Culture Secretary Says 'BBC Is Left Wing'

Just a few months after a BBC boss suggested that his own organisation was 'left wing' the corporation has again been blasted for alleged anti-right wing political bias.

The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt said during an interview with the Observer, that it "was clear to most people that more BBC employees would vote Labour or Lib Dem than Conservative".

He also said that the corporation had been out of touch with public opinion in the recent past and shown left wing bias on issues such as Europe, immigration and Northern Ireland.

While Mr Hunt went out of his way to praise much that the BBC does, saying it made fantastic programmes and provided unparalleled news coverage, he suggested: "I think if you were to discover how people vote at the BBC there are probably more who vote Labour or for the Liberal Democrats than the Conservatives."

Mr Hunt then said he believed the BBC "now seemed to have got a grip on the problem of bias" - which had been recognised as an issue by its own Director General Mark Thompson.

As reported on Regional Film & Video, (page 1, September 2010) the BBC Director General Mark Thompson said the BBC was guilty of a "massive bias to the left" in the past.

In a magazine interview Mr Thompson commented that staff were "quite mystified" by the rise of Margaret Thatcher, but now there was "less overt tribalism" among its journalists.

He told the New Statesman: "It is a broader church. The BBC is not a campaigning organisation and can't be, and actually the truth is that sometimes our dispassionate flavour of broadcasting frustrates people who have got very, very strong views, because they want more red meat.

"Often that plays as bias. People think, 'Why can't they come out and say they are?' And that can play out on left and right.

"In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left," he said, but claimed it had changed.

"Now it is a completely different generation. There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC."

Meanwhile, the British public is losing faith in the BBC with public trust in the corporation having dropped by nearly a third since the early 1980s.

That's according to a new survey of British Social Attitudes published today.

(BMcC/GK)