As a publicly-funded public service broadcaster, the BBC is supposed to be impartial. The BBC claims it is impartial. How it manages to do that in view of the fact that its bias is so obvious is a little difficult to understand.The corporation is notorious for its bias against Israel. It commissioned a study on its coverage of the Middle East conflict which resulted in the Balen Report. After chiefs read the report, the BBC refused to make its contents public, and is reported to have spent £200,000 in legal costs so far defying an order to make its contents public under the Freedom of Information Act. It is hard to imagine why it would do that unless it were that its contents condemn the corporation for its bias.
On another front the BBC has recently been accused of acting as cheerleader in the campaign to legalise assisted suicide.
On his website, Dr Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, gives the background to the charge. The BBC has recently filmed a man killing himself at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland for a documentary to be screened this summer. The programme will be presented by author Terry Pratchett, a patron of Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) and a campaigner for legalised assisted suicide.
The programme will be the fifth produced by the BBC in three years, says Dr Saunders, presented by a pro-euthanasia campaigner or sympathiser and specifically designed to portray taking one's own life in a positive light.
A BBC Panorama documentary fronted by Margo MacDonald MSP in the lead-up to tabling her euthanasia bill in the Scottish Parliament was screened four times. A 90-minute docudrama starring Julie Walters, telling the story of the death of Bath GP Anne Turner at Dignitas was screened seven times.
The 34th Richard Dimbleby Lecture featured Terry Pratchett making the case for assisted suicide for patients, like himself, with Alzheimer's disease. A hand-picked audience in the Royal College of Physicians signalled their approval as he described himself ending his life by nonchalantly sipping poisoned champagne in his back garden.
BBC East Midlands featured a confession by producer Ray Gosling to smothering a homosexual lover with AIDS. The story turned out to be pure fantasy - "but not until after the BBC machinery had blown it up into a massive international news story just prior to the Director of Public Prosecutions reporting on his assisted suicide prosecution criteria.
"I am also aware of a sixth 'documentary' currently being put together, again presented by a keen advocate of legalising assisted suicide, news of which has not yet entered the public domain.
"During this three year period there has not been one BBC programme presenting the opposite point of view. This is in spite of the fact that all three parliamentary bills attempting to legalise the practice in the last five years have been heavily defeated and despite the continuing robust opposition to legalisation from disability rights groups, medical professionals and faith groups. . .
"What is somewhat ironic about this whole process is the fact that there are strict codes about media coverage of suicide, not only from bodies like the World Health Organisation, but also from the BBC itself (on covering both suicide and criminal acts), which are constantly and repeatedly flouted . . .
"Concerns about the well-documented phenomenon of suicide contagion, especially following suicides carried out by celebrities. . . are simply not part of the narrative when the BBC covers these issues. Instead it has adopted almost a campaigning stance.
"No one is denying that the debate about assisted suicide is crucially important. This is a free democratic society and those who wish to see a change in the law are fully entitled to express their views in the public square. Furthermore it is to be expected that private media outlets will want to pursue a specific editorial line.
"But with an issue as important as this one, campaigners should not have the added advantage of being able to spread their propaganda by using the publicly funded national broadcasting corporation effectively as a private public relations company and press office."
The BBC spends an almost incredible amount of money. In these days of economic difficulty, perhaps something needs to be done about that too.
