Difference between revisions of "British Broadcasting Corporation"

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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the major national public service broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is the leading broadcaster in the UK and is the largest broadcaster in the world by audience figures.

It was founded in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company. In 1927 it was reconstituted under its current name as a public corporation. Its headquarters are in London.

The BBC is often criticized for political bias, particularly liberal, and for being overly politically correct.

Broadcasting

The BBC operates eight national television channels[1] in the UK and ten national radio stations[2]. Alongside these are its regional television services, which are variations of the national services, and separate regional radio stations.

The BBC produces many well-known television programmes, including The Ten O'Clock News, Newsnight, Questiontime, Eastenders, Planet Earth, Holby City, Casualty, Top Gear, Match of the Day, Have I Got News For You and Doctor Who.

Its best known TV channels in the UK are BBC 1 and BBC 2. The other channels are broadcast as digital-only services and are available to owners of terrestrial digital receiving equipment. BBC 1 typically shows more mainstream programmes while BBC 2 has a reputation for more diversity and special interest content.

Outside the UK the best known service is the BBC World Service radio network which transmits in 33 languages to an estimated 163 million listeners a week[3]. The BBC operates a number of commercially-funded international television channels including BBC World, the international news channel.

Funding

The BBC is a Crown corporation supported by a licensing fee applied to television owners^[1] of £135.50 (US$270 approx) per year. All owners of TV receiving equipment are obliged to pay the fee whether they watch BBC content or not. As such it is often criticised as being a tax.

In theory, funding by the licence fee means that BBC programmes are free of advertising. However, it has some obligations to transmit statements by political parties and it advertises its own programmes, but BBC channels transmitted in the UK are nevertheless completely free of commercial advertising. This results in much greater non-advertising broadcasting time and uninterrupted broadcast of feature films. However, since the funding is determined by the government, the BBC can be slow to criticise those in power. This arrangement means the government has to do very little to apply pressure on the BBC and often the BBC will self regulate in favour of the government without any formal instruction being given.^[2] This in turn leads to the government and the BBC being able to declare independence and neutrality officially, while in reality this is far from the case.

While there is a vocal campaign to have the BBC changed into a commercial company, this appears highly unlikely to happen.

Ownership

The BBC is an independent body which is held in trust for the British people.

The BBC has a ten-year royal charter that defines its purposes and allows it to act somewhat autonomously, free from commercial and government influence. The BBC is ultimately responsible to its readers and listeners as well as to the BBC Trust.

BBC News

BBC News and Current Affairs is the largest news organisation in the world. It has at least 2,000 journalists and 44 news-gathering bureaus, three in the UK and 41 overseas. [4] It produces some 120 hours of news broadcasts daily.

News programmes are produced for both TV and radio stations. Much of the TV news programming is delivered in a few major news bulletins throughout the day, the most recognised of which is the flagship Ten O'Clock News in the evening on BBC1. On BBC radio, news is delivered in mostly smaller segments on the hour or half hour. However, the Today programme on Radio 4 is broadcast from 7am to 9am and is often considered the most influential news broadcast in the UK.

News produced by the BBC is made available and archived on the BBC news website.

Internet

The BBC has a news and archive website, one of the top twenty most popular English language websites. Like its TV and radio broadcasting it is not allowed to show advertising if the site is viewed from within the UK. This has prompted some criticism from within the BBC as it means funds from the licensing fee used for the website are not available for TV and radio programming. However, some costs of the site are now, since late 2007, offset by advertising to non-UK based visitors to the site.

Competitors have also criticised the BBC website due to it's ability to fund itself non-commercially without advertising to the detriment of its commercial competitors such as on-line versions of national newspapers and other news broadcasters such as Sky and ITN.

Cultural Impact

As the only TV broadcaster until the mid 1950s and only radio broadcaster until the mid 1970s, the BBC had a monopoly in the UK of broadcasting in those media. As such its content was highly influential. Since then the BBC, while exposed to high volumes and variable quality of competition, has remained popular with the British public and its cultural influence is still a major force. The BBC is considered the default choice by many when viewing major events such as breaking news or state occasions, even though competitors may be broadcasting the same content.

The BBC has had enormous influence over British attitudes to not just politics but also comedy, multiculturalism, travel, natural history, international culture, popular trends, fashion and even the way the British speak. Through its foreign broadcasts on the BBC World Service, it has also had significant cultural influence outside the UK.

Accusations of Bias

The BBC has a long history of being criticised for bias. As well as persistent criticisms of liberal bias, it also receives accusations of cultural bias, regional bias, political correctness, bias towards multiculturalism and minority interests, and anti-government bias.

The BBC is often accused of right-wing bias by those on the left and of left-wing bias by those on the right. This is sometimes attributed to UK governments of either persuasion simply objecting to negative reporting of its policies. However, it is also common for opposition to the government to be critical of the BBC. In some cases, the BBC can be subject to criticism from both sides citing bias in favour of their opposition, as in its reporting of the war in Iraq.

Bias against the US and Israel

Although its charter requires it to be impartial, critics often accuse it of bias against United States and Israel,^[3] and because of these complaints of bias, an internal investigation was conducted on the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, after the investigation was completed, BBC officials decided to withhold the 20,000-word report of the investigation, compiled in 2004 by senior editorial adviser Malcolm Balen. Steven Sugar, a Jewish critic of the BBC, attempted to get access to the report under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, but was denied by the United Kingdom's High Court. The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, backed the BBC's decision to block access to the report, but the information tribunal ruled on appeal in August, 2006, in favour of Steven Sugar. Still, the BBC argued at the High Court in London that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction over the case, and the High Court ruled in favour of the BBC on April 28, 2007. The BBC maintains that the internal investigation found no deliberate or systematic bias. Conservative MP David Davies commented: "An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinize governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using tax-payers' money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is absolutely indefensible" and called the BBC's actions a "shameful hypocrisy". It has been estimated that the BBC has spent around £200,000 - £300,000 on the case so far.^{[4] [5]}

In 2003, Media Tenor, an independent, Bonn-based research group, conducted a study and found that the BBC’s Middle East coverage was 85 percent negative, 15 percent neutral, and 0 percent positive toward Israel.^[6]

During a 2006 internal "impartiality summit", BBC executives said they would happily broadcast an image of a Bible being thrown away, but would not do the same with a Koran. At the summit, the BBC's Washington correspondent Justin Webb also accused the executives of being anti-American, saying they treated the nation with scorn and derision and no moral weight.

On June 15, 2007, BBC drew criticism due to their apology over calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel.^[7] The incident is one of many examples of repeated and systematic anti-Israeli bias from the BBC over a number of years.

Liberal bias

Details of the BBC's alleged bias were further tabled in an official report^[8][9][10] - in preparation since 2005 - which found that the BBC:

• has an "institutional Left-wing bias"
• has "a tendency to 'group think' with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone."
• promotes anti-Christian sentiment
• promotes anti-American sentiment
• allows schedules to be "hijacked by special interest groups promoting trendy issues"
• over-represents homosexuals
• over-represents ethnic minorities
• fails to reflect the views of the British public on issues such as capital punishment
• fails to reflect the broader views of British people
• allows itself to be used by "sinister" campaign groups
• finds it difficult to understand there may be alternative views of the world

Antony Jay, a former producer on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme, said the BBC News and Current Affairs are part of the "liberal media consensus". Jay also said his ex-colleagues "were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it." ^{[11] [12]}Paul Dacre, the editor of the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, in his January 2007 Hugh Cudlipp Memorial Lecture, said that "the BBC is, in every corpuscle of its corporate body, against the values of conservatism, with a small 'c', which just happen to be the values held by millions of Britons." He also accused the BBC of being hostile to the "traditional Right, Britain's past and British values, America, Ulster Unionism, Euro-scepticism, capitalism and big business, the countryside, Christianity and family values."

A survey of BBC employees with profiles on the Facebook site showed that 11 times more of them class themselves as "liberal" than "conservative". ^{[13] [14]}

Regional bias

The BBC is based in London, in the South East of England. It often faces accusations of being London-centric, with events in the North of England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland having a reduced profile. A percieved disproptionately private school education is often claimed to be illustrated in the output, with a dispropotionate emphasis on private school events and sports.

It is also argued that the BBC also systematically discriminates against Scots speakers. Although over 1.5 million^[15] people speak it there is no service in the language of those licence fee payers^[16][17]. Supporters of the BBC and some linguists argue that the large number of regional dialects of Scots makes it no more viable to programme for the language than it would be with English^[18].

Other

BBC employees have changed Wikipedia entries, including a derogatory word in the entry for George W. Bush and changing the word “terrorists” to "freedom fighters". ^[19]

The BBC canceled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain's youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq. ^{[20] [21]}

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and didn't pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police. ^{[22] [23]}

Pauline Neville Jones, who is a member of Britain's Conservative party, a former spy chief and former BBC governor, accused the BBC of "parroting" Al Qaeda propaganda to children. ^{[24] [25]}

External Links

• BBC official site
• BBCresistance - Campaigns against the television licence
• Bias at the Beeb - official, June 17, 2007, UK Times Online.
• Biased BBC

References