Ex BBC senior journalist on BBC Bias

Peter Sissons is a journalist with a successful career working both for the independent television news (ITN) and the BBC.

The Daily Mail Online (not something I am given to reading, but someone twittered about it...) carries an extract from his book which really gets under the skin of BBC bias. Well worth reading, including lines such as:

In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.

It reminds me of something incredibly revealing that the late Brian Hanrahan once said: 'Of course we don't just base our views on our opinions: we talk with friends and colleagues to get a sense of what the public are thinking.' Oddly enough, the friends and colleagues whom BBC journalists talk to in Ealing and Highgate may not be a completely representative sample of the views of the people...