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The Guardian
of the
Airwaves?
Bias and the BBC
Martin McElwee
and Glyn Gaskarth
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Contents
Biographical Notes 4
Introduction 5
Programme Case Study: Panorama 12
Subject Case Study: Grammar Schools 55
Conclusion 69
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Martin McElwee was Deputy Editor at the Centre for Policy Studies
and edits the Bow Group’s magazine Crossbow. He is the author of
The Great and Good: the Rise of the New Class (CPS, 1999);
Leviathan at Large: a New Regulator for the Finacial Markets (with
Andrew Tyrie MP, CPS, 2000); Keeping Ministers in Check (Bow
Group, 2002) and Statism by Stealth (with Andrew Tyrie MP, CPS,
2002). He curently works in the City.
Introduction
This has not been an easy year for the BBC. 12 months ago the
corporation was basking in the glow of its rating successes. Now it
finds itself under fire from all sides. The Conservatives started the
ball rolling with a complaint, since settled, that the coverage given to
their local election results was biased. This though was as nothing
compared to the Kelly/Gilligan/Campbell affair that has dominated
the summer.
It seems likely at the time of writing that none of the parties
investigated by Lord Hutton will be entirely exonerated.
Resignations or sackings may yet be required. What is clear,
though, is that journalistic standards at the BBC have come
under scrutiny as never before. This paper is written as a contri-
bution to that scrutiny. It may be critical but it aspires to be
constructive. Its essential thesis is that, despite being a publicly-
funded broadcasting organisation with a statutory duty of
impartiality, the BBC’s output demonstrates a bias to the left.
That is to say that it often reflects the world view of the Guardian
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Balance of biases
One of the few upsides, from the BBC’s point of view, of the Kelly
affair is that it has given the Corporation and its supporters a
ready answer to those who have claimed that it is biased against
the Tory Party. Such allegations, of course, have a long history,
from the Falklands War and Norman Tebbit’s interventions in the
1980s to the complaints levied against the local election coverage
in 2003. The upshot to this most recent controversy was the
announcement by the Conservatives that they were compiling a
dossier of examples of anti-Tory bias on the BBC.
The Corporation’s response has been quite clever, if somewhat
disingenuous: it is that the disagreements with the Blair govern-
ment, which have reached an intensity quite beyond those with the
Conservatives, prove that the BBC is not biased. It is willing to take
on, where necessary, politicians from any part of the political
spectrum.
As far as it goes, this riposte probably has some virtue. Apart
from some isolated incidents, the BBC appears to give fair coverage
to the Conservative Party. It is generally conscious of the need to
allow both major parties to present their cases. Insofar as the
Liberal Democrats have obtained a larger share of the vote and a
larger number of MPs, it is also fair that they be given a greater
share of airtime, and here too the BBC meets its obligations.
Of course, there are jarring incidents when the Conservative
Party is treated unfairly. The absence of a Conservative from the
panel on one notable edition of Question Time in 2000 merited a
protest and rightly led to an apology. The local election coverage
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Introduction // 7
A deeper problem
However, the absence of formal animus against the Conservative
Party does not tell the whole story. Viewers as much as political
parties would be alert to bias against a particular party. What is
much more insidious, but in the end much more damaging, is an
institutional bias for or against a particular political value set.
The argument of this paper is that the BBC possesses just such a
bias. It leans institutionally to the left.
This bias can most readily be seen not in the airtime allocated to
Conservative spokesmen, but in the presentation of BBC reporting.
It creeps in through the choice of interviewees and the way in
which they are introduced (for example, where a right-winger is
given a ‘health warning’ and a left-winger is not by framing their
contribution and implying objectivity or otherwise). It is also
apparent in presenter-led editorial comment on current affair
programmes such as Panorama, which is analysed below. It
manifests itself in the very choice of topics that are deemed worthy
of examination.
The summer’s troubles between the BBC and the government do
not undermine this theory – indeed they tend to support it. Even
left of centre commentators have been of the view that the BBC’s
coverage of the war in Iraq suggested an underlying opposition to
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The impression has been given, on the BBC in particular, that public
and expert opinion is strongly opposed to military action.
Introduction // 9
Exactly the same point may be made of BBC staff. While they
almost never display an active intention to disregard, undermine or
ridicule right wing thinking, the totality of their output is such that
it must be regarded as left-wing.
were it to be less successful, it is likely that other (or even the same)
voices would be questioning the value of the licence fee.
The role of this paper, then, is quite different from any which
seeks to analyse the funding or future of the BBC. It seeks quite
simply to demonstrate – by means of the broad case studies below
– that there is a consistent left-wing bias at the heart of BBC current
affairs reporting. It seems most likely that this will be remedied not
by altering the funding arrangements of the BBC but by a sustained
period of self-reflection and self-assessment by an institution
which has thus far been too confident in the unfailing objectivity of
its own agenda. It is to be hoped that such a period will be under-
taken following this summer’s events.
Methodology
This paper falls into two sections. The first is a programme case
study. As the BBC’s self-described ‘current affairs flagship’,
Panorama is an appropriate choice to examine for political balance.
The transcripts of all editions of Panorama over the past five years
were reviewed. The results are presented in Chapter 2 below.
The second is an issue case study. This was designed to see how
the BBC’s coverage of a single issue – rather than the wide range of
issues covered by Panorama – stacked up. Care was taken to select
an issue on which there was clear water between right and left. The
issue of grammar schools was chosen. While the Blair Government
seems to have largely ceased to care about the continuing existence
of grammar schools, their abolition remains a totem of the left. By
contrast, their retention is regarded as an article of faith by the
Telegraph-reading right. We analysed accessible coverage of this
issue – primarily from the excellent BBC website – over a number
of years. We also analysed coverage of the same issue in the
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Introduction // 11
Introduction // 13
Methodology
We examined the transcripts of all the episodes of Panorama for the
past 5 years (Autumn 1998-Summer 2003). This period covered a
number of key events, including the 2000 US Presidential Election,
the 2001 UK General Election, the terrorist attack on the World
Trade Centre in 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iraq war.
All of these events were dealt with by Panorama, as well as a wide
range of other domestic and international stories. There was a good
balance between the domestic and international across this period.
Summary of findings
It should be stressed at the outset that there was no evidence of
anti-Conservative Party bias over the period examined. Of neces-
sity, there was a much greater focus on the Labour Party and
Labour government, often to the exclusion of the Conservative
Party and its spokesmen. This, though, is a reasonable reflection of
the Labour Party’s position in government and their effective
dominance of politics in this period.
On some high profile topics, the programmes were notably fair. On
Europe and the Euro – a subject on which the BBC has already found
itself under considerable scrutiny – there was an impressively even-
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1. Anti-free market
The operation of market forces is consistently opposed in
Panorama, with benefits ignored and costs magnified. This is
evident both in the topics chosen (and not chosen) and the manner
in which they are presented.
2. Pro-regulation
This is mirrored in a oft-repeated theme that more government
regulatory action is required to solve those problems identified by
Panorama. A recurring motif is criticism of regulators for failure to
take stronger action and criticism of government for failure to give
regulators more power or to get regulatory legislation on to the
statute book more quickly.
3. Anti-business
Another aspect of Panorama’s anti-free market bias is its approach
to business. Ignoring the well-documented costs on companies
introduced by the Labour government and the natural vicissitudes
of the business world, the programme takes a blinkered approach,
which displays little appreciation of commercial realities or of the
benefits which efficient businesses bring to society. This is most
evident in the themes chosen and the voices allowed to dominate
the debate.
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5. Anti-United States
A general anti-American bias imbues much of the Panorama
reporting. America is regularly presented as an aggressor, with
voices opposing this notion generally confined to a small number
of neo-conservative ‘usual suspects’. A not terribly subtle ploy to
insulate the programme against charges of anti-Americanism is
often deployed: using maverick Americans to voice the criticisms. A
British TV audience could not be expected to be aware of the fact
that someone presented as ‘an experienced observer’ may well be
the US equivalent of Paul Foot.
6. Anti-Bush
The most noticeable aspect of the generally anti-American
approach which has featured in Panorama programming has been
the remarkably naked anti-Bush bias. Such a view is, of course, a
hallmark of the left in the UK and internationally. Many commen-
tators have expressed the opinion that even BBC News reporters
appear biased when commentating on left/right isues in the US.
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7. Anti-war
As noted above, the debates led by David Dimbleby were generally
even-handed. Similarly, the edition presented by Jane Corbin on The
Case Against Saddam was also well-balanced, giving the right degree of
coverage to the allegations against Saddam Hussein, but also giving air
time to those who had reservations about the evidence. However, as
the war drew closer, the reporter-led Panorama editions on the war
against Iraq became marked by a clear anti-war bias. Difficulties were
magnified, successes were underplayed. Voices opposing the war were
given an undue degree of prominence whilst voices explaining a legit-
imate rationale for action were given very limited airtime indeed.
Justitification?
It is evident from this range of observations that, as already noted,
anti-Conservative Party bias is not in issue here. But it is not good
enough to point out that the programme (as it does) regularly criti-
cises the Labour Government. When it does, it criticises from the left
rather than the right. Nor is it good enough to say that the
programmes are focussed only on ‘the use and abuse of power’, which
inevitably leads to extra scrutiny of ‘big business’, the Republican
administration in the US and the like. All of these are, of course, legit-
imate targets for scrutiny. However, the choice of angles from which
these parties are scrutinised – however deserved the scrutiny – makes
clear a conscious or unconscious left-wing bias. What is missing is
precisely the depth of understanding that the programme’s standards
refer to: it is simple to take leftwing pot shots at easy targets; it is more
difficult to explain the often complex economic and political realities
which lie behind controversial decisions. In other words Panorama
deploys a kind of left wing populism but never examines issues from
a right wing populist perspective.
In general a clear patern emerges. As goes the left, so goes
Panorama. Once an issue achieves salience in the pages of the New
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Thatcher notions. Even when the homeowner points out that he took
a significant risk in borrowing to fund it, Kenyon puts it to him that
‘it’s the same house really that you bought ten years ago – it’s just
worth significantly more now’.
The programme’s title – itself a pejorative representation of the
market forces at work in housing – is repeated throughout, without
any appreciation that a market which responds to supply and
demand is a legitimate and healthy one.
‘Buy-to-let’ buyers attract particular scorn from Kenyon. Despite
the fact that many such buyers are responsibly investing for old age,
Kenyon portrays them as a ‘new breed of buyer’ whose actions have
‘damaging consequences’ – buyers who have ‘locked out’ the poor and
who have caused the countryside to be built over. Kenyon seems to be
oblivious to the fact that to bring down property prices, the law of
supply and demand requires that more houses be built.
Kenyon praises, by contrast, a government-subsidised (to the
tune of £250 million) mixed housing scheme. His other demand of
the government minister whom he interviews is that he reverses the
southwards migration trend. Again, the free play of market forces is
apparently an anathema.
David Lomax continues the same theme in his 2002 report. His
descriptions of the free housing market range from a ‘nightmare’
through ‘hysteria’ to ‘a huge ogre’. His solution is that the govern-
ment must take action. His regretful conclusion though is that ‘for
the government, influencing it is not going to be easy’.
2. Anti-Business
(a) Choice of topics
Britain’s businesses are clearly newsworthy and a legitimate subject
for a major current affairs programme. While some businesses
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1 These were the practices of requiring payments for prime siting of products in the store and
delisting of suppliers. A third Panorama allegation, that supermarkets required their
suppliers to make charitable donations was found not to operate against the public interest.
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money? Well it says here, ‘If people were better informed about
what was available, fewer of them might choose to remain
unbanked.’ So Hazel, if you’re watching, I’m terribly sorry but the
Treasury thinks it’s your fault you don’t have a bank account. And
as for the idea of actually passing laws to oblige banks to provide
services to all sections of the community, the Treasury concludes
‘the case for doing this is weak’.’
Even a Labour government’s approach to banks, it seems does
not come close to the Panorama world view.
3. Pro-regulation
(a) Choice of topics
From food to mortgages, Panorama brings to light what it views as
failings in the system. Its consistent answer is that greater regula-
tion of the system is required. The choice of topics – ones which
tend to highlight this view – is noticeable. There has been, by
contrast, no programme highlighting the adverse effect of
increased government regulation on small businesses, on the care
home industry, on schools or on councils. Only in one programme,
Fiddling the Figures (29 June 2003), on NHS targets, is this topic
even touched on.
tory burden on small producers and shops at a time when they are
already under considerable pressure.
Panorama once again takes an entirely one-sided approach to
this question, ignoring the costs of regulation and instead
demanding more. David Lomax begins by referring to Labour’s
promise to ‘make food safety a priority’ but quickly damns the
government for failing to introduce regulation quickly enough:
‘protecting public health has had to stay in the hands of the old
system which the government promised to overhaul’.
Lomax’s expresses outrage that ‘formal training in hygiene [for
all employed in food retail] is not compulsory’. To demand that
every person doing a weekend job in a supermarket undergo
Whitehall-programmed hygiene training is symptomatic of a
centralist approach.
The programme’s main interviewee is the alarmist Edwina
Currie, who presents it as scandalous that the Ministry of
Agriculture (as it then was) is close to the food industry – surely a
key role for a department responsible for its welfare as much as it is
responsible for public health. The range of interviewees,
meanwhile, is drawn almost exclusively from victims of food
poisoning. In the entirety of the programme, only 20 seconds is
given over to a quote provided by a representative of the food
industry explaining the costs of more regulation.
Lomax’s pro-regulation agenda is clear. He complains that
‘without a food standards agency, blood testing of poultry flocks is
still voluntary’ (ignoring the benefits of self-regulation) and that the
‘fundamental problem’ of the egg ‘lion quality mark’ scheme is that
‘not everyone is in it’ (ignoring the fact that consumers are now
perfectly well informed as to the relative safety of the eggs they buy).
His panacea is more regulation: ‘ A food standards agency would
have powers to make sure that the poultry industry was properly
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They estimate that there are at least 500 cases of transfer from
private hospitals into NHS intensive care beds every year. These
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beds cost over £1500 a day and when private patients take them up
it can cause the NHS problems.
The authority for policing the net and catching the cheats and
conmen who have discovered its potential is the FSA, the Financial
Services Authority. It has a good bark, but sadly its mouth is all gums.
I mean, how naïve can you get? This isn’t what we expect the FSA to
do. We expect the FSA to not just say, put the information on the
label, but to sort it out.
The use of private providers where appropriate may not fit Ware’s
views on the NHS, but many experts – although not those
consulted by Panorama – would argue that it is often a sensible
and prudent option which allows patients to get their operation
more quickly. Ware’s implication is that it is somehow a waste of
money.
Labour’s multiple announcements and double and triple
counting of investment are cogently and rightly subjected to
sustained scrutiny. But Ware’s pro-public spending agenda comes
to the fore again when he describes Tony Blair’s statement that
health spending should rise to the European average as ‘the most
important statement in the history of the NHS’.
There is no analysis of whether the required taxation and
spending to achieve this target is appropriate or prudent. This
would also have been an appropriate juncture to point out that a
much greater proportion of health funding in other European
countries is private sector driven. This point is not made. Instead,
Ware takes the Government to task for still not spending enough:
he criticises the fact that the Government’s plans will raise health
spending only to the unweighted European average (which gives a
lower figure) than the weighted average (which is higher).
How much was available to recruit extra doctors and nurses? Not
much. At least not at first. New Labour’s initial priority was to lay the
ghost of Labour’s spending profligacy and economic incompetence
and demonstrate its new credentials. So for two years, the manifesto
pledged to stick to the tight spending limits set by the Tories. Well,
New Labour certainly stuck to that promise. In its first two years,
health spending only grew at half the rate of the Major years.
Even that [meeting the target], seems unlikely. New Labour are
committed to their present spending increases only until 2004.
Two billion sounds like a lot of money, but actually it’ll only increase
health spending as a share of national wealth by 0.2% per year. That’s
not as much as it sounds.
Once again, the main expert interviewee is one who supports higher
public spending. John Appleby of the King’s Fund, is given a series of
slots in which he states that there needs to be higher funding over a
longer term. The programme then moves on to Labour’s education
record. Here once again, there were a number of issues which could
have been discussed: the dismantling of grant maintained status, the
grammar school ballots, the target setting for schools, the impossible
complexity of the funding system. But once again, an allegedly low
level of public spending gets the blame for all ills:
The answer [to why there were teacher shortages] lies with New
Labour’s manifesto pledge on spending. As with health, it committed
the Government to stick to Tory limits for the first two years.
Over the last four years, the education system that has been under-
funded for so long has been increasingly overwhelmed.
You kept education spending on a very, very tight rein during the 18
years of Conservative Government – why should be believe you [that
you will match Labour education spending]?
Why did Labour achieve less on public services than it set out to? The
answer lies in the decision to establish economic credibility by sticking
to the Tory spending plans for the first two years.
5. Anti-United States
(a) Choice of topics
The war in Iraq has dominated coverage of the US in the period
covered by this study. Most of the programmes in relation to the
war itself are dealt with in the section below, which details
Panorama’s practically non-existant airing of support for the US’s
policy on military action. Insofar as President Bush should be
identified with the US at this point, the consistent anti-Bush tone
of the choice of programming is also important.
There are no programmes on non-military aspects of United
States life or behaviour. While this is in part unsurprising given that
this is the area in which the US’s actions have most impinged on
UK life over the past five years, it is worth mentioning that there
would not have been a shortage of good news stories had Panorama
wished to go looking for them: the higher prosperity of the US
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balanced on the war. John Simpson, for example, explains that ‘off
the record, you will find that a majority, a clear majority of Arab
governments will be absolutely delighted that Saddam Hussein has
gone.
There is, however, one section of the programme which
displays a view of the US that owes little to fair analysis. Gavin
Esler allows it to be introduced with the words ‘What is America
really up to?’. The suggestion of a hidden underlying agenda is
made in more than one Panorama programme, but only here is it
given the credibility of being promoted by the presenters
themselves. The accompanying graphic is ‘The New American
Empire’.
Esler quotes sources claiming the US wants ‘world domination’
before giving air time to talking heads from round the world. An
Egyptian claims that they US has a ‘broader strategy of complete
and absolute domination all over the world’. Two UK interviewees
speak of the US’s ‘bully boy tactics’ and ‘this policy of one country
having the free will to invade another country’.
There is no evidence of such an agenda in the US. Indeed, the
main liberal criticism of the first years of the Bush administration
was that it was failing to engage with the rest of the world. It is left
to another news correspondent, Matt Frei, to say (in a statement
that itself contains the implication that the US ‘hawks’ are extrem-
ists) that ‘even’ the White House hawks are not interested in
‘imperial occupation’.
6. Anti-Bush
(a) Choice of topics
George Bush and his administration are a legitimate target of
scrutiny. Given their current dominance of the American political
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unusual number of sick people’. His comments once again show the
endemic pro-regulation assumptions of Panorama presenters:
7. Anti-war
(a) Choice of topics
Some of the Panorama Iraq war coverage is admirably balanced.
This is particularly true of the debates chaired by David Dimbleby.
The certainties of Richard Perle and the like on one side are well
balanced by those who oppose the war on the other. Similarly, Jane
Corbin’s report on The Case Against Saddam is fairly presented,
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giving air time both to those who believe that the evidence merits
action and those (such as ex-MOD civil servant, Sir Michael
Quinlan) who believe that the case is not made out.
However, the number of programmes which centre on the
opposition to the war and on ‘the case against war’ (the title of the
8 December 2002 edition) is not balanced by programmes which
make a positive case for military action. The Case Against Saddam
is rather more balanced than its title would suggest. Indeed the only
programme which the pro-war lobby gets to itself is the War Party
edition (discussed above) which paints the ‘hawks’ in the most
negative light possible.
We’ve examined the case against Saddam. Tonight we assess the case
against going to war with Saddam.
This seems on the surface to be quite fair. The difficulty is that the two
strands are approached on an entirely different basis. The ‘case against
Saddam’, as noted above, is presented in an even-handed fashion, with
anti-war voices mixed with those who believe that the evidence is
strong enough to merit action. This programme is not so balanced.
It focuses on seven figures who put the case against war – figures
whom Steve Bradshaw tells us ‘you might not expect to hear
making it’. This fits neatly with the more general theme across the
Panorama programmes that the war is being led by a group of
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Who, one may ask, are Ware’s ‘insiders’? Throughout, the focus is
on the resistance to the American army and the alleged ‘gamble’ of
Donald Rumsfeld (always referred to as the ‘hawkish’ Rumsfeld).
Ware shows his antipathy quite clearly in one remarkable passage:
The Americans have called this war Operation Iraqi Freedom, though
no one asked the Iraqi people if bombing was the price they were
willing to pay for liberation from Saddam. It’s hard to know exactly
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what the Iraqi people are thinking but so far as one can tell, the
prevailing mood looks more muted than joyful.
Grammar schools mark a clear dividing line between the right and
the old left. Views on them divide fairly neatly into two camps.
The first – what we may call the Telegraph view – is that
grammar schools are a thoroughly good thing, that the government
was wrong to introduce a mechanism by which they could be
abolished, that this mechanism was biased against the grammar
schools and that the failure of all of the attempts at abolition has its
roots in the fact that parents want to retain them
The opposing view – which may be termed the Guardian view –
is that they are a backward piece of social engineering which disad-
vantages the less well off and which provides a poorer education on
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Background
On coming to power, the Labour Government introduced a scheme
whereby local parents in areas where grammar schools still existed
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The Guardian
The themes which characterise the Guardian’s coverage are as follows:
BBC Coverage
The themes which characterise the BBC’s coverage are as follows:
(c) Kent
The relatively poor results of grammar schools in Kent are, as with
the Guardian coverage, given a high profile. A 1999 story on
OFSTED’s critical report is followed up with a story quoting a
STEP spokesman’s condemnation of the county’s ‘backwardness’
and a further 2001 story complaining about its selection process.
Extensive coverage is given to a 2002 report which suggests that the
Kent system ‘is failing pupils’ – and although the story notes that
the report was commissioned by an anti-selection Labour MP, it is
treated as entirely objective in the BBC coverage. Both the Labour
MP in question and a representative of STEP are quoted exten-
sively. No pro-grammar spokesman is quoted.
There is also a special feature in 2003 on ‘Kent’s selective schools
compared’, which points out the county’s failings again. Another
STEP representative is quoted. The only contrary statement is from
a Kent councillor who rather unsatisfactorily states that it is ‘much
ado about nothing’.
These two (rather parti pris) studies are joined by Roy Hattersley’s
regular statements (June and October 1998) that grammar schools
represent ‘education apartheid’ and that the system ‘cruelly disad-
vantages’ many children. He is also quoted as saying that selection
is ‘arbitrary and shamefully inaccurate’.
The Education Network’s report (mentioned above) also gets
extensive coverage. This report also claims that selective schools are
‘socially divisive’ that they ‘are perpetuating a polarisation of
society between the haves and the have nots’ and ‘do not reflect
their communities’. Tellingly, the article tells the reader that the
study has been released in advance of a conference ‘aimed at
improving secondary school admissions arrangements’. It is clearly
taken for granted that the limiting of selection is synonymous with
‘improvement’ in admissions policy. No pro-selection voices are
quoted in response to this study.
By contrast, very limited coverage is given to any argument that
grammar schools are socially diverse and benefit bright working
class children. A brief statement is presented from headteacher of
Altringham Grammar School, David Weedon, who points out that
selection by parental ability to pay high house prices would replace
the current selection system were his school to be converted into a
comprehensive.
Conclusion
The Labour Government’s position on grammar schools may have
wavered over its time in office, but it is fair to say that taken as a
whole it has adopted a middle of the road path – allowing parents
to choose whether the grammar schools stay open and seeming to
lose interest in the issue when the ballots failed. Both the BBC and
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Conclusion
In practice this means that the BBC aims, over time, to give due
prominence to all the main strands of argument and to all the major
parties
the BBC that there is no awareness that a bias may exist. It is partic-
ularly telling to note that when the BBC has come under sustained
criticism from what can broadly be described as rightist single issue
lobby groups objecting to its Guardian-style editorialising it has
responded intelligently, albeit after an initial period of Pavlovian
denial of any bias. On both Europe and hunting the corporation’s
previously left-wing reporting has given way to a much more even-
handed approach. However unless there is a well-organised group
like the Countryside Alliance or Business for Sterling pushing the
BBC to be fair and balanced then the reflexes of Guardian readers
on most left/right issues tend to find their way into broadcasts
unchallenged.
The fact that editorial lines have changed on Europe and hunting
in response to criticism is clear evidence that the initial approach
taken to these issues was flawed but the adjustment also gives hope
that a broader objectivity and pluralism can, in time, come to
represent the norm.
The BBC’s response to a summer which has seen it placed under
unprecedented pressure will be crucial in ensuring that it regains
the trust of viewers and that it meets the requirements set out in its
own Charter and Guidelines. The initial ‘batten down the hatches’
approach of the Governors to the criticism that followed the
Gilligan report seems now to have been premature and may be
regarded as unfortunately symptomatic of an organisation with an
excess of confidence in the quality of its reporting and the impar-
tiality of its agenda. A similar approach to the conclusions of the
Hutton Enquiry will not be politically or publicly acceptable.
It is likely that the BBC knows this already. It would be highly
surprising if the Corporation attempted to brush off criticism.
However, the self-examination which follows should not be
restricted to any points made by Lord Hutton – whose enquiry is
Document1.qxd 9/26/2003 17:18 Page 71
Conclusion // 71