Media Bias at the BBC Guest Column | By Peter C Glover | December 11, 2008 http://www.aim.org/guest-column/print/media-bias-at-the-bbc/ There is a line in Michael Mann's 1999 film The Insider that resonates with me as a long-time analyst of the news media. It is where the CBS 60 Minutes news bosses broadcast a story they knew to be less than true. The line comes where CBS News is, as a result, accused of "betraying the legacy of Ed Murrow," the iconic CBS broadcaster whose ethics represent, for many, the epitome of 'tell-it-as-is' journalistic integrity. Where just a few decades ago breaks with the Murrow standard were the exception, today they appear increasingly the norm. And, most glaringly, by a twist of fate, at the very BBC London studios from where Murrow delivered his historic war-time broadcasts. Complaints of BBC bias are nothing new. Entire websites are devoted to cataloguing it. Recently external and internal reports and not a few books have all identified the BBC's climate of liberal bias. But it's the BBC and national media's pre-disposition toward one key element of bias¯its predilection for fearmongering¯that is my concern here. A June IPSOS/Mori poll for The Observer revealed that 60 percent of Brits aren't buying the BBC and mass media man-made global warming line, a line largely unquestioned by Britain's army of left-leaning journalists. Given the British media's ubiquitous global warming hysteria the poll should come as a shock. But, in May 2006, a Trust in the Media poll showed that less than half of Brits actually trust the British media to tell the truth at all. A further finding in the same poll revealed that 77 percent of us now check several news sources, especially on the Internet. And it is there that many Brits will have discovered a curious key fact¯one largely unreported by the British mass media¯that 'global' warming actually stopped in 1998, a full ten years ago, casting doubt on the carbon-temperature link and anthropogenic warming theory. Even BBC weatherman John Kettley has gone on record acknowledging GW "has stalled." So why does this simple fact continue to go unreported in the UK? And why is the media's climate alarmism so relentless, when it is clearly not believed? Could it be that GW alarmism is just the latest in a long line of popular science/media-induced alarmism, all of which have come to nothing? In March 2005 the BBC news announced that violent crime was "spiraling." While BBC news editors read it that way, the two main sources for recording crime statistics¯the police and the British Crime Survey (BCS) ¯interpreted them quite differently. The police and BCS pointed to a steady decline in the crime statistics in the UK since 1998 while the BBC had them rising during that same period. In January 2003, the BBC announced, "Smallpox kills about 30% of those infected. There is no cure, but there is a vaccine. If given before exposure, the vaccine will prevent the disease from appearing. But is there enough for everyone?" The reality? Lots of vaccine sold. No smallpox epidemic. The public received its alarmist shot. The debunking story barely got covered. Numerous other similar BBC warnings and outcomes could be mentioned: tuberculosis, measles, a whole array of killer flus, killer bees, SARs and MMR jabs for children (still no evidence that MMR does anything other than good) and an alleged pandemic spread by Bird flu. "Bird flu could kill your cat" (BBC, 1 March 2006) after a single cat became infected in Germany. The very same day the BBC ran, "Cancer chemicals found in drink cans." Though the Foods Standards Agency quickly put this last BBC 'fear' into perspective, pointing out the reality that: "The levels found are no cause for concern," the public fear factor had received its almost daily dose. As usual the problem is that while most remember the lurid headline; few remember the mostly unreported debunking reports. Why pick on the BBC? Surely other British broadcasters and journalists are just as culpable? True enough. But most have the excuse they are independently funded and we can always turn them off. But the increasingly anachronistic licence 'tax'¯just how is an organization cited by its own reports as inherently biased providing a unique public service? ¯we Brits are constrained to fund the BBC's litany of alarmist propaganda. A globetrotting world energy analyst and U.S. TV pundit colleague of mine samples more global TV news than most of us. He has no qualms in citing the BBC as "the most alarmist broadcaster in the world." One can only marvel at what continues to prevent dire prognostications predicted via BSE, mad cows, listeria, E coli, salmonella poisoning, GM crops, the Y2K bug, the return of TB, asbestos, nuclear holocaust, HIV/AIDS and, of course, the daddy of them all, anthropogenic warming¯seemingly, down to our refusal to adopt stone age living and prevent cow flatulence. It was Mark Twain who noted: "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact." What would Twain make of a mass news media that, along with popular science, has apparently rejected CSI's Gil Grissom adage to: "follow the evidence?" As a result alleged 'experts,' who cannot tell us with any degree of certainty what weather to expect in a few days time, feel entirely justified in pretending they can predict weather patterns 50 to 100 years hence. While the average in-house hack perceives politicians as fair game for public humiliation and verbal crucifixion, it seems even the wildest speculations of modern science simply get a free pass. If the penny were to drop that scientists are not gods, it finally ruptures the unholy alliance of popular science theory and mass media alarmism that all too often ends up costing us the earth rather than saving it. Of course, 'end is nigh' doomsayers have been a feature of every generation. It is simply that today they have become more sophisticated. They have bought into prophetic hyperbole, apocalyptic headlines and state-of-the-art 'shock tactics' computer graphics that would work for a Stephen King novel. And they present gripping PowerPoint science-fiction presentations showing a polar bear (often the same one) floating about on an ice floe, chunks of ice falling into the sea and all concocted by a leading science educationalist who used to be the 'next-president-of-the-United-States.' "Billions could die" is the message. Kids get nightmares and sincere, but ignorant green activists, who know nothing about real science (and think CO2 is a pollutant ¯which it isn't), take to the streets to rattle tins demanding we pony up our hard-earned cash to save 'the environment.' Whose environment? The media-induced paranoia runs deep and, in the rush, the tiny, tiny but oh-so relevant journalistic cop-outs may, could and might get overlooked. Take away the qualifiers and countless news editors, journalists and science researchers would soon be left pursuing gainful employment at Tesco or Walmart. One wonders whatever happened to actual science and real news and genuine public debate on issues. Still I suppose it is only natural in an age of unprecedented global media reach that self-promoting purveyors of modern snake-oil (and their 'cure alls') and the entrepreneurs that manufacture the (media) bandwagons, should gravitate, respectively, to the modern science research lab and to the mass media newsroom. If you've ever wondered why we don't see so many 'end is nigh' placards in our high streets these days, now you know. They've been put out of a job by bespectacled boffins and science-fiction writers. For the record, I'm a freelance journalist and self-employed. I don't have to play by the mass media's rules. I can sit at home and write whatever I want, including the unfettered, if often more prosaic, truth. Not that much of the mass media actually wants to print or broadcast it. Now don't get me wrong. I am not alone in this. There are many decent journalists about inside mass media newsrooms. And may of them know all this¯and not a few would like to say so more openly (see: former BBC editor Robin Aitken's Can We Trust The BBC? whistle-blowing book). That's because they fully recognise the politically-correct, left-leaning editorial regimes that require inherent leftwing bias that requires them to spew forth this alarmist mush which robs the profession of its integrity. Robin Aitken's book references John Lloyd's What The Media are Doing to Our Politics in which Lloyd accuses journalists of "living in a parallel universe" where "what they report bears little resemblance to the real world." Watching the 6 o'clock news these days it is easy to see where he is coming from. Aitken informs us that the BBC is a veritable army of scribes being the world's biggest employer of journalists. And, for good measure, that: "93 percent of us use at least one BBC service every week." Given the news fare, it is a wonder our society is not sicker than it undoubtedly is. As Aitken warns, "It is essential that people have a choice. In Britain, what we currently have is one dominant, national broadcaster, funded by taxation, which proclaims itself impartial but in reality is not." Listening to impartial BBC news reports I have learned that the world's leading terrorist organization and public enemy no 1 respectively (America and George W. Bush) sponsor torture techniques at Guantanamo Bay. Now I for one have no idea what goes on at Gitmo. But I doubt that Truth is being tortured and abused quite so systematically as it is in many contemporary BBC and national news reports. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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