Janet Daley
Janet Daley was born in America where she began her political life on the Left as an undergraduate at Berkeley. She moved to Britain (and to the Right) in 1965 where she spent nearly twenty years in academic life before becoming a political commentator: all factors that inform her writing on British and American policy and politicians.
The BBC says anyone who accuses it of bias – is biased
Well that's is one way of countering the criticism that your news presentation is biased against arguments from Right-of-centre think tanks.You just smear the Right-of-centre think tank that points it out as being politically motivated and biased against you. Even by the standards of the BBC – which has never been known to address (or even comprehend) criticism of its impartiality – this argument takes the biscuit.
The Centre for Policy Studies has published an impeccably researched report which offers objective statistical evidence of the BBC's persistent habit of describing (which is to say, effectively dismissing) the proposals of think tanks such as the IEA, the Centre for Social Justice, the Taxpayers' Alliance, and the CPS itself as emanating from "Rightwing" organisations, while offering up material from Leftwing or Labour-supporting groups without any such health-warning. The effect, needless to say, is to cast political suspicion on the published claims or policy suggestions of the outfits labelled "Rightwing", even when the material they contain is factual and empirically indisputable.
So how does the BBC respond to this? Do they say, "This report contains serious allegations of bias which we will examine"? Or perhaps, "We understand that there is concern about lack of impartiality in our political news coverage, and we will consider the facts in this report seriously"? No, they do not. Their tirelessly defensive spokesman simply points out that the CPS is (guess what?) a Right-of-centre think tank which has been known to campaign for the BBC to be reduced in size and question the continuation of the licence fee. So we can ignore whatever it says, then. Got that? The BBC is never wrong: it just has unscrupulous critics who – for some unfathomable reason – want to do it down. God in heaven. What idiot is it who decides on the Corporation's public relations policy? Could they really be so arrogant – and so out of touch – and so sublimely impervious to the danger that their superciliousness creates?
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