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Biased BBC

Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Hugh # Further fallout It's been hard to avoid comment about the Beeb's bias in the national press lately, but this article by novelist DJ Taylor on the Beeb's US election coverage is worth flagging up: While everybody in the room – party cheerleaders excepted – clearly wanted Obama to win, those in charge were doing a very good impression of studied neutrality. It was all a far cry from recent British general elections, where the anti-Conservative bias of certain BBC pundits... has been so flagrant as to make you wonder exactly how they got away with it... There is no great mystery, of course, behind this sudden excess of timidity. In the wake of the Brand/Ross disaster the corporation is simply terrified of offending anybody. Worth mentioning, too, that Taylor's a member of the Labour party, and this is from the left-leaning Independent. And, sticking with leftist newspapers sticking it to the Beeb over the last couple of days, here's Sue Carroll in the Mirror on Ed Stourton's description of the Queen mother as a "ghastly old bigot": When the Queen Mother died, Ed Stourton condemned a tabloid newspaper for publishing details of her last moments, claiming the publication was "quite comfortable in the gutter"... Would his book about political correctness have made news without him shopping the nation's favourite gran? In a word No. Welcome to the gutter, Ed. Comments: 3 (unread) - Biased BBC Home Monday, November 10, 2008 Laban # Compare And Contrast ... The BBC News home pages for the 2004 Presidential Election and the2008 Presidential Election They're .. er .. somewhat different in tone, to put it mildly. And they must have used up all the website's scare quotes in 2004. Then we had : 'Liberty' at the heart of President Bush's foreign policy. Rice begins work on 'great cause'. Not to mention What Bush means by 'liberty' US vote 'mostly free and fair' Admittedly the 2004 page is post-inauguration - but I don't remember coverage of the result being quite so "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, that the King of Glory may enter in". Indeed, I recall a certain gloom creeping in at the time the results were announced - one observer claimed that "every single BBC reporter looks like they have just swallowed a wasp". You may remember that after 2004, the BBC's post-election theme was'Divided America'. Although the 2004 vote was 51/48 and the 2008 vote was a not-radically-different 53/46 percentage split, I somehow think that the 'Divided America' theme will go back in the toybox for a few more years. Not that the BBC weren't following the pack. (via Booker Rising) Comments: 4 (unread) - Biased BBC Home