[Media-watch] BBC coverage

[david Miller]

in case you feel like writing to mark.damazer at bbc.co.uk or his boss
richard.sambrook at bbc.co.uk to complain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,940770,00.html

Analysis 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taking sides 

The anti-war movement accuses the BBC of having had a pro-war bias; the
government says it was too Baghdad-friendly. So who is right?

David Miller
Tuesday April 22, 2003
The Guardian 

The BBC was attacked by both sides over the Iraq war. It was the only news
organisation apart from the Sun that was targeted by anti-war demonstrators,
and senior managers apologised for the use of biased terms such as
"liberate" in their coverage. Meanwhile, ministers publicly criticised the
BBC's alleged bias towards Baghdad. The BBC argued that criticism from all
sides showed it must be getting something right. The empirical evidence,
however, suggests a pro-war orientation.

The BBC, as the national broadcaster, has always found it difficult to
resist government pressure. During the Falklands war, for example, it was
attacked as traitorous for airing doubts about the war, but its senior
management was clear that the bulk of its output had either not reported
Argentinian claims or had "nailed" them as "propagandist lies".

The level of public opposition to the war in Iraq was difficult for the BBC
to navigate. The war exposed a serious disconnection between the political
elite and the public, so the usual method of ensuring "balance" -
interviewing politicians - was never going to be enough. Other channels,
including even ITV's lightweight Tonight programme, tried new ways of
accessing opposition, while the BBC cautioned its senior manage- ment, in a
confidential memo dated February 6, to "be careful" about broadcasting
dissent. 

Once the war began, the BBC restricted the range of acceptable dissent yet
further. The network's head of news, Richard Sambrook, said this is "partly
because there is a degree of political consensus within Westminster, with
the Conservatives supporting the government policy on the war and the
Liberal Democrats, while opposed to the war, supporting the UK forces".

The BBC thus turned a blind eye to divisions in the country. A study of
coverage in five countries for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shows that
the BBC featured the lowest level of dissent of all. Its 2% total was even
lower than the 7% found on the US channel ABC.

The BBC argues that its reporters are not perfect and make mistakes on a
"daily basis". "We don't only make them in [a pro-war] direction," the
deputy head of news, Mark Damazer, protested last month. But in the first
half of the war almost all the false stories, such as those about
non-existent Scuds or the capture of Umm Qasr, Nassiriya or Basra, reported
by the BBC, originated with the US and UK military.

According to Damazer, "It's perfectly proper for us to say 'a British
defence source has said...' and not report it as gospel truth... The secret
is attribution, qualification and scepticism". But it is a secret with which
news teams are not always familiar. According to Sambrook, the 10 O'Clock
News is more "solid" than rolling news because editors have time to "weigh
up material". Yet, on the first night of the war, the 10 O'Clock News stated
on 12 separate unattributed occasions that Scuds had been fired by the
Iraqis. 

Sambrook says it is "important [to] correct" false stories. But this doesn't
mean that they will actually say "and not as the BBC wrongly stated earlier"
or "and not as the military told us yesterday".

The fundamental orientation of the BBC is towards UK and US forces. The use
of terms such as "liberation" to describe US and UK victories continued
after Damazer noted it was "wrong" on March 27. Pro-war assumptions were
also revealed in the failure to use warnings when reporting was restricted
by the coalition. According to Sambrook, "We do preface our reports from
embedded reporters, saying that they cannot give operational details or
location. That is the only constraint on their reporting." This was not
true. There was no consistent prefacing of embedded reports with warnings,
as there was in Baghdad. In the Iraqi capital, reports were said to be
"monitored" and reporters sometimes "restricted" in their movements. With
the coalition, no "restrictions" are said to be in place. In fact, embedded
reporters signed a contract requiring them to "follow the direction and
orders of the government".

As Baghdad fell on April 9, BBC reporters could hardly contain themselves in
their haste to endorse the victors. This was a "vindication" of the strategy
and it showed Blair had been "right" and his critics "wrong". Here the BBC
enunciated a version of events very similar to that of the government.
According to the BBC, "dozens" witnessed the statue pulled down by US
marines in Baghdad on April 9, while "thousands" demonstrated against
"foreign hegemony" in the same city on the 18th. Yet the footage of the
former was described as "extraordinary", "momentous" and "historic", while
the larger demonstration was greeted with scepticism. Are they "confined to
a small vocal minority", the newscaster asked.

It was almost as if the BBC and Channel 4 News were covering different wars.
On the night that Channel 4 led with the killing of 13 civilians in Mosul by
US marines, the BBC relegated the story to the end of the news. ITN has
followed the fortunes of a Baghdad family throughout the war. Such
innovations were absent on BBC news.

In the leaked February memo, Sambrook concluded that these are "delicate"
judgments and "we will pay a high price for getting them wrong". He is
right, but it may not only be the BBC's reputation that is damaged - BBC
staff are voting on whether to take strike action over the sacking of two
World Service journalists (one Iraqi, one Palestinian), which some believe
was linked to the pressure on the BBC to misreport the war.

· David Miller is a member of the Stirling media research institute.
Additional research by Emma Miller.


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