Stick around
As some of you may have noticed, BBC World Affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds, with whom I had a series of exchanges the other day on Biased-BBC, has contributed a comment to the previous post about Chavez, Bush, and embarrassment. I sincerely hope he returns and becomes a regular reader and contributor to the comments. Sites such as this run the danger of becoming little more than echo chambers of agreement. TAE will, I think, benefit from someone with an instictively different point of view of the BBC, and an insider is all the better. (Someone, that is, who is not named anonymous and whose critical vocabulary consists of more than just "moron".) And, naturally, it is nice to know that criticism aimed at the BBC is actually reaching it.
Now, if only I could get Emily Bell's attention....
Now, if only I could get Emily Bell's attention....
2 Comments:
Send Emily some Chianti and some of that funny Italian bread stuff and call her darling....works for Yabba Yabba Brown!
Lets not kid ourselves. Paul knows very well of the bias at the BBC. He just can't say it in public without threatening his job. If I worked in a room full of priests chances are the majority believe in God. If I work in a room full of city bankers, chances are the majority are in favour of capitalism. If I work in a room full of BBC journalists, chances are the majority are left wing. The only problem the BBC has is that it has a charter that requires it to be balanced. Unlike the Guardian (say) or the Teachers Union.
Remember, this is the company that had Polly Toynbee as their flagship social affairs editor for more years than you can count. And people then used to tell me that Toynbee was unbiased. Yes - really.
Paul knows this. He works in the company. The question he tries to address is not whether the people working in BBC journalism are left-wing, but whether this can be found from their work.
This is very difficult ground for Paul. He will not stick with this.
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