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January 25, 2016

Comments

Dave Timoney

You could take this further (go on, let's) and note that the BBC's choice of the personality trope reveals not only a deference to the VSPs, but a profoundly monarchical bent. Their hosting of SPOTY (and anxiety over Tyson Fury) is of a piece with their indulgence of the Royal Family and their "courtier" approach to political coverage.

redpesto

Frankly, that 'personality of the market' line sounds like pure Chris Morris (see Collaterlie Sisters and the 'Currency Kidney')

Peter Smith

Surely you fall into the same trap by assigning the BBC one personality. Sure there is a culture, but underneath it is a collection of thousands of independent minds. No one person could approve or direct every word broadcast or guest chosen, so you can find examples of whatever biases you would like to project on it, just as you could the NHS or Politicians or Estate Agents.

Adrian D.

I can find nothing to disagree with in your post - with the BBC 'flagship' Today programme set up almost perfectly to entrench this. Much of the first half hour of any day is taken up with a series of bods from Sumsuch Asset Management making their sage predictions and framing everything from tax to industrial relations in their neoliberal context.

As an aside this follows another bastion of BBC ideological/institutional bias - Farming Today whose concentration on smaller, mostly family owned, enterprises gives a wholly misleading impression of the way most of our food is produced these days.

Churm Rincewind

I can't quite see that one passing remark in one Radio Four programme amounts to any sort of evidence that the BBC is "helping to shore up the power and prestige of the ruling class" and that "that’s a profoundly politically biased position".

The BBC has always made the point that it aims to show no political bias ASSESSED ACROSS THE RANGE OF ITS OUTPUT.

A single remark is no proof of bias, and to argue otherwise is paranoid in the extreme.

TickyW

@Churm

The BBC fails even in that modest aim.

Churm Rincewind

@TickyW

And your evidence for that assertion would be - what?

TickyW

@Churm

It's the BBC making the assertion of being unbiased accross its output range. You should really ask the BBC for evidence to support that assertion.

In the meantme, I can indicate to you why I believe the BBC fails in its claim to be unbiassed.

Right wing commentators / Promoters of bourgouise values
1. Nick Robinson;
2. John Pienaar;
3. John Humphries;
4. Martha Kearney;
5. The Andrew Marr Show,
6. The Archers (promoting a twee middle class ideal)

Left wing commentators.
1. Er;
2. That's it

Tonybirte

@Churm

This.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/breadth_opinion/content_analysis.pdf

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