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I'm no fan of the British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc), and neither am I a conspiracy theorist about its political leanings. I have detected, however, on previous occasions — like others — a noticable bias in its coverage of particular events.

Which is what makes this response to accusations of bias from the Director of News at the BBC, Helen Boaden, interesting.

Both Andrew Marr and Jeff Randall have made comments about the bbc being biased, and both have been dismissed by Roaden for basing their conclusion "on anecdote and attitude rather than evidence". She then bases, in part, her own belief that the bbc is not biased on, erm, anecdote and attitude as follows:

When I first joined the BBC I asked a very experienced and subtle journalist what was meant by BBC impartiality. "It means we don't take sides," he said. "We don't take sides either explicitly or implicitly. We test all opinion toughly but fairly and we let the audience make up their own minds."

Interesting stuff. But what's really interesting are the areas in which Boaden suggests bias:

According to the Mail on Sunday, and other recent press reports, we have admitted that we are an organisation of trendy, left-leaning liberals who are anti-American, biased against Christianity, in favour of multiculturalism, and staffed by people who wouldn't know an unbiased fact if it hit them on the head.

Now, I'm happy to accept this isn't an exhaustive list of potential bbc biases, but there does seem to be one big one missing, doesn't there?

Tags — Newspapers