Charles Moore, the Telegraph’s editor, explains the reasons behind the initiative and makes the case that the BBC’s bias is institutional but largely unconscious.
The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn't, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is "judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business" is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that... well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help.Today’s Beebwatch focuses on the BBC’s interview with Michael Meacher on Radio 4’s Today program and shows how a set of unquestioned assumptions (anti-Americanism in this example) affects how an interview is conducted.
As an American living in England, I often have to contend with the prejudices that the BBC promotes, so I welcome what the Telegraph is doing. However, it would have been nice if Moore's piece had given a mention to some of the people who have been Beeb watching for some time, such as Biased BBC.
