[Media-watch] Biased Broadcasting Corporation

[David Cromwell]

Hello,

An interesting, timely and very useful article in today's Guardian 
undermining any misapprehension that the BBC has been 'anti-war'!

best wishes,

David Cromwell

Media Lens
http://www.medialens.org


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Biased broadcasting corporation

A survey of the main broadcasters' coverage of the invasion of Iraq 
shows the claim that the BBC was anti-war is the opposite of the truth

Professor Justin Lewis
Friday July 4, 2003
The Guardian

The recent furore about the BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq has 
generated rather more heat than light. But behind the government's 
attack on the BBC lies the serious accusation that the corporation's 
coverage of the conflict was anti-war. This claim goes much further 
than the much publicised attack on Andrew Gilligan - the BBC's 
critics in the government have clearly implied that Gilligan's 
stories are part of a more systematic, institutional bias.

So, is it true? The answer has little to do with the work of 
individual reporters - we know from previous research that people are 
influenced by the general weight of TV coverage rather than by 
particular reports. For this reason, we have conducted a more 
comprehensive survey of the way the four main UK broadcasters - the 
BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky - covered the war. After careful analysis 
of all the main evening news bulletins during the war, we have been 
able to build up a fairly clear picture of the coverage on the 
different channels.

Matthew d'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph described how "in the eyes 
of exasperated Blairites - the BBC whinged and whined, and did its 
best to sabotage the war effort". But the pattern that emerges from 
our study is very different. For example, we asked which of the four 
channels was most likely to use the British government as a source. 
The answer, it turns out, is the BBC - where the proportion of 
government sources was twice that of ITN and Channel 4 News. The BBC 
was also a little more likely to use British military sources in its 
coverage than the other three channels.

When it comes to reporting the other side, on the other hand, the BBC 
was much more cautious. Sky and Channel 4 were both much more likely 
than the BBC to quote official Iraqi sources. The BBC was also less 
likely than the other three channels to use independent sources like 
the Red Cross - many of whom were critical of the war effort (Channel 
4 used such sources three times more often than the BBC, Sky twice as 
often).

The government's case for war was based partly on the idea that most 
Iraqi people wanted liberation and hence supported the invasion. So 
to what extent did TV news portray the Iraqi people as welcoming US 
and British troops? This turned out to be a dominant theme of the 
coverage: across the news as a whole, the Iraqi people were around 
three times more likely to be portrayed as pro-invasion than 
anti-invasion. How far this represented actual Iraqi public opinion 
we have no way of verifying, but it fits happily with the 
government's version of events. This ratio was remarkably consistent 
across all TV channels - with the exception of Channel 4, where the 
ratio was a little less than two to one.

When it came to reporting the Iraqi casualties - clearly a negative 
for the government's case - we found fewer reports on the BBC than on 
the other three channels. Again, it was Channel 4 which was most 
likely to offer a critical note - 44% of its reports about the Iraqi 
people were about civilian casualties, compared with 30% on Sky, 24% 
on ITN, and only 22% on the BBC.

The picture that emerges from our data is fairly clear: if there was 
a TV channel that was more likely to report information damaging to 
the government's case, it was Channel 4. The BBC, by contrast, was 
often the channel least likely to engage in "whingeing and whining". 
So, for example, when Tony Blair accused the Iraqi regime of 
executing British soldiers - a story Downing Street was later forced 
to retract - the BBC was the only one of the early evening news 
bulletins that failed to examine the lack of evidence to support it, 
or to report the rather embarrassing government retraction the next 
day.

And when it came to the many other stories from military sources that 
turned out to be false, such as the Basra "uprising" or the launching 
of Scud missiles into Kuwait, Channel 4 was the only channel - 
rightly as it turned out - to offer a note of scepticism or caution. 
The BBC, ITN and Sky were, on the whole, much more trusting of US and 
British military sources.

The only finding that does not quite fit this pattern was, 
interestingly, the coverage given to weapons of mass destruction. The 
government was clearly keen to emphasise the danger posed by Iraq's 
alleged chemical or biological weapons, so to what extent did 
broadcasters report speculation hinting at their likely or possible 
use? While this turned out to be a much smaller theme during the war 
than we might have expected beforehand, we found that all four 
channels were much more likely to report speculation that implied 
Iraq might use such weapons than to cast doubt on their possible use.

But in this case, we found a few more reports on the BBC than 
elsewhere which allowed doubt to creep in - whether by reporting that 
such weapons had not been found or by casting doubt on their possible 
use. And yet, even here, the BBC was more than three times more 
likely to suggest that such weapons might be used than to suggest 
they might not. And, as it turned out, the BBC and the other 
broadcasters all placed much too much faith in the plausibility of 
such rumours.

Indeed, far from revealing an anti-war BBC, our findings tend to give 
credence to those who criticised the BBC for being too sympathetic to 
the government in its war coverage. Either way, it is clear that the 
accusation of BBC anti-war bias fails to stand up to any serious or 
sustained analysis.

· Professor Justin Lewis is deputy head of Cardiff University's 
school of journalism

comment at guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003


http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,991007,00.html
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