BBC Impartiality: Myth and Reality

The BBC bias argument is the proverbial fish in a barrel shoot.  A five-year old could make the case and give Jeremy Paxman a run for his money.  We could go on forever and ever and ever and ever with the examples.  Every day, almost, brings a new outrage in which some presenter or other flagrantly reveals that his own private political and social biases would not be out of place at an editorial meeting of Pravda, or paradoxically, at a board meeting of Dragons' Den.  The bias is an eclectic mix of Leftism, cringy plastic commercialism and metropolitanism. 

But the basic problem with the ‘bias’ complaint is that it reflects a naïve trust in institutions that is no longer warranted.  It's a bit like a grown-up lodging an earnest complaint concerning boyhood lies about Santa Claus.  It’s too late.  We're not in the 1940s anymore.  The cat is out of the bag.  It's clear that the BBC fails to be unbiased not because it wants to be biased, but because - in common with all other media organisations - it can't be any other.  The BBC is just as partial and dishonest as everybody else.  Thus, it’s not enough to complain about so-called ‘BBC bias’.  That's tilting at windmills.  The BBC itself exists on the basis of a false prospectus, and reforming it will only make matters worse, even if the reforms are thought-through and well-intentioned.  And anyway, reform has been tried before and whenever it has been tried, there have always been assurances that bias would be tackled and minimised and standards would improve.  It never happens because it can't.  The BBC must go.

Nevertheless, let's look more closely at the bias issue.  It is an issue, and bias is at the centre of our concerns, but our approach to the problem is distinct.  We offer a more subtle (and, we would like to think, more sophisticated) argument, which goes like this:

1. First, the Platonic objective of impartiality is impossible.  It is specified in the BBC's public mission, but it is idealistic and the BBC manifestly fails to achieve it.  The BBC is not an elite media.  It is biased and pervasively dishonest, like all media organisations are.  Better to acknowledge this and deal with reality than carry on pretending that Britain can somehow have a noble broadcasting aristocracy that is above partiality and partisanship.  We imagine even the Queen sometimes struggles to remain impartial, even though that is her duty.  That she manages to give even just an appearance of impartiality at all is probably down to the fact that little is expected of her in terms of controversial decision-making.  The BBC's very existence is predicated on its claim to impartiality, or at least a claim that it aspires to the ideal: it's a broadcasting ethic that runs through the entire organisation, yet it's a giant, bare-faced Big Lie.  Enough!  Arguments and complaints about bias are loved by the BBC because they divert attention to more useless reform and engagement with their complaints process, and away from the real solution: The inexorable logic is for abolition of the BBC.

2. A lot of what people think is BBC bias actually strictly isn’t.  First, there’s the simple Devil’s advocate duty that every journalist arguably has.  Related to this, it's perfectly legitimate for BBC journalists and broadcasters to want to hold the attention of viewers and listeners with a big amount of aggression and controversy.  Jeremy Paxman's interviews were both illuminating and entertaining and he frequently played Devils' advocate in order to challenge his guests.

3. There’s also the need for functional biases in maintaining balance.  For example, if a defender of the tobacco industry goes on Newsnight to dispute the causes of lung cancer, you’d expect the Newsnight interviewer to give him quite a hard time - not because the Newsnight interviewer disagrees with him necessarily, but because of a need for balance in the debate and to reflect wider concerns in society.  

4. The problem however with functional biases is how you decide to be balanced, which in turn is a subjective decision - and not always a conscious decision, sometimes more a result of an institutional culture.  This is where we come to the root of what we think is the real problem with the BBC's so-called 'bias', which is mostly not a 'bias problem' at all, but more a problem of how the BBC institutionally decides to be 'balanced'.  The BBC is still imbued in a Reithian paternalistic mindset.  Its serious journalists believe that part of their duty is to "educate, inform..." the viewing and listening public. That's all well and good, but the problem is that a kindly, detached, cultured sort of paternalism can easily become a stifling, suffocating maternalism.  Aunty knows best!  Educating and informing the public can easily become "improving and indoctrinating" the public in whatever the BBC as an institutional culture thinks is the 'right' set of views, which in the case of the BBC and the wider Establishment will normally be whatever is politically-correct.  This is a classic Actonite slippage: you start with the best of intentions, and before you know it, you end up with a Monster on your hands.  

To amplify the point, let's see if we can find a recent example of 'BBC maternalism' in action:

"They were sieg heiling, they were unfurling pictures of Hitler. They were very professional in their imagery and what they produced."

King's College's Rajan Basra talks about the now proscribed group National Action.@rajanbasra | #newsnight pic.twitter.com/yKIDmuOQLn

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) August 17, 2018

Aunty Beeb, imbued with Leftists and an Aunty Knows Best attitude, assumes that the majority of the rest of the country are Leftists too, and thinks that 'balance' means presenting the 'right' sort of opinions: in this case, Hitler and [neo-]Nazism are 'evil'.  That is not to deny that Newsnight features such as the above are the result of BBC bias in and of itself - they are - nor is it to deny that the bias is deliberate propaganda - it's that too - but we think the following comment from Twitter is closer to the mark in explaining the Left's motivations:

Hard to escape the conclusion that many in the Western left have declared a self-flattering war on neo-Nazism precisely as a distraction from the real problems facing Western society today, to which they have no answers, and are uncomfortable even with the questions - B O'Neil

— Stewart McOwan (@SLMcOwan) August 18, 2018

Mr McOwan hits the nail on the head, so to speak: Newsnight, for instance, are well-aware of the problems in British society, especially in England, and have (we must say, to their credit) run a series of features on the social issues of northern England.  These features are worth watching - they demonstrate poignantly the potential of the BBC when it gives the Leftist/PC agenda a rest - but it is too little too late.  If Reithian paternalism has been corrupted into maternalism, this is only due to wider changes in society and a broader Establishment agenda.  The BBC clearly has an overriding agenda against the white British.  It is an enemy bureaucracy and must be stopped.

5. We think balance is a more realistic goal than impartiality, but the BBC can't even achieve this.  This is partly because the goals of impartiality and balance are often in practical conflict and are sometimes paradoxical to each other.  To achieve balance requires the state to get out of broadcasting, while assuring a minimalist regulatory framework within which a plural media can function.

6. An additional point is that the corruption of BBC paternalism into maternalism has affected and influenced the British media generally.  As an example, consider the following clips from the commercial radio station, LBC, in which the caller raises understandable concerns about an alien minority in British society.  The presenter, Tom Swarbrick, also works for the BBC.  Swarbrick accuses the caller of Islamophobia and proceeds to lecture to him in the manner of a schoolmistress: