Mail in trying to prove its own prejudices shocker.
Why is Gordon Brown so reluctant to be a liberal, asks Martin Kettle in today's Grauniad. The obvious answer is because he isn't one. If he was, he would have seen to it that his original soundbite, tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime would have meant exactly that, rather than only the former. He would have opposed all the dilutions of civil liberties we suffered under Blair, and would now abandon identity cards while opposing any further extension of pre-charge detention under which "terrorist suspects" can be held, instead of standing firm by both.The other though is that he simply can't afford to be, at least not when his biggest friend and supporter, appointed to a panel to investigate whether the 30-year-rule on the release of documents should be abolished, so loathes liberalism, especially any sign that it might exist at the BBC. As Mellomeh points out in the comments of yesterday's post, Paul Dacre's Mail has lazily taken ConservativeHome's own solipsistic search for their own prejudices at the BBC and more or less published it word for word, with a few other examples of alleged bias at the corporation. CH's survey of course doesn't note whether the employees that describe themselves as "liberal" actually work in either the BBC's news or current affairs sections, where their "self-perpetuating institutional bias" as Samuel Coates describes it would be most influential, but that would be expecting too much.
You do however have to love the Mail's last paragraph:
But a well-placed insider said that staff who were Facebook members were likely to be warned to remove their political views from their profiles in the wake of the row.
Would this well-placed insider happen to be of the Mail's own creation? Surely not.
Most of the comments are the usual bag of bilious outrage:
Sory to say it but I stopped trusting the BBC long ago. They are an arm of Nu labour! - John Stretton, Albrighton, nr Wolverhampton
Yes, of course they are. That's why the BBC and "Nu Labour" went to war over Andrew Gilligan's reporting of the WMD lies, not to mention the countless other examples of where the BBC has been highly critical of government projects/policies.
Nothing new here. The BBC and The Guardian are the two cornerstones of Political Correctness in our blighted country...
Those less than 400,000 Grauniad readers sure have a strangehold over Britain, completely unlike the tabloids.
Like the others who have passed comment, I am not surprised by this, it has beeen so obvious in the content of the news and current affairs programs, what does supprise me is that the staff who register on Facebook are so blatent about it. Perhaps thier HR department will look at it and take it into consideration when the axe starts to fall on the overmanning dross. - Mike Woods, Colchester
That would be discrimination, wouldn't it Mr Woods? Oh, shit, I'm being politically correct.
And why are there 10,000+ BBC employees on Facebook anyway? Do these people not have enough work to do? They are paid with public money and I expect value for it. - David G, Carshalton, Surrey
How dare BBC employees have a private life?! I demand they be at their desks 24 hours a day!
For once, the voice of reason comes last:
It is simply that facebook is a young persons phenomena and most people are more liberal in their views when younger and become more conservative with age. Older and probably more influential employees of the BBC won't be on Facebook. - Sara, Cornwall, UK
Labels: BBC bashing, bias, ConservativeHome, Daily Mail-watch, Facebook, Mail-watch
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