Media Mea Culpa Day

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

Shocking. All this time I thought the BBC played it straight down the middle.

Seriously, I don't think there is any news organization on the planet that isn't biased in some fashion. That the vast majority of the major news outlets are on the left of the political spectrum is self evident. To be fair, the conservative-leaning Fox News's motto "Fair and Balanced" is also a misnomer (perhaps a more accurate motto would be "Fair and Balancing").

Not only is the BBC a purveyor of leftist bias, but it is also, on a grander scale, an example of what's wrong with socialist policy. The BBC is a monolithic monopoly financed through a "license fee" (i.e. taxation) that is imposed on every TV owner in Britain. It has no real competition and, therefore, nothing to challenge its narrow, strictly-enforced worldview (Auntie knows best). And if you don't pay up for the eight channels of BBC groupthink, "enforcement officers" will pay you a visit (calling Mr. Orwell!).

Americans, on the other hand, have multiple news sources from which to choose. These organizations must compete for viewers/readers in an environment where credibility is currency. Shoddy journalism is punished with declining subscriptions (New York Times, LA Times, etc.) and poor ratings (e.g. MSNBC). By and large, most media organs do a reasonably good job, particularly the ones without a political ax to grind. However, as I've chronicled here, here, here, here and here, too much of the mainstream media allow their political agendas to influence their reporting, headline selection, story "framing", and the stories they choose to report.

The New York Times provides a plethora of examples of politically-biased news reportage. Today, the Times's Public Editor, Byron Calame, admits bias in this mea culpa on the Times's reporting of the SWIFT program.

My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.

Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column. . . .

I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws. Although data-protection authorities in Europe have complained that the formerly secret program violated their rules on privacy, there have been no Times reports of legal action being taken. Data-protection rules are often stricter in Europe than in America, and have been a frequent source of friction.

Also, there still haven’t been any abuses of private data linked to the program.

Instapundit: So the New York Times damaged national security by tipping terrorists off to the existence and nature of a legal program that was not being abused. Remember that the next time they declare their own fitness to be trusted with national security decisions.

Calame's excuse for supporting the disclosure of the program:

What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press — two traits that I warned readers about in my first column.

John Hinderaker looked into the "vicious criticism" claim and found scant evidence of such, other than Bush expressing displeasure at the publication when he said,

"...[W]hat we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America."

Hinderaker: This is what Byron Calame considers "vicious criticism of the Times"? That characterization is, frankly, absurd, especially since Calame now admits that what the administration said was true. If this is really Calame's idea of "vicious criticism," apparently he hasn't been reading his own paper's editorials on President Bush.

Me: The ombudsman of the most influential paper in the nation, which cues many local news outlets around the country, supported the publishing of national security secrets because he felt attacked by the Bush Administration. How pathetically juvenile. The editorial board of the New York Slimes can't supress their reflexive urge to embarass the Bush Administration long enough to consider the damage they are doing to the national security interests of the country. They may get a lot of people killed someday if they keep this up (God forbid).