Another Case Of BBC Bias The Loonies Will Ignore

This one goes out to all the loonies who believe that the BBC has some radical left-wing agenda. Buried in the Entertainment section, is an enlightening apology over the BBC's coverage of the Holyrood election. Desperate to boost the arguments for holding on to the Union, the BBC conducted a survey into what the 'top 50' companies in the UK would think if Scotland broke away from the Union. During an interview with Alex Salmond, Jeremy Paxman claimed:

"We spoke to the 25 largest companies in Britain and the 25 largest companies in Scotland and none of them favoured independence".

Interestingly, the BBC has now issued an apology as it turns out that this wasn't exactly the truth. According to the apology on the website:

"Newsnight had not commissioned a formally-conducted poll or opinion survey, but had conducted its own straw poll of the companies concerned (though putting the same questions as had been used in a survey previously commissioned from the polling organisation ORB).

"This was an acceptable way of taking a snapshot of business opinion, and there was no requirement to publish further information about the basis on which it had been arrived at.

"However, the great majority of the companies contacted had declined to express a view on independence, so the results of the exercise didn't warrant the claim that none favoured it, or the implication that the biggest Scottish and British companies were ranged against it."

This apology follows a previous apology to Alex Salmond for the way he was cut-off in an interview by Kirsty Wark.

Of course, examples such as this will be widely ignored by the conspiracy theorists on the right. So obsessed are they with claiming that the BBC is involved in some grand left-wing scheme, they ignore all the evidence that points to the contrary. Like all deeply deluded individuals, they focus on the facts that they want to believe, rather than acknowledge the facts that deeply undermine their argument. The BBC has, and always will, defend the Union from any sign of a break-up. The dissolution of the Union is the last thing that the establishment wants, and the BBC is more than willing to support all efforts to undermine moves for independence in any of the home countries. In the rush to condemn the BBC as a left-wing organisation, facts like these will always be overlooked.