Friday 18 October 2013

An American Thinker on BBC bias


Here's an extract from a piece entitled BBC Bias. It was published on the conservative U.S. blog American Thinker. Its author is Paul Austin Murphy: 
Another personal experience of BBC bias occurred with the well-known BBC journalist and writer Mark Easton. In this instance I heard him pontificate for five minutes or more on the ceaseless and unpolluted glories of (unrestricted?) immigration on BBC Radio 2's "Jeremy Vine Show." I decided to pick him up on what he said by emailing him. To my surprise, he replied. He wrote back saying:
"I was not making an argument about the pros and cons of immigration itself..."
In fact Mark Easton had done precisely the opposite of that. He didn't offer a single criticism of any aspect of mass immigration. In response to that reply I repeated my criticism in a return email. And, even more surprisingly, he replied again. However, this time the political nature of what he had said was made much more explicit:
"I do think it is shocking that, a significant minority of people in Britain don't think immigrants who live and work here quite legally should be able to use the NHS and other public services."
Mark Easton also told me about the 'climate of prejudice and xenophobia at that time' (in the 1960s) and that the 'British have a very negative attitude towards immigrants compared to other European nations.' Now that could be classed as a simple after-the-fact elaboration. Nonetheless, those views were still there -- if not so explicitly -- in the original BBC programme; despite Easton's claims about 'not making an argument about the pros and cons of immigration.' In fact he put a very 'pro' position on immigration in the programme and the following emails only made his political position even more explicit.
None of this is surprising, however. Of course, Mark Easton has political biases. In may even be the case that was he said is true or politically valid. So why then hide these biases or political positions through such silly dissimulation? And what is true about Mark Easton is of course true of the BBC as a whole.

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