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in case you feel like writing to mark.damazer@bbc.co.uk or his boss richard.sambrook@bbc.co.uk to complain.<BR>
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,940770,00.html<BR>
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<FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Geneva">Analysis <BR>
</FONT></FONT><FONT SIZE="5"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
</FONT></FONT><FONT SIZE="6"><FONT FACE="Arial"><B>Taking sides</B></FONT></FONT><FONT SIZE="5"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> <BR>
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</FONT><FONT FACE="Arial">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?</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> <BR>
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</FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Geneva"><H3>David Miller<BR>
Tuesday April 22, 2003<BR>
</H3><FONT COLOR="#003366"><FONT SIZE="4"><B><U>The Guardian</U></B></FONT></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"> <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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". <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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". <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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". <BR>
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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". <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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<B>·</B> <FONT COLOR="#003366"><U>David Miller</U></FONT> is a member of the Stirling media research institute. Additional research by Emma Miller.<BR>
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