BBC hangs on the balance

THE growing cacophony of voices accusing the BBC of being less than impartial in its news coverage scored an important victory this week when Britain′s public broadcaster appointed an independent panel to examine whether its reporting of the Middle East had been coloured by a pro-Palestinian bias.

Complaints that one BBC Middle East correspondent showed a "deep-seated bias against Israel" and another reported that she had cried when Yasser Arafat died, and comparisons between deaths of Palestinian children during the Intifada and the biblical account of Herod′s Massacre of the Innocents, have been singled out and stacked up against Britain′s state-funded broadcaster to suggest there is an institutional anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bent in the corporation′s coverage of affairs in the region.

Quentin Thomas, president of the British Board of Film Classification, which awards films their rating, will chair the five-member panel, which begins its review this month and will report to the BBC′s board of governors early next year.

"Because of its importance and because the BBC′s coverage often attracts comment and criticism from all sides, a review of its impartiality, carried out independently both of the BBC and of interest groups, is appropriate," he says.

"The panel will ensure that, in the course of its work, all shades of opinion are considered and taken account of before we present our report to the board of governors."

To BBC director-general Michael Grade the review is business as usual. The BBC has conducted other such examinations in the past and Grade said in his Goodman lecture in May that the review would take place.

But the timing of the announcement of the panel is full of significance, coming as it does a fortnight after Rupert Murdoch (chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, parent company of News Limited, which publishes The Australian) revealed in a speech in the US that British Prime Minister Tony Blair considered the BBC′s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, to be "full of hatred for the US" and anti-American bias.

Is this review, therefore, a sop to the BBC′s critics and a PR exercise designed at reassuring an increasingly sceptical public that the state-funded broadcaster - which depends on their taxes to exist - is still the beacon of impartiality on which it built its reputation for excellence in news gathering?

Murdoch and Blair aside, the review comes amid a welter of criticism of the BBC for its perceived left-liberal leanings; its coverage of the occupation of Iraq and of the US under George W. Bush, himself a contentious figure in terms of all media coverage in the US.

Perhaps most damaging of these voices has been provided by a book published this year on the subject by former BBC correspondent Robin Aitken. Taking Sides: Bias at the BBC laments what Aitken sees as an institutional left-wing bias that colours the broadcaster′s coverage of important political stories.

"The scandal is that left-wing voices are not balanced by right-wing voices," Aitken writes.

"If that is not reformed, then it′s hard to justify allowing the BBC to hold on to its monopoly. In 25 years, I met only a smattering of Tories in the organisation. I stood outside the prevailing centre-left culture and that was an uncomfortable place to be."

The Daily Mail′s Melanie Phillips, a long-time critic of the broadcaster, goes further.

"With a few honourable exceptions, the BBC views every issue through the prism of left-wing, secular, anti-Western thinking," she writes in a recent article.

"It is The Guardian of the air. It has a knee-jerk antipathy to America, the free market, big business, religion, British institutions, the Conservative Party and Israel; it supports the human rights culture, the Palestinians, Irish republicanism, European integration, multiculturalism and a liberal attitude towards drugs and a host of social issues.

"Every day, its relentless bias rolls across the airwaves to shape the assumptions of our society. Who can be surprised at Britain′s current anti-Americanism when the BBC starts from the premise that President Bush is a dangerous extremist?"

To be fair, there is plenty of ammunition for critics of the BBC′s news coverage.

Veteran political reporter Jim Naughtie lived up to his name in committing a blunder by reporting in March, at the height of the general election campaign, thus: "If we win the election does Gordon Brown remain Chancellor?" By "we", he meant the Labour Party.

But if the BBC is partisan on behalf of Labour, that would be news to the Blair administration, which has been at loggerheads with the state broadcaster for more than two years, mainly over its coverage of Iraq.

Then last month came the Murdoch speech, which reportedly had the BBC seething, although the broadcaster made light of the situation, repeating the mantra that its reporting of Hurricane Katrina had been "straight down the line" and that it had not received any complaints from licence-fee payers.

This was simply not true. More than a week before Murdoch′s revelations about Blair - in a story reported on the BBC′s website - the corporation had already revealed it had received a large number of complaints about the nature of its reporting of the hurricane.

"I think your reporting of the events in New Orleans is as bad as it gets ... All [the reporters] wanted was to knock Bush and the Republicans and again just showed how anti-Republican the BBC is," wrote John Howson, one of several British viewers to complain about the tone of the coverage, while Ken Sommers, of the US, emailed to say: "I was waiting for the point at which the BBC would claim that Bush had caused the hurricane itself to form, and caused it to veer to the right into New Orleans rather than to the left and on into the state of Texas."

And so it goes on. Criticisms of bias have been levelled at the BBC since the corporation was set up in the 1920s under the guidelines set down by John Reith, who saw the BBC as an organ of the establishment and required it to lend support, for example, during the 1926 General Strike when the broadcaster was clearly supportive of the government and against the striking workers.

It is a function of the state-owned media that all people feel they have a stake in the way they operate and feel justified in intervening when it is not operating in a manner with which they feel comfortable.

During the Thatcher years in the ′80s, many in the government felt the BBC had set itself up as the voice of the opposition, particularly in its reporting of the Falklands War (the BBC was accused of being too impartial in referring to "the British" and "the Argentinians" and in questioning Margaret Thatcher over the sinking of the Argentine ship General Belgrano) and its coverage of the miners strike in 1984-85.

At the time, Thatcher′s home secretary Norman Tebbit (who the BBC on its website calls her henchman in a retrospective piece, written last year) called it the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation.

Thatcher did her utmost to ensure a compliant BBC, appointing political cronies as directors-general and to the chair, and the Blair Government appears to have followed her lead. For its part the BBC′s commercial future as a global newsgathering service depends on its reputation for fair and honest reporting, hence the reviews.

With the BBC′s charter due for renewal next year and its continuing role under intense political and public scrutiny, it will be intriguing to see whether the broadcaster opts for the hair shirt approach or one of defiance in answering its critics.