

That's not to say that there haven't been lots of comments berating the BBC for bias over the issue but they rarely seem very specific (except over Robert Peston, who's widely assumed to be pro-EU rather than pro-Syriza)...

...and I'm simply not seeing the usual phalanx of united criticism for the BBC that tends to accompany any highly controversial issue. 

Indeed, I've actually been seeing quite the reverse: 'People like us' seem to be split between those who think the BBC is biased in favour of those hunky Greek leftists of Syriza (the BBC's radical chic in action) while others - perhaps the majority - think the BBC's pro-EU instincts have come out on top. 

I haven't posted any very clear posts myself on the subject, because I just can't tell if the BBC is (a) biased in either direction, (b) as confused as 'we' are or (c) simply reporting the matter in a duly impartial manner (as, of course, could well be the case).

Or perhaps (d) as confused as 'we' are and actually biased in both directions at the same time......i.e. wavering between hot, lefty Syriza and the great and glorious project that is the European Union, like one of those optical illusions which irresistibly flips the brain between, say, seeing a rabbit and a duck.

I was thinking of that possibility again today only because of former BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell's The World This Weekend this lunchtime - a Greek Crisis special. 

Having mocked Mark Mardell earlier this week for his homoerotic 'Pecs Appeal' blogpost about Yanis Varoufakis, here was MM presenting a programme which repeatedly slated Syriza for its climbdown, with no come back whatsoever from Syriza. 

From MM's commentary to that of the other BBC reporters and the various Greek 'vox pops' in Mark Lowen's report and all the Europhile 'talking heads,' far-left Syriza was thoroughly and utterly berated by them all.

There were two sizeable interviews throughout the programme (both with arch-pro-EU figures - Guy Verhofstadt and Sir Stephen Wall) and various shorter ones. 

They covered a range of views from the ultra-pro-EU (Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt) to the ever-so-slightly sceptical (a generally pro-EU Polish minister) via famous U.S. investor Jim Rogers, who wants Greece dumped from the Eurozone before he'll invest in the Eurozone. 

No strongly sceptical or out-and-out anti-EU, withdrawalist voices were heard from all - which is quite remarkable in the circumstances.

All we got was Mark Mardell saying, in passing, "The Eurosceptics believe..."

And, making me very uneasy (given earlier posts here at ITBB), it was also remarkable that the closing interview - the 'round-up' interview - was with Sir Stephen Wall, merely introduced (by MM) as a former UK ambassador to the EU and a former advisor to Tony Blair. 

Sir Stephen is much more than that. He's also one of the EU's most vigorous Europhiles (part of the pro-EU Business for Europe). He told MM today that it was wise not to have joined the EU for now for we should keep our options open. (Guy Verhofstadt "raised some very valid points", he said). 

So I'm chalking this one up as an example of pro-EU BBC bias. Please listen for yourselves though and see if you agree.


P.S. (h/t Guest Who at Biased BBC). Dan Hannan is on the case, and Mark Mardell - after initially biting - seems to have gone quiet after Dan's second question:

At the risk of seeming slightly churlish myself, might the reason why MM has (three hours on) failed to answer Dan Hannan's follow-up question be that MM realises there's no good answer to it (that doesn't admit guilt or dodge the issue)?

What Evan Davis said in 2003

There was a sentence in one of Christopher Booker's latest Sunday Telegraph articles which caught my attention:

....we must never forget that equally mad campaign some years back, led by the BBC and politicians such as Michael Heseltine, Chris Patten and Kenneth Clarke, to get Britain into the euro. In 2003 the BBC’s Evan Davis famously made a documentary explaining how happy the Greeks were at last to have a currency that was “stable” and “quite secure”. All these people were carried away by one of the greatest acts of collective make-believe of our time. As the resulting tragi-farce now unfolds daily before us, they also should never be allowed to forget it.

For anyone who wants to re-visit that famous documentary, there's a full transcript of it available online. 

I have to say, on reading it (having Googled it this morning), that it turns out to be not quite as straightforward a pro-euro piece as Christopher Booker remembers it as being. A number of potential downsides were examined too. 

And the Telegraph columnist doesn't quite do the BBC man justice, given that Evan didn't really explain "how happy the Greeks were" about the change to the euro (that was probably just hyperbole on CB's part) and Evan did interview quite a few Greeks who complained about price rises due to converting to the euro. Plus, Evan also qualified the word "stable" with "relatively". 

That said, the overall impression I got from reading it was the Evan was indeed pushing the pluses more than the minuses when it came to joining the euro.

Please read it for yourselves though.

Looking back, however, the passage CB specifically refers to does make for grimly ironic reading today:

00.07.50
Evan Davis
There's the Olympic Stadium.  You'll be seeing more of that next year.

00.07.57
Evan Davis
Now Barbara has fixed up an appointment for me with the chairman of the company whose site we've just been looking at.  And he's one; he's a household name in Greece, right.  He's a top man.

00.08.10
Evan Davis
The folks in the market had complained [about price rises].  So was he yearning for the days of the Drachma?

00.08.16
Prodromus Emfietzoglou
Welcome.  Welcome.  It's a pleasure to meet you.

00.08.17
Evan Davis
Thank you very much indeed.  Good to see you.  Good to see you.  Thank you for having us.

00.08.22
Evan Davis
So we saw your Olympic site this morning.  Very Impressive.  Is it going to be finished on time?

00.08.27
Aston
PRODROMUS EMFIETZOGLOU
Chairman, Michaniki S.A.
Certainly we will finish early, early September this year, so it'll be on time for the Olympic Games.

00.08.37
Evan Davis
What was wrong with the Drachma?  I mean why didn't the Drachma work quite as well?  Was it the inflation? Because it did have much more inflation.

00.08.44
Prodromus Emfietzoglou
It had inflation.  As a result we had high interest.  As a result we had difficult approach to, to the banks, so we had a disadvantage.  Money was costing to Greek companies too much.  It was a high burden.  

00.09.06
Prodromus Emfietzoglou
From the other side you have high inflation.  So it was always an effort to cope with the inflation, to cope with the interest rates, and that was a problem.  Now things are clear.  We have a stable situation.  Stability is very important for business.

00.09.30
Greek music

00.09.33
Evan Davis
Stability - Gordon Brown's favourite word.  It's not one of his five tests, but if it was, the Euro would pass.

00.09.40
Music

00.09.47
Evan Davis
Before leaving Athens you've got to see the Parthenon, built two and a half thousand years ago when the whole concept of money was in its relative infancy.

00.09.58
Evan Davis
You might ask whether the Euro could last two and a half thousand years, but I think that would be pushing it a bit, wouldn't it?  But at least it does seem to pass the first requirement of a currency.  It's relatively stable, it's quite secure and it's broadly accepted.  

00.10.12
Evan Davis
There are teething problems, and the Greeks have been the first to notice those, but at a kind of everyday level the Euro does work.

00.10.20
Evan Davis
That's a useful message, yet it doesn't tell us why we might actually want to join.  For that we move on.