Monday, October 30, 2006

The non-secret impartiality policeman's ball

Blogger Bruce Bawer, writing yesterday, via an approving link from Andrew Sullivan:

... a story from LifeSiteNews.com reporting that the BBC "has admitted to a marked bias against Christianity and a strong inclination to pro-Muslim reporting among the network's executives and key anchors." It has also admitted that "the corporation is dominated by homosexuals." These admissions came at a secret "impartiality summit" that the Daily Mail reported on last Sunday. The Telegraph ran an opinion column about this summit, but otherwise I can't find any reference to it on the websites of other major UK papers.

So the canard about the "secret summit" is still circulating. Here's the BBC explanation from, yes, their website --

Well I was one of the people who was at the "secret" meeting and I have to say the reality was somewhat different to the way the press are reporting it. For a start, this wasn’t a secret meeting... it was streamed live on the web. The meeting was made up of executives, governors and lots of non-BBC people like John Lloyd from the FT and Janet Daley from the Daily Telegraph. It was planned as a serious seminar to investigate and understand better the BBC’s commitment to impartiality in an age in which spin and opinion riddle much of the world’s journalism.

Many of the supposed revelations from the live online secret summit spring from freewheeling discussion groups and are far short of final analysis of bias, real or imagined, at the BBC. Do like Bawer or Sullivan did not do and read the whole thing.

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