A BBC SERÁ PARCIAL?
Todos os defensores irredutíveis da BBC como exemplo de seriedade informativa devem ler o artigo publicado esta semana na revista The Spectator em que se defende a tese de que a BBC desde há muito favorece de forma clara a esquerda. A análise é curiosa e o método devia ser aplicado em Portugal. Excerto: A group of researchers at Cchange, the Tory pressure group, devised this test. And it works. First of all go to the website of the Daily Telegraph — www.telegraph.co.uk — and study a range of political stories. Note the way they are covered, the experts who are quoted and the overall slant. You won’t be surprised by what you find. The Telegraph is the great broadsheet of the British Right, read by colonels and company directors of the more traditional kind.
Now visit the Guardian’s website —www.guardian.co.uk — to see the same stories covered from a very different ideological perspective. Again the results are predictable. The term ‘Guardian reader’ is a synonym for left-winger, and many social workers and university lecturers wear the label with pride.
Finally click on to the BBC’s excellent site, www.bbc.co.uk. It is a cornucopia of information. Not only can you get up-to-date news but it’s also possible to read transcripts of certain bulletins and political programmes and even to watch past editions online.
One might expect the BBC, with its compulsory levy and statutory duty of impartiality, to have none of the political bias of the other two sites. All programmes should be strictly neutral — but they’re not. At the very least it would be reasonable to expect a balance of biases. If one edition of Panorama denounces greedy employers for exploiting downtrodden workers, then surely another will point out that small businesses are drowning in over-regulation and increasingly onerous employment legislation. Not a bit of it. The fact is that, on issue after issue, the BBC broadcasts the views of the Guardian and its readers as if they were gospel. This takes place across a range of programmes. As goes the Left, so goes the BBC.
Todos os defensores irredutíveis da BBC como exemplo de seriedade informativa devem ler o artigo publicado esta semana na revista The Spectator em que se defende a tese de que a BBC desde há muito favorece de forma clara a esquerda. A análise é curiosa e o método devia ser aplicado em Portugal. Excerto: A group of researchers at Cchange, the Tory pressure group, devised this test. And it works. First of all go to the website of the Daily Telegraph — www.telegraph.co.uk — and study a range of political stories. Note the way they are covered, the experts who are quoted and the overall slant. You won’t be surprised by what you find. The Telegraph is the great broadsheet of the British Right, read by colonels and company directors of the more traditional kind.
Now visit the Guardian’s website —www.guardian.co.uk — to see the same stories covered from a very different ideological perspective. Again the results are predictable. The term ‘Guardian reader’ is a synonym for left-winger, and many social workers and university lecturers wear the label with pride.
Finally click on to the BBC’s excellent site, www.bbc.co.uk. It is a cornucopia of information. Not only can you get up-to-date news but it’s also possible to read transcripts of certain bulletins and political programmes and even to watch past editions online.
One might expect the BBC, with its compulsory levy and statutory duty of impartiality, to have none of the political bias of the other two sites. All programmes should be strictly neutral — but they’re not. At the very least it would be reasonable to expect a balance of biases. If one edition of Panorama denounces greedy employers for exploiting downtrodden workers, then surely another will point out that small businesses are drowning in over-regulation and increasingly onerous employment legislation. Not a bit of it. The fact is that, on issue after issue, the BBC broadcasts the views of the Guardian and its readers as if they were gospel. This takes place across a range of programmes. As goes the Left, so goes the BBC.
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