The Daily Telegraph of London reports that a group called the Campaign for Common Sense is offering new research demonstrating a “woke bias” at state-run British Broadcasting Corporation, despite rules about maintaining impartiality. It comes two years after BBC director general Tim Davie launched a 10-point plan to ensure impartiality.
Start with slavery: As of September, the BBC News website had featured 55 separate stories about slavery and reparations for slavery and Britain’s links to the transatlantic slave trade, appearing at a rate of more than one a week to that point in the year. Stories ranged from “How a flood led family to discover slavery link” to “Jamaicans call for Gladstone slavery reparations”.
In January, the long-running soap opera Waterloo Road featured a plot involving students in open revolt over their school’s links to the transatlantic slave trade. “The episode opens with a girl scrawling the word ‘racist’ across a plaque of her school’s 19th-century founder. Students are later depicted holding banners saying ‘students against slavery’, and throwing red paint to symbolize the blood of slaves.”
The BBC also came under criticism in January for referring to the explorer Sir Francis Drake as a “16th-century slave trader”. BBC London News was forced to amend its online article and delete a tweet on it after a backlash.
The research also revealed how contested gender issues also featured in BBC news and drama with what the Campaign described as a “woke world view” driving the output. In February, BBC Radio 4’s PM program was forced to apologize for having two transgender activist guests who branded Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling “transphobic” without any opposing view. The Left despises allowing any dissent from LGBTQ orthodoxy.
In June, the medical drama Casualty came under fire for promoting breast amputation – “top surgery” –– before 9 pm, what they call “pre-watershed.” The episode featured Arin Smethurst, a non-binary trans actor playing the character Sah, expressing happiness her amputation has been scheduled. “For now at least, I’m just happy that I’ll finally look like the person I feel like on the inside.” Other characters shared their happiness and approval.
The Independent published an official BBC attempt at a rebuttal:
A spokesperson for the BBC responded to the accusations, arguing that “cherry-picking a handful of examples or highlighting genuine mistakes in thousands of hours of output does not constitute analysis and is not a true representation of BBC content”.
“We are proud that our output seeks to represent all audiences and a range of stories and perspectives,” they continued.
“Across the entirety of our services there will, of course, be occasions when people disagree with or want to challenge what they have watched or heard and we have well publicised routes for them to do that.”
Readers of NewsBusters know we laugh especially hard at newscasters complaining about “cherry-picking” examples, since news organizations “cherry pick” quotes and facts all day, every day.