BBC Bias

For those who don’t think there is a systemic media bias (less so in NZ I have to say than the US and UK), this leaked story of a BBC “impartiality summit” gives food for thought. Highlights:

* Executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran
* Would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity.
* BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
* Was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.
* Political pundit Andrew Marr said: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’
* Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to ‘correct’, it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it ‘no moral weight’.
* One staffer told how he once wore Union Jack cufflinks to work but was rebuked with: ‘You can’t do that, that’s like the National Front!’

Hat Tip: Iain Dale