Recalibrating the BBC’s scales – Part III

“They want to be able to say that they did not commandeer us, but they know they can trust us not to be really impartial." John Reith, first Director General of the BBC

To cut to the quick, the force that shapes BBC-brand impartiality is political power. Rather than such abstract immeasurables as balance, or moderation, or public opinion, the BBC calibrates its news output to suit the political outlook of those who hold power over it – those supplying the carrots and wielding the sticks.

This shouldn’t surprise us too much. It’s the same with every news organisation. No opinion that truly goes against the grain of Rupert Murdoch’s politics will prevail on Fox or Sky. While op-eds are essential to creating an illusion of balance, they can’t be given so much weight that they buck the overall editorial agenda. Any journalist or editor found consistently off-message will soon find themselves looking for an alternative employer. Rupert himself has admitted as much. While the power set-up at the BBC is obviously more complicated, the controlling effect on content is just as thorough. The BBC can no more bite the hands feeding it than a News International editor can bite Rupert’s hand.

So who does hold power over the BBC? Obviously a key player is the incumbent government. If the BBC hopes to have its broadcasting licence renewed and its licence-fee protected (rather than its assets sold-off and its content molested) it has good reason not to upset the government of the day. Likewise it can’t afford to upset the opposition – they may be its best ally during conflicts with the government. And of course today’s opposition may be tomorrow’s incumbent. If the BBC doesn’t want to sow the seeds of future ‘restructuring’ it has good reason to keep both parties on-side.

Another important player is the rest of the mass media. The BBC’s existence is deeply resented by the corporate sector and its critics are well placed. Its chief crime, oddly, is the high-quality of its output – embarrassing proof of the superiority of public broadcasting. Many powerful people would love to see it broken-up and sold-off, so the whole sector can descend to the same level of commercial dross. One of the sharpest weapons in this ongoing war on the BBC is its mythical left-wing bias. Any attempt by a BBC editor to redress ‘balance’ as understood by News International or DMG Media would be swiftly dealt with (despairing newspaper editorials, floor of the House, ‘and all at the licence payers expense!’ etc.)

At this point, alert readers may be experiencing Déjà Vu. It would appear that the forces that hold power over the BBC coincide perfectly with the sources the BBC would be happy to admit it relies upon to gauge public opinion (as discussed in Part Two.) We can now see a more plausible reason why the BBC relies upon the opinions of Parliament and the corporate media to achieve political balance. Not because those bodies reflect public opinion, but because it feels answerable to them, and is wary of displeasing them. They have the ability to make life very difficult for the corporation – and they have a long track record of doing just that.

You can account for most anomalies in BBC balance if you keep these two external influences in mind. For example, why is the BBC so deferential towards the President of the United States? Obama’s recent visit was treated like the second coming. As when any epoch-making event occurs (like Westerners dying in a bomb attack or the birth of a royal baby) BBC news homepage switched to ‘mega-consequence’ format. Fonts became huge; images stretched to dominate the whole screen, softly scrolling through key moments of glorious day; between bouts of fainting, flutter-eyed teenaged onlookers were given the chance to voice their honeyed adoration, ‘Hail to the Chief!’

I can't think of another world leader who would be accorded such reverence. I’m sure the BBC could source teenagers who find Angela Merkel wonderful and inspirational, and would be delighted to describe their feelings. But such comments would not be an appropriate backdrop for the visit of a mere German leader.


While many Britons do have special affection for the US, the same cannot be said for its Commander in Chief. Nixon? Ford? Carter? Reagan? Bush Sn? Clinton? Bush Jr?(!!) Do these names make British hearts swell? They certainly conjure strong emotions – but uniform admiration? In orchestrating such sycophancy the BBC is actually kow-towing to the British political establishment, which itself feels an obligation to kow-tow the President of the US. The BBC is helping the British establishment top-up the hearts-and-minds element of the ‘special relationship’.

And if that sounds paranoid, well just imagine the reaction if the BBC presented things differently? Can you imagine the hell that would rain down on the BBC if it refused to join-in with the presidential foot kissing? Bye-bye licence – hello Sky. One amusing consequence of the (far from-amusing) prospect of a Trump presidency would be the sight of David Cameron (or his successor) bowing before the Clown in Chief. The BBC would then be in a dreadful knot; desperately trying to keep in step with the government, while also trying to maintain the illusion that it is representing British public opinion (and we know what British people think of Trump – a genuine case of uniform opinion.)

Of course there’s one politician the BBC currently encourages its journalists to vilify, without reserve. Only the most distracted viewer would fail to notice that BBC news detests Jeremy Corbyn, and will miss no opportunity to damage his leadership. At first one might wonder how this fits with the BBC’s need to keep both government and opposition sweet, but in fact it’s an exception that proves the rule. The answer is that BBC news does not see Corbyn as the leader of the opposition. They feel no reason to fear him because they don’t see him as a future leader of the country. They see him as a mere pretender, wasting time until his true Blairite successor deposes him.

This treatment of Corbyn reveals a significant flaw in the BBC’s means of self-calibrating – the problem of employee inertia. As noted in Part One, rather than force neutral journalists to conform to a political agenda, instead the BBC employs journalists who already hold the required opinions; those who defer to existing power structures as naturally as they breathe. However this raises problems when the political landscape itself changes. When the opinions of the population drift, the mind-set of BBC journalists can be left high and dry. Over the past 30 years, to qualify as a ‘safe pairs of hands’ at BBC news required possession of an ingrained sense of political balance ranging from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair. Obviously this is a rather narrow span of the full political spectrum, and I’m not even sure of the left-right orientation. Nevertheless, the BBC has now staffed its newsrooms with journalists and editors whose political beliefs reside somewhere along that political Planck length.

No wonder they didn’t know what to make of Corbyn. Currently, BBC news does not employ a single journalist who wouldn’t wince incredulously at talk of rail nationalisation or the cancellation of Trident – regardless of how popular these policies are becoming with the public. So how do they deal with a leader who proposes such things? They attack him. They join hands with the Tories and the Blairites and the Murdoch press and Guardian ‘liberals’ to smear him and discredit him. And all at the licence-payers expense.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. It’s not what we pay for. If Laura Kuenssberg and Andrew Neil find Jeremy Corbyn’s politics unacceptable it is they who need to be removed from their posts – not Corbyn.

So what do we do? Well it depends who you are. Powerful people like Corbyn and his allies should be kicking up a stink. At present they prefer to pretend it isn’t happening. Presumably their own PR people tell them it’s a non-starter – they’ll just be accused of ‘whining’. But if a Tory shill can stand up in the Commons and paint Kuenssberg as a victim of misogyny then surely it is possible for a Corbynite to stand-up and document examples of her prejudice? And the more her supporters squeal (on both sides of the house, shamefully) the better. This needs to become a live topic. Media bias needs to be pulled out of the closet, and public understanding of the subject finally begin to mature.

As for the rest of us, we should exercise the little power we have. We need to question, complain and criticise – much as those stoics at Medialens have long urged us to. With the BBC we have an unusually strong hand. As viewers, listeners and licence payers we are supposed to be the ones in the driving seat. So the least we can do is take the BBC to task over its most flagrant violations.

Contacting the BBC and its journalists can seem like an uncomfortable and thankless task. The immediate reward is to be ignored or patronised, or receive a robotically generated and logically circular reply, detailing the corporation’s commitment to impartiality. Nevertheless such efforts count. A mass of small voices is a powerful thing, an essential counterbalance to the handful of powerful voices that have bullied the BBC into its current predicament.

And when the robotic reply does arrive, we don’t have to leave it there. Once we recognise unbiased journalism to be a myth, and political balance to be just another form of political judgement, we have no reason to be shut-down by claims of impartiality. We should ask, politely, for clarification: What methods does the BBC employ to maintain its impartiality? How do its journalists and editors know when political balance has been achieved? When it claims to represent public opinion, what sources does it use to gauge public opinion? These are impossible questions to answer without revealing a very different image of the BBC to the one it tries to project. Indeed, your correspondent may well have never considered such contradictions. If you can get a bite at that point perhaps a revealing dialogue can begin.