British Broadcasting Corporation

File:BBC Logo 1997-Present.png

The British Broadcasting Corporation is the national public service broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is the leading broadcaster in the UK and is regarded as one of the leading broadcasters in the world. In terms of audience figures, it is the largest broadcaster in the world. It was founded in London in 1927.

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

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. The BBC has a ten-year royal charter that defines its purposes and allows it to act somewhat autonomously, and the BBC is ultimately responsible to the BBC Trust and to the government. The BBC produces many well known television programmes, including Bod, Grange Hill, Holby City, Are You Being Served?, Terry and June, Crackerjack and Doctor Who.

The BBC repeatedly says it is 'independent' but in fact it clearly has an agenda all of its own. Furthermore, although the BBC is technically not-for-profit, it has an enormous worldwide revenue from the resale of programmes and repeat fees, from the sale of CDs, videos, DVDs, and a wide range of books and magazines. It is in fact a major publisher in its own right.

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]

Accusations of Bias

Although its charter requires it to be impartial, critics often accuse it of bias against United States and Israel, 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 [sic] 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.

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.

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 for apologizing over calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

Details of the BBC's bias were further exposed in an official report - 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

The BBC also systematically discriminates against Scots speakers. Although over 1.5 million people speak it there is no service in the language of those licence fee payers.

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."

External Links

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