Post by Pacifico on May 2, 2024 10:46:13 GMT
The BBC is “a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large”.
All this, he said, “creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC”.
–Andrew Marr
“It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat.
“If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.”
– Jeff Randall, former BBC business editor
By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.
– Peter Sissons, Former BBC News and Current Affairs presenter
“In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [as a production trainee, in 1979], there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher.
– Mark Thomspon, former BBC Director General
“I do remember… the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I’ll always remember that”
– Jane Garvey, Radio 4 presenter, recalling Tony Blair’s election victory in 1997