Bias Fights 'Bias'

I have been amusing myself this week-end by reading some amusingly biased web sites. Amusing that is if you find right-wing nutcases funny. Whether it be intentional or not, I'm not entirely sure. Eitherr they have a very sophisticated sense of irony (somehow the thought of it being sophisticated is really pushing the limits) or they really do believe the lies and distortions they peddle.

Take Biased BBC, for example. Here is a website that likes to pick up on the bias inherent in the BBC. How does it do this?? By picking up on stories that the right feel offensive, but carefully ignoring the stories that have a slight right-wing slant to them. They conveniently forget that Nick Robinson (the current political editor) was a former chairman of the Young Conservatives and takes every opportunity to damage the Labour Government....like the questioning of the 2005 Labour election campaign poster that suggested that the Tories would initiate cuts of £35 billion. Of course, this does not fit with the argument that Biased BBC is trying to convey. They obviously wish the licence fee to be scrapped and the BBC replaced with a commercial channel (because ITV has such fantastic output of course!). This commercial channel would obviously die on its arse and Murdoch would use that to his advantage. Now I have my problems with a state controlled broadcaster, of course, but better that than some of the awfulness over at their commercial rivals. I don't want a channel that bows to the pressure of corporate interests, if I wanted that I would move to America. Essentially, they would wish for an equivalent of Fox News, a channel so devoted to the Bush government it will not criticise it in anyway. Yes, that is what we want....not a state controlled broadcaster, we want a broadcaster that bows to right-wing interests.

The truth of the matter is that Biased BBC and BBCEye, fall into the age old trap that has dogged political argument for some time. The BBC has done much to upset the Labour government over the years and also did much to upset the Conservative government. It has always upset both sides of the argument and that is its job. To indulge in such juvenile claims is really rather counter-productive. All that these sites are doing is fighting perceived bias with more bias. I would have a lot more respect for these sites if they actually exposed the times where the BBC shows bias towards the Tories (like the love for David Cameron over Blair). Somehow, I think they will continue with their rather narrow agenda.