The BBC is biased in a number of ways. The organisation recruits people from the same left wing, liberal mould and this has gone on for years.The result is that BBC staff are incapable of being objective, their perspective of normality is skewed and their genuine efforts to be unbiased fail miserably.

It would be impractical to sack the lot and start afresh so we are stuck with this endless bias unless we grasp the nettle and disperse their funding much more widely and shut the BBC down.

Stewgreen, your mental picture of me is inaccurate, and if you believe I didn't engage with students you also know very little about me.

I've undertaken a little research project over the past 6 days. I recorded either the ITV or the BBC 10PM news and watched both one after the other. The result, very little difference in the news items, some difference with their length or with the order in which they were presented. My overall conclusion is that the news teams made essentially the same decisions regarding the newsworthiness of news items (and by inference decided against other new items, deciding they were of less interest to their publics).

Make of this what you will about leftish bias, environmental cronyism and the like.

I did not include channel 4 news as this has a different format (twice the length, fewer news items covered at greater depth). Channel 4 News is my preferred choice.

@Alan we are not limiting ourselves to TV news
I have said more than once that i don't watch TV
I listen to BBC podcasts for about 5 hours/day

"if you believe I didn't engage with students you also know very little about me."
Did I say that ?
I said "@Alan walks down the street with his Guardian under his arm, stops and chats with people"
then "I walk down the street chat with the same people " see ..SAME people

Those people might always be forthcoming with directly honest views at first
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@McCourtney "employs a left-wing shock-jock" so where's the " "employs a right-wing shock-jocks"
There are individual employees, but there seems also systematic bias thru management setting a tone (eg training dept "pushes Green is good" uncritically. There seems an institutional bias of "right on social justice".

There is a simple solution. Remove all news features from the BBC, including the World Service. They can be as biased as they like in light entertainment but they don't get to pretend that they're the voice of political reason.

M Courtney
Most comedians and comedy programmes on the BBC appear to me to be on the left-hand side of the political spectrum as do many of the programmes of the Question Time/Any Questions genre. Not being particularly lefty and more right of centre perhaps that view is just a reflection of my prejudices.

I do agree with your assessment about the BBC being London urban and therefore out of touch with much of the country, in fact I have the impression that there is a view of the inhabitants of the country outside the home counties and now Manchester which is similar to the view the Victorian administrators had about the colonies. Nice people but not as good as us and education isn't going to help. Not limited to the BBC and London based media as we saw with Gordon Brown and his "bigoted woman" comment.

Stewgreen. If you don't watch TV then you can't have a voice in that particular debate.

I noted that your type 2a and type 2b morphed from people (general) into "like younge students" (more specific). Hence my comment about students.

I also somewhat resent your turning what I originally wrote by 180 degrees. I said I LISTENED to conversations, because being part of a conversation, and perhaps being the dominant participant (something you seem to be describing), runs the strong risk of people (especially not those like young students) keeping quiet if they don't agree with you or have no firm opinions. People commonly want quiet conversations not arguments. Another source of information arises if you are discussing the weather with strangers is to jokingly blame it on climate change or it being different from what might be expected, and then judging the responses. I believe my methodology reveals Joe Public's opinions best. I base this claim on talking to some of my student advisees about their social science dissertations and learning from them how ENV's social scientists judged their proposed methodologies. A rule of thumb learned is to be as far from your subjects as is possible. Contamination by your own views is both easy and difficult to eliminate.

Finally your comment about voting is, I'm.sorry to say, fatuous I could use your argument to say that people vote Tory, Labour, LibDem or SNP because all their policies support AGW or even CAGW. All voted overwhelmingly for the Climate Change Bill, and so on.

SandyS I live in good old Norfolk. Oddly I do not recognize your belief that the BBC is too London-centric, especially that its out of touch, although weather forecasters sometimes forget to mention the whole of East Anglia. Don't you watch/listen to local programming?

Nothing could have been as bad as the CBC during one winter in the 1970s. A major blizzard affected southern Ontario, the home of CBC, essentially shutting everything down, but the whole county's airwaves, from Vancouver to St. Johns, were full of tales of hardship and woe as if the whole of Canada were affected. We in Saskatchewan, more than a thousand miles away, basked in winter sunshine (but -25oC). No one informed them how Toronto centric they were and they never apologized. BBC London can sometimes be bad but its not in the big league.

The idea that the BBC, or any news delivery organization, is never going to have to change or even be evolved out of existence is ludicrous.
And evolutionary change is frequently not gentle or mild, It is raucous, punctuated with intense pressure, and made apparent over time by the losing member of the evolutionary competition to do what it needs to do to thrive.
The BBC and most other news organizations are unable to do their job of delivering accurate or honest news on a number of vital issues. That is evidence their time has passed.

Hunter,

How long do you give Fox News? Guess which way it's evolving?

Alan Kendall, for any journalist, a crucial point is the difference between reporting the news story, and creating the news story. On Green Blob issues, the Beeb is leading the news stories.

An investigative reporter does search out for stories, and the Beeb has paid for journalists to go 'undercover'. That is all legitimate journalism, but the Beeb is no longer obliged to report anything against climate science.

Fox News can do what the hell it likes. No one is forced to pay for it. So can any UK newspaper.

golf Charlie. I was responding specifically to hunter's last two sentences where he appeared to claim an ability to determine the fate of any news agency based upon its ability to report news accurately. I challenged this ability with the example of Fox News..

Please try to keep up.

Alan Kendall, frightfully sorry! I don't watch much Fox News. Is it like Pheasant Pluckers Weekly, which always seemed a minority issue, unless you were an unplucked pheasant?

Stewgreen. If you don't watch TV then you can't have a voice in that particular debate.
Apr 20, 2016 at 3:18 PM Alan Kendall

Alan, I don't see why not watching TV disqualifies him.

I don't watch bullfighting. Does that disqualify me from debating whether it's a good thing?

Alan,
Thank you for a nice demonstration of frothing.
Fox will adapt or die.
Unlike the BBC, Fox not supported by the state and must face actual market and popular pressures.
The BBC only has to keep its government subsidy in place, a decision controlled by at most a few thousand people.

Martin A.

If you have never watched bullfighting then yes you are not qualified to comment.

If you have watched it, even long ago, then you have the right to comment because bullfighting is ritualistic and doesn't change over the years. (Except for the skill /incompetence of the matador). I would also suggest that to fully appreciate it you need to experience it several times and preferably with an aficionado who can explain the finer points. I did my PhD in Spain and was fortunate to be instructed by someone very knowledgeable.

Bbc television on the other hand does change and a critic needs to keep up to date. Those who don't watch can of course comment, but what value do you ascribe to their criticism?

I would love to see the BBC and EU restored to what they were intended to be. Unfortunately, neither the BBC nor the EU have the ability to do it.

The old joke is that Rupert Murdoch found a niche market for Fox, half of America.
====================

Martin A. Goal posts stationary. To have a voice refers to recognized debate participants, not to anyone with an opinion in the audience. In ancient societies the "voice" is an object, passed to someone wishing to speak, brilliantly re-imagined in "Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome" as a TV screen made of grass and twigs. I would not pass a "voice" to stewgreen in any debate about BBC TV content because he's not qualified.

If you, on the other hand, shift goalposts now to debate BBC funding that's a different matter. Debate away stewgreen but always remind us that you don't watch and haven't paid any licence fee.

I'm never impressed by those who bitterly complain about having to pay for something they profess they don't use (the BBC) but are quite content to force those who don't use other national assets to do the same (childless people paying for education). I like the fee option for the BBC because if its funding came from general taxation it would be under even more political control. Consider the fee you pay more like a vehicle road tax. If you don't drive you don't pay. Simples!

Stewgreen. What I value is determined by what I watch and listen too. That's personal and I believe of no relevance to a discussion about whether BHers are trying to destroy the BBC. Some here clearly are, but most are using the opportunity to chastise the organization for their pet hates. I've repeated written I will not join that bunfight. My secret BBC guilty pleasures will not become public knowledge. End of.

It is not possible to have both a state funded and free media.
The BBC is a lackey of the coalition that assures its state mandated subsidy remains.
Alan skips over the best and most viable way to fund the BBC:
By the BBC earning its keep in the market place.

Stewgreen. By asking rhetorically if I live in a silo and attributing such people a degree of stupidity, you turn a discussion/debate into a shouting match with insults, Combined with slithering around logic, unbelievably taking my opinions as your own and claiming I represent the opposite. You describe your method of discussions, then claim you do the opposite.

I grow tired of wasting my time. We will never agree, we can't even reach a middle ground. I'll leave you to your fantasy of believing you belong to a majority position regarding climate change, and the implications this has when you judge whether the BBC reflects its audience.