Tuesday, July 21, 2009

In built bias at the BBC

As revealed by a senior controller.

Ben Stephenson, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, said that the corporation should encourage "peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking."

Mr Stephenson then tried to excuse his bias by claiming that the phrase had no political meaning.

"Like 'left-field', it is a phrase that I use with frequency when talking to the creative community to encourage them to develop and approach their ideas from a completely new perspective," he said.

In which case Mr Stephenson is either a fool - and I don't think that someone that stupid should be a controller in the BBC - or is being deliberately disingenuous. Unless he is a complete idiot he will know damn well that "left of centre" is a political phrase meaning socialist. He'll also know that it does not mean the same as "left field" and is not interchangeable with that expression.

I don't think Mr Stephenson is a fool - I think he knows only too well what is meant by "left of centre" and slips it in to promote his own particular choice of politics - and I believe he is far from being the only one who is left of centre in the BBC who does this. I think he's got so used to doing it unchallenged that it didn't occur to him that some people might disagree with him.

2 comments:

Letters From A Tory said...

He's a liar, plain and simple. He got caught trying to push something that he shouldn't have and is desperately backtracking.

What a weasel.

Stan said...

Absolutely, but the main concern for me is that this is indicative of the in built bias that exists at the BBC and which goes unchallenged. If this were a commercial company then they could be as biased as they like (well - they couldn't, but it would be less of a concern) - but this is an organisation funded by the public under threat of imprisonment if we refuse to pay. As a conservative I resent the idea that I am required to fund the promotion of socialist propaganda. The BBC claims that is is balanced because it gives fair hearings to Labour and Tory - a dubious claim in my opinion, but one that the watchdog concurs with - but my argument is that isn't enough. Virtually all non-political programming from the BBC - drama and comedy as well as factual - comes with a profound left wing slant. There is little (if any) programming that has a positive conservative message which is a clear bias. Add on to that the fact the Conservative Party isn't very conservative anymore and virtually the Beeb's entire output is left wing to one degree or another.