In the afternoon or evening of Wednesday
26th November 2003, U.K. Time (i.e. the next morning in New Zealand),
I saw on BBC World TV an episode of the interview programme "Hardtalk"
which showed the most blatant exhibition of Leftist media bias that
I have ever observed. This Leftist bias is almost always present, of
course, but most journalists try to conceal it most of the time.
This episode was not hosted by Tim (Never Criticise A Feminist) Sebastian,
but by one of his
stand-ins. It was an interview with Don McKinnon, Secretary-General
of the Commonwealth.
The interviewer cited the adverse views of two major UK newspapers
with regard to the Commonwealth.
The first paper cited was the Daily Mail, which used strong language
about the Commonwealth,
including the word "corrupt", or one of its cognates. The
interviewer then said something to the
effect that, of course, many people wrote off the Daily Mail because
of its right-wing views. Then
he quoted some likewise negative (but less strongly expressed) anti-Commonwealth
views that had
appeared in the Guardian. He did not say that anyone wrote off the Guardian
because of its
left-wing views (though I myself do -- and, in fact, there is a term
"Guardian-Reader", which stands
for a fairly predictable set of opinions. This term was in common use
when I was in the UK in
the 1980s.)
It is obvious to any critical media-watcher that journalistic culture
is crawling with people who
regard right-wingers as biased, and left-wingers as objective (See:
Left-Wing Media Bias ), but this was the
most blatant and
overt expression of that culture that I have ever seen. What makes that
bias even more insane in
this context is that Don McKinnon is a former Deputy Leader of the New
Zealand National (right-wing)
Party ! Why would he agree with a biased, left-wing BBC journalist,
saying that a right-wing newspaper was
biased ? I was until recently a member of that same party, and I can
say without fear of
contradiction that National Party members are well aware of anti-right
bias in the media -- as are
right-wingers all over the Western World.
Of course, these biased, Left-Wing journalists are always repeating
(as a smoke-screen) the well-known myths
about right-wing media bias, which is allegedly caused by the ownership
of the media concerned, but
it is obvious that most owners have little or no control over the slant
that is put on news and
current affairs programmes in the Western World.
