News Bias Of The Bbc...

[Iggle Piggle]

Does anyone else find it sickening that the BBC are allowed to be so biased with news coverage in that they 'protect' the Government with favourable news items and keep others quiet ? (such as the selling off of the NHS)
Why are we not making a huge noise about this?

[factor-fiction]

For every person who says they are biased in favour of the Coalition government there are usually two people claiming that the BBC has a strong left wing bias

[seadogg]

Agree ff. A public broadcaster can never win.

[Peter Pedant]

.

yeah I find it sad when the pinko letie wets of the Beed
ask someone like the Ukraine Prez:

well putin has a point doesn't he ? He says that the Ukraine was always 100% Russian and what do you say to that ?


ar around about the Falklands crisis 1982
the beeb was asking intense questions like
Are the Falklands ours ? and since then ?? The argentinian ambassador gives a reasoned argument

[mikey4444]

Its the first time I have encountered the BBC being described as favouring the Tories ! Wonders will never cease.

[Iggle Piggle]

Well if not bias, why do we not get the full (or any) story on the selling off and privatisation of our NHS ? There are plenty of angry people out there but without the backing of the BBC we aren't being heard.

[factor-fiction]

They're too busy talking about the increase in food banks.

[jno]

just to answer the question... the BBC is still basically a news organisation. They do run pieces on longer-term changes, such as the future of the NHS; but it's not really their job; they deal with day-to-day events rather than decade-to-decade ones.

Actual power over politicians is held by voters.

[Iggle Piggle]

day to day event is that one day the NHS will be free to use, the next day it will be under private ownership of god knows who and treatment will be charged for, that, I believe is worth the BBC mentioning ...

[jno]

no, that won't be done overnight; it'll be little-by-llittle changes - privatisation a bit at a time, perhaps, or Big Pharma granted more power by slightly reducing safety restrictions on new drugs, that sort of thing.

[ToraToraTora]

never seen the BBC accused of protecting the governement, especially a Tory one. The BBC is traditionally to the left politically. I see now though this is not about the BBC it's about your ill informed beliefs about the future of the NHS.

[LazyGun]

It is something of a myth that the BBC have a bias toward the left wing, one that the right love to believe.

Nick Robinson - Chief Political Commentator - former chair of the young conservatives.
Chris Patten - Chairman of the BBC
John Humphreys Is certainly not a left wing sympethiser.
Craig Oliver, recent chief politics editor hired to replace Andy Coulsen in No,10
Stephanie Flanders - until recently chief economics editor at the BBC has left to join that notoriously left wing organisation, JP Morgan.
Andrew Neil, Presenter of the Daily Politics and This Week in Politics on the Beeb is chair of that left wing rag, the Spectator, former editor of The Times and certainly not a left wing sympathiser.
Kamal Ahmed, the new Business Editor at the Beeb comes from the Sunday Telegraph, hardly a bastion of left wing sympathies.

These are all big names and big voices within the BBC. Truth is, those in power are always going to be scrutinised more closely than the opposition; That's the way it works.It is almost always those who support the incumbents who complain the loudest about BBC bias.


As to the NHS - changes in the NHS Charter have meant that virtually anyone can bid to run pretty much any part of the NHS now. That has already had serious financial consequences eating into the NHS operating budget, not least of which is the additional costs of the tendering process, and picking up the pieces when companies walk away from running the services they had bid for and been awarded.

Nor, at a time when we really need to be looking at regionalisation of specialities to improve clinical outcomes. does it do much to help with harmonisation of service planning, when those services are further fragmented with lots of different organisations buying up different parts of the NHS.

You might feel happy with the NHS being run as what amounts to a franchise; I am not, and none of the media outlets - with the exception of the print media -have made much effort to cover this.

The BBCs coverage in particular has been slight, and there is more than a suspicion that they are afraid to offer to robust a challenge for fear of an unfavourable funding settlement from the Government. Public funding in this instance is a 2-edged sword.

[jno]

but LG, the tea ladies are definitely leftwing.

A friend of mine had cause to spend a couple of hours in their Millbank studios before the last election and was astonished at how pro-Tory they all were - jeering whenever Brown appeared on screen and cheering Cameron. But people persist in their opinion that the whole place is run by the North Koreans.

[Wharton]

Scotland had the foresight to have the NHS devolved from Westminster.

[Gromit]

You do not seem to understand what unbiased means.

The BBC reports the news. If privatisation of the NHS is in the news it will report on it. If it is not in the news, it will ignore it. The BBC is not the Governments opposition, the Labour Party are. If privatisation of the NHS is an issue then Labour should bring it to the top of the news agena. They won't because Labour enthusiastically push privatisation itself when it was in power.

[youngmafbog]

I'm no fan of the BBC, but I am not sure what you want them to do? Are you seriously expecting them to be politically motivated?

Although many of us think they are to the left it is generally because of the luvvies they employ.

Perhaps it is not such a big story as you make out?

[ludwig]

People on the right think the BBC is biased towards the left, and people on the left think the BBC is biased towards the right.

Their evidence for this seems to be largely that the BBC doesn't spend it's whole time spouting propaganda for whichever side the person complaining supports.

It's all a bit boring.

[anotheoldgit]

Anyone who believes that the BBC do not show left-wing bias, obviously doesn't watch Question Time on a Thursday night.

[LazyGun]

Well the panel that is chosen each week to appear on QT is balanced, it seems to me. The coalition often have 2 representatives on the panel. Mr. Farage has been one of their most frequent guests. Other contributors, such as Melanie Phillips or Peter Hitchins can hardly be described as left wing.

Dimblebot himself seems fairly neutral, also, doing the job that a chair should do - probing answers given, offering previous opinions made.

As for the audience - You tend to see bias when those views or opinions you agree with are being challenged. The BBC say that the audience is carefully chosen to represent the views in the area in which the show is being filmed, and that certainly seems about right to me, based upon what I have seen. And James Delingpole and Mr. Farage themselves have both made the point that they feel the audience selection process is fair and representative.