“Hackgate” and bias at the BBC

A few weeks ago Stephen Glover, the media commentator, made a convincing case that BBC and the Guardian were involved in the failed plot to unseat Brown.  Today he returns to these two organisations in relation to “Hackgate”:

For 48 hours it dominated the Corporation's airwaves, and increasingly horrendous events in Afghanistan were relegated into second place.

The first interesting point about this story is that it was not the BBC's. The Guardian newspaper began running it on its website late last Wednesday afternoon, and cleared countless pages on Thursday, and again on Friday.

The second interesting point is that BBC news bulletins on Wednesday evening had been primed, as had BBC2's Newsnight, which went nuclear.

They had had several hours to prepare the story because Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, had alerted Helen Boaden, head of BBC News, earlier in the day.

Clearly there is a bias at the BBC.  As examples, you only have to watch Marr on Sunday (a subject I have discussed many times) or read Nick Robinson’s or Robert Peston’s blog postings to appreciate this.

Glover motors on:

Day after day, week after week, the BBC adopts the Guardian's Leftist preoccupations and prejudices. The relatively low-selling newspaper serves as the Corporation's brain, and many of the progressive causes it promulgates are taken up by the BBC with its far wider reach.

In an article last weekend Peter Sissons, until recently a newsreader on the BBC, revealed how a couple of months ago he was instructed by a BBC producer not to ask Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, why the Queen had not been invited to the 65th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. The reason given was that it was a Daily Mail campaign.

Then we move to Andy Coulson:

I am no great admirer of Mr Coulson, and question the Tory leader's wisdom in appointing a former 'red-top' editor in the first place.

All the same, none of the Guardian's hysterical coverage took us one inch closer to establishing that Mr Coulson knew about mobile phone hacking when he was editor of the News Of The World.

Glover makes a fair point and on the wider issue:

What matters is that the public-funded organisation, with its enormous and, in some areas, near monopolistic power, should embrace a relatively narrow set of values which belong to Guardian executives and readers rather than the general population.

With the commercial sector weakened by the recession there is little that can be done to counter this bias in the short-term.  Moreover, Cameron will have more pressing priorities than to tackle the BBC’s power when he becomes PM, at least in the first term.

The culture of the BBC will not change overnight even if changes are made to the management personnel or the structures of the organisation.  However, Cameron could start by making the BBC Trust more robust and replace one of Brown’s buddies as its Chairman.