A Down-to-Earth Approach to Bias from Daniel Finkelstein in the Times today- an article I should thank BBBC commenter Andrew Bowman for drawing to my attention.

He's pragmatic, using canny examples to prove his point. He cleverly doesn't take on the BBC directly, but refers to John Humphrys' self-confessed "bias in favour of challenging those in power". All he will say is 'My Today programme, which I would also claim was politically impartial, might often turn out to be very different from the one that is being broadcast.'

His example of BBC bias is a cracker (if bias ever can be cracking):

I remember watching BBC news shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Centre. The reporter linking the items casually announced that he was standing in Jerusalem where the events of September 11 had begun and where, ultimately, they would have to end. This was stated as if it was objective and factual, when it was, instead, a political opinion and one with which I strongly disagree. Someone else might have made this assertion while standing in, say, Finsbury Park or Tehran.

I find myself in vociferous agreement with Finkelstein when he says, topically,

'Every single choice made by a news programme reflects the values of the people who make it. They decide, for instance, to report night after night on the Palestinian question rather than the dreadful problems in the Sudan.',

but I'm not entirely with him when he says that 'bias is inescapable', because although some kind of bias will always squeak out at some point, there is a vast span separating 'good journalism' across the 'gulf of bias' from 'propaganda' which I would not want to dismiss. It is time however for many in the media to admit that they cannot claim reasonably to be at the opposite pole to propagandists- a claim that Greg Dyke effectively made in the Autumn when criticising US 'flag-waving' journalists.

Yes, good journalism is 'to find out the truth' by 'challenging all contributors', but it isn't about inviting chosen contributors for or against a cynically chosen world-view justified on the grounds that 'bias is inescapable'. At least, though, admitting the likelihood of bias is opening that possible cynicism up to scrutiny.

I feel I should mention again that this appeared in the Times newspaper- you know, the one owned by allegedly Beeb-o-phobic 'media mogul' Rupert Murdoch- and although it says nothing about the license fee or the BBC's charter review any Beeb-o-phile will no doubt join the dots, spell 'conspiracy', and see intimations of the BBC's mortality that Greg Dyke feared recently when he said 'the vultures are circling'. Well I'm sure that Finkelstein would admit that he, and the Times who decided to publish his article, are indeed biased- and say good luck to people who admit to having opinions.

In the crackingly biased finale to his article Finkelstein points humorously back to first principles:

'How on earth can something sound good in theory but not in practice? If something doesn’t work in practice, in what sense does it work? And if it doesn’t work, how can the theory behind it be any good? The whole point of theory is to explain how things work in practice.'

The theory he has in mind? That of the existence of a balanced and impartial broadcaster-
like the BBC perhaps?

A wonderful article, and the last thing I want to pick out is Finkelstein's digression about his least favourite media expression- the 'U-Turn'. Apart from strongly agreeing with his sentiments, I think that he is hinting courteously that what is needed is a media U-turn (centering in the UK on the BBC), away from the notion of impartial broadcasting and towards doing one's news-provision thing to the best of one's ability.