Whos Paul Johnson?

[Voetsek]

soon all this will be history and no one will care

[manker]

Originally posted by j2k4+24 June 2004 - 02:58--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (j2k4 @ 24 June 2004 - 02:58)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-manker@23 June 2004 - 16:26

I feel the BBC needed defending like no other media outlet before or since during the hutton enquiry. and has since needed a fair bit of inflating.

surely you&#39;re not saying the BBC isn&#39;t worth a tinker&#39;s damn?&nbsp;

After the Hutton inquiry, the Beeb needed rescusitation, true, but as to bias?

Let&#39;s be honest:

The BBC has succumbed, as has every other media outlet on the planet; bias is strictly a matter of course these days. [/b][/quote]
What a cynical outlook you have J2, certainly in normal circumstances media outlets are biased to some extent due to pressure from their government, advertisers or their parent company.

Clearly the BBC is different. It most certainly is not biased toward it&#39;s government as the Hutton Enquiry proved, It has no advertisers to pander toward and no parent company. It merely has an obligation to the licence fee payers to operate in an unbiased manner and it has always strived to that end.

Even in this increasingly capitalist environment Auntie Beeb still has no reason to tend toward bias.

My original query pertained to whether you did indeed believe that the BBC wasn&#39;t worth a tinker&#39;s damn. Maybe you were being flippant in that respect but to group our beloved BBC with "every other media outlet" with regard to bias smacks slightly of transatlantic covetousness, old chap.

[j2k4]

Events often serve to point up such things as biases, Manker, and we have certainly had our share of events recently, as I&#39;m sure you&#39;d agree.

What you regard as my cynicism is nothing more than honest and objective surmise.

You make the common mistake of assuming bias does not exist in the absence of some external pressure.

Media bias is just that:

Media bias.

It comes from within; the misguided mores of the anointed, elitist journalists, and their compulsion to see themselves as the arbiters of right and wrong, moral and immoral.

The BBC is not exceptional in this.

BTW-Your Hutton Report and mine don&#39;t match, apparently.


EDIT: I will retract any scrap of intent you detected regarding the Beeb&#39;s worthiness; it has as much credibility as any other news source, but while the BBC revels in your esteem, remind yourself that, as the BBC is to you, Al Jazeera is to the Arab world; facts are (as they say) facts.

[j2k4]

Mods-

Perhaps this should be in WN&E?