The BBC’s institutional bias

Professor Richard Murphy has ended his chances of ever being invited back on BBC Scotland. On Wednesday morning he called out the Corporation’s obvious biases on the issues of Scottish independence, Israel-Palestine, and its constant platforming of right wing views and right wing news framing. During a phone-in on BBC Radio Scotland’s Mornings Show discussing BBC impartiality, hosted by Connie McLaughlin, Murphy noted quite accurately that the half of the Scottish population who support independence have no trust in the broadcaster because it is “so absolutely pro-Unionist”. Until Murphy’s intervention the programme had largely consisted of McLaughlin, former BBC political editor Brian Taylor, and former BBC Radio 4 presenter Roger Bolton mutually patting one another on the back about how wonderfully impartial the BBC is and what a great job it does.

When Murphy was brought in to have his “final word”, he said: “We’ve gone on for 40-plus minutes and all I’ve heard so far is pro-BBC propaganda from the BBC.”

After calling out McLaughlin for constantly interrupting him when she’d allowed her BBC colleagues to speak without interruption, Murphy was finally allowed to say: “The BBC is biased in favour of big business, it is biased in favour of the right wing media because it uses that as its news sources in the main for discussion, it is biased against the nationalist cause in Scotland, it is biased against the Palestinian cause in its claim and its right to have a state, it is biased in favour of Israel very clearly.”

The BBC likes to delegitimise those who call it out for its obvious bias, particularly on the issue of Scottish independence, by characterising its critics as conspiracy theorists, and indeed this was in essence the defence attempted on the programme by Brian Taylor, who claimed that he was “never at any point asked within the BBC by managers to tailor a report to fit an agenda dictated by the BBC” adding that he had witnessed “endless complaints” about BBC Scotland coverage.

Taylor’s response represented a simplistic and self-serving mischaracterisation of how bias operates. No one is alleging that BBC managers issue instructions to journalists and reporters to alter their reports in particular ways. That’s not how institutional bias works.

Institutional bias arises from an culture within an institution which creates and fosters perceptions that a particular institutional policy is fair, deserved, or justifiable in some manner. In the case of the BBC that policy is the belief that Scotland being a part of the UK is a natural and politically neutral state of affairs which does not require to be defended or justified. The BBC is a quintessentially British organisation and as such is incapable of viewing Scottish independence as anything other than a threat to the proper and natural order of things. Indeed the BBC Charter mandates the Corporation to foster and promote “cohesiveness” amongst the nations and the regions of the UK. This is in direct contradiction of the supposed impartiality of the BBC. How exactly can a broadcaster whose goal is to promote “cohesiveness” amongst the nations of the UK report fairly and in a neutral and unbiased manner on independence movements in the smaller nations of the UK. The short answer is it can’t, and the BBC doesn’t even try to.

The pro-British institutional culture of the BBC permits those BBC employees who possess personal beliefs against Scottish independence permission to allow these beliefs to colour their reporting, safe in the knowledge that pro-UK bias will go unchallenged or will be tacitly supported by senior management, while those who have personal views in support of independence will self-censor.

This is compounded by the BBC’s unshakeable belief in its own impartiality, which inhibits staff from speaking out against bias from within the organisation, which allows bias to continue uncorrected and to become compounded over time.

Institutional bias also shows itself in the choice and framing of news stories. The BBC has a symbiotic relationship with the print media, which in the UK is largely right wing, and which in Scotland is both largely right wing and overwhelmingly anti-independence. In both these aspects the print media is wildly out of kilter with the views of the Scottish population as a whole, yet the BBC’s own pro-British and establishment institutional bias prevents it from recognising that it allows print media bias to determine the BBC’s own news agenda and presentation.

Taylor may have witnessed “endless complaints” about BBC coverage, but the Corporation has never admitted that the complaints point to a systemic issue. At best the BBC admits to minor errors with limited effect and even that is unusual. More often the BBC loftily dismisses complaints being the investigator, judge, and jury in allegations levelled against it.

Evidence of BBC bias, particularly when it comes to the coverage of the Scottish constitutional issue, is overwhelming, instances are numerous, detailed, and indeed endless, but the BBC Scotland’s institutional bias prevents the Corporation from recognising it as such. Recognising it would entail making a radical change to the entire structure, organisation and ethos of the BBC. The BBC is not prepared to do that. Instead it resorts to the simplistic and comfortable kind of straw man defence which was witnessed from Brian Taylor on Wednesday morning’s BBC Scotland programme which implied that there is some sort of conspiracy being alleged. This protects the BBC from having to examine the more fundamental and systemic issues which are responsible for the bias which is so plain to see but which the BBC cannot admit to.

The British establishment has no real interest in reforming the BBC. This unwillingness has now become dangerous not just to democracy in Scotland, but to democracy in the UK as a whole. The rise of the far right in the UK has a great deal to do with the BBC’s constant platforming of Nigel Farage and his party, giving it airtime out of all proportion to its electoral impact. That’s because Farage and his ilk do not present a real threat to the interests of the British establishment. Those parties which do, the Green in England, and the pro independence parties in Scotland and Wales, are consistently marginalised by the Corporation.

The BBC is one of the agents of the British state which militate against reform and change. That’s what it was set up to do, and that’s what it continues to do.

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