Readers may remember Mushroom’s, ultimately, fruitless battle with
the BBC which ended with an OFCOM ruling in 2018. The essence of my complaint was that the BBC,
through their reporter Kamal Ahmed had deliberately manipulated data to support
an editorial line that UK would be much worse off out of the EU. I escalated my complaint to OFCOM because I considered that the BBC News at Ten report
on 14 Feb 18 was inaccurate, biased and misleading and the BBC, through their
complaints process, had not addressed my concerns satisfactorily. I wrote at the time that, “in rejecting my
submission Ofcom pointed out that their duty under the Communications Act 2003
was to ensure that broadcasters are “duly” impartial and “duly”
accurate. In my case, Ofcom found that the BBC had been duly
accurate, not unduly biased and not unduly misleading.
Ofcom said that “due” means adequate or
appropriate to the subject and nature of the programme and that “due
impartiality” does not therefore mean “an equal division of time has to be
given to every view, or that every argument and every facet of every argument
has to be represented.
So, it seems to me, the BBC may construct a
programme in which Brexit is in the dock. However, the evidence for
the prosecution need only be “duly” accurate. Worse, the evidence
for the defence need not be heard in full since the subject and nature of the
programme is Brexit in the dock; the test of “due impartiality” providing
generous cover for how facts are selected and represented. In sum,
it seems to me, if the programme content is roughly (duly) consistent with the
editorial line, then anything passes the Ofcom test! Like Captain
Yossarian, I am tempted to let out a respectful whistle and exclaim, “that’s
some catch.” And like Doc Daneeka, you might agree, “it’s the best
there is?”
It came as little comfort, but no surprise,
that the “BBC internal Watchdog” has been dismissed as unfit for purpose after
upholding a mere 25 complaints of bias in the last 5 years. During this time the BBC would have received
over 1.7 million complains of which, statistically, over 600,000 would have
been complaints about bias. It was
considered inconceivable that all but 25 of theses complaints were either
considered to be without merit or were dealt wilt informally to the satisfaction
of the complainant. Quite so!
As for Ahmed, in a dose of the curse of Mushroom,
he was made redundant by the BBC in 2021.
According to Wikipedia, he now heads a digital news company that aims to
counter misinformation.
Posts
