"I am unable to accept the idea that I should be an obedient subject of a gang of corrupt, unprincipled thugs who pontificate about freedom while enslaving the population" John Pugsley
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"I am unable to accept the idea that I should be an obedient subject of a gang of corrupt, unprincipled thugs who pontificate about freedom while enslaving the population" John Pugsley |
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Left behind: the democratization of the media BBC programmes 'heavily biased in favour of
EU BBC 'Bias' Row: Editor Steps Down Yes, BBC was biased against Forsyth admits, ex-Today
man
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Left behind: the democratization of the media The Internet and talk radio have brought with their rise a new kind of media democracy, where privilege and education do not make kings. For the past decade, a growing number of citizens have tuned in to Rush Limbaugh or logged on to the Drudge Report for their news. And the left doesn't like it one bit. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the information superhighway can help shape global values. That is why China now bars minors from Internet cafes and forces cafes to close by midnight, as well as prohibiting their location within 124 feet of schools. China's leaders are afraid that young people will find new ideas on the Internet about democracy and human rights and begin agitating for change. The American left can't restrict Internet usage or ban talk radio, so it de-legitimizes these news sources. Ripping alternative news sources as illegitimate is the left's only remaining option -- it cannot compete with the right wing in the new media. Not that the left hasn't tried. Mario Cuomo attempted to parlay his political fame into a talk-radio gig; he was so badly received that his show was pulled off the air. Jerry Brown met with the same fate, as did Alan Dershowitz. Jim Hightower, a self-described progressive populist, passed through the talk-radio world without notice. On the 'Net, liberal failure has been just as complete. While Matt Drudge's Web site receives nearly 5 million hits per day, liberal news sites are virtually non-existent. Salon.com is going the way of the dinosaurs, and Slate.com is a mere facade. The only liberal Web sites that get any hits are established television channels like BBC, CNN and ABC News. There are no major leftist commentary sites to compete with conservative monsters like Freerepublic.com and lucianne.com, where normal news followers can post their opinions on the story du jour. The left has been left behind on the Web. It's the inability to compete that has the liberals so angry. They don't understand why people won't listen to elite intelligentsia dither about politics but gladly tune in to hosts like Sean Hannity, a former construction worker with no college degree. They rant and rave over the newest phenomenon -- weblogs, or bloggers, where ordinary folks comment on the news in real time, allowing true Rousseau-ian democracy to flourish. Why, they ask, do more people visit libertarian/conservative bloggers Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds than the soon-to-be-extinct American Prospect blogger, TAPPED? Here's the answer: The left cannot survive criticism. It is easy for liberals to air their views when the audience cannot challenge them. Network news is a perfect example -- when Peter Jennings sympathizes with Palestinian suicide bombers, viewers can kick their televisions and scream at Jennings, but Jennings cannot hear them. If Jennings had a talk show, though, he'd have to deal with the views of his audience. Print media is similar. Maureen Dowd can write nasty things about President Bush but would be hard pressed to respond to a reader's challenge. Since it can't compete, the left turns to degrading the opposition. NBC's Lisa Meyers attributes the success of conservative talk-radio hosts to their portrayal of the world as "black and white -- and revolving around them." The left demonizes Rush Limbaugh, calling him an extremist and hoping that his popularity will diminish. His audience numbers continue to climb. They call Matt Drudge a muckraker and a yellow journalist. His hit count continues to rise. At universities, professors and faculty are scared to death of the Internet, since it provides a challenge to their monopoly over student minds. Take, for example, the intellectuals' opposition to Daniel Pipes' campus-watch.org, a site where anti-Israel professorial bias is revealed and examined. University of Chicago historian Rashid Khalidi derides the Web site as "slimy" and "McCarthyite." "(T)hey're simply trying to intimidate people by creating a witch-hunt atmosphere," accuses Professor Joel Beinin of Stanford. "These are guys on the lunatic fringe." Apparently, it's all right for professors to brainwash students in the privacy of their classrooms, but when their bias is revealed, it's a witch hunt. The left will continue in its attempt to tear down the alternative media that the right has championed. If it can't control or compete, it wishes to destroy. But the tide has turned toward true democratization of the media. The growth of the Internet and talk radio has the left scared and on the run. And short of China-like restrictions, the trend will continue unabated.
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BBC programmes 'heavily biased in favour of
EU' A LEADING Eurosceptic published a report yesterday allegedly proving that the BBC is biased in favour of Brussels. The survey, conducted by an independent media monitoring company, claimed that the BBC's Today programme was twice as likely to feature pro-Europeans as Eurosceptics. It also said that there were "clear grounds for concern" in the programme's handling of European issues. The BBC has disputed the methodology used to compile the report. But Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a Tory, said it proved that the BBC was "endemically biased in favour of the euro". The Eurosceptic peer runs a think tank called Global Britain which commissioned the report from Minotaur Media Tracking. Minotaur was asked to examine whether Today provided balanced coverage of matters relating to the European Union and it based its findings on an analysis of 54 editions of the programme, broadcast between May 22 and July 21. During this time Today featured 87 pro-European speakers (defined as those in favour of joining the euro or greater EU integration) and 34 Eurosceptic ones (defined as those against euro entry in the foreseeable future or further EU integration). The report concluded: "Balance in journalism is not achieved through simplistic counting of the pros and antis in a debate. But, given the controversial nature of the issues being discussed on Europe, Minotaur finds the breakdown of the number of speakers over the period as a whole hard to explain or understand." The report also said the timing of some interviews showed a lack of balance. "Some items giving the Eurosceptic perspective were broadcast early in the programme, while the countervailing interviews or treatments came at peak time." On June 3, three interviews highlighting the danger to British investment from not joining the euro were broadcast between 7am and 9am, "while an important balancing perspective, from a Japanese analyst who contended that many more important factors . . . were in play, went out only in the business news at 6.17am". Lord Pearson, who had an on-air row with Today presenter James Naughtie this week about the programme's alleged bias, sent the report to Sir Christopher Bland, the BBC's chairman, in September. He released it yesterday because he still has not received a substantive reply. In a statement, Stephen Mitchell, the BBC's head of radio news, said: "Lord Pearson's new report is a weighty tome and includes some broad general points and some detailed criticisms. We are now in the process of setting up a fresh meeting with him to discuss it." |
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BBC 'Bias' Row: Editor Steps Down Rod Liddle, editor of BBC Radio's current affairs flagship Today, has stepped down from the post following a row in which he was accused of political bias. Liddle, like several other prominent BBC journalists, also writes a newspaper column - in his case The Guardian. Last week, following the Countryside Alliance March in London, Liddle wrote an article criticising elements of the Alliance, and suggested that its supporters, "the public schools that laid on coaches; the fusty, belch-filled dining rooms of the London clubs that opened their doors, for the first time, to the protesters; the Prince of Wales and, of course, Camilla," would remind many why they had voted Labour. The Countryside Alliance's supporters were quick to act. Daily Telegraph accused Liddle of "the most blatant bias, animus, and even party allegiance, while running an important news programme for the corporation whose charter insists on the absence of all three." The Telegraph complained that Liddle's alleged bias meant that the Alliance's march - which attracted over 400,000 supporters, the most ever recorded in Britain - received no news coverage on Today the following Monday. The Telegraph went on to say that if Liddle had ignored a march of similar size organised by trade unions or members of an ethnic minority, he would have been "rightly" sacked. The BBC, which is publicly funded, is obliged to present news impartially. In recent months, it has reined in correspondents who have written controversial op-eds for newspapers, and in March it revised its guidelines for staff, warning that "Our audiences need to be confident that the outside activities of our programme makers or presenters do not undermine the BBC's impartiality." Liddle joined the UK Labour Party in 1983 and was a speechwriter for the party until 1987. In recent years, however, he has scrupulously avoided party allegiances, and has taken positions on both sides of the political divide in his Guardian column. In 2001, it was rumoured that he was listed as a potential editor of the conservative magazine The Spectator (incidentially the house organ of the Countryside Alliance's huntin', shootin' and fishin' branch). He had been Today's editor since 1998. In his time in the job he had brought listener figures up to around 7 million each week: An all time record for the institution. Nevertheless, the BBC decided that his article for the Guardian was unacceptable. In a statement, the corporation said that the article "did not square" with the BBC's obligation "to be impartial and to be seen to be impartial." Mark Damazer, deputy director of news at the BBC, wrote to the Guardian to quash speculation that Liddle was sacked because of the Telegraph's complaints. The BBC had told Liddle that his article was "out of kilter" with corporation policy on the day it was published - that is, before the Telegraph picked up on it. Damazer also claimed previous articles Liddle had written for the Guardian had been vetted by the corporation, although the Countryside Alliance one slipped through the net, "as a result of a genuine error." Liddle is reported to have chosen his Guardian column over the Today job. He will continue to work for the BBC as a presenter. The BBC's media correspondent Nick Higham speculates that Liddle's scalp will act to deter other broadcasters from falling short of its guidelines in their extracurricular activities. "There are plenty of other BBC journalists who write for the papers," he writes, "and who are aware of the tension between newspaper editors' demands for trenchant views, trenchantly expressed and the BBC's requirement that personal opinions be kept firmly in the background." Sources: BBC; Media Guardian; Daily Telegraph |
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Yes, BBC was biased against Forsyth admits, ex-Today
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