Biased Broadcasting Corporation

‘POLITICS is a knock-about affair and, battered and bruised from accusations about ‘sexed up’ dossiers and plagiarised policy documents, the Government seems to be playing its joker.

‘I’m going outside; I may be some time’

Step forward and rattle the bells on your hat, Alastair Campbell. The man behind many of the news stories has now become the story himself.

It could be an act of selfless heroism up there with Captain Oates.

The Independent says that Campbell’s allegation that the BBC has exercised bias against the Government in its coverage of war in Iraq has set the corporation and Tony Blair’s spin doctor on a ‘collision’ course.

Last night the BCC’s governors emerged from a meeting in one mind. Gavyn Davies, the Beeb’s chairman, called on Campbell to withdraw his claims of bias.

In a statement, repeated fully in the Times, Mr Davies says that the BBC’s coverage of the Iraq issue has been ‘entirely impartial’.

The response to the statement of BBC unity by No.10 is as direct. ‘We are saddened that the BBC continues to defend the indefensible,’ it tells the Telegraph.

This ‘indefensible’ is not the suggestion that the dossiers might have been designed to win public support for war, talking of the 45-minute deployment time for weapons of mass destruction and such, but that the Prime Minister misled the nation.

In a further statement, spoken through Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Campbell’s new deputy, we hear that the enemy are moving up the Thames on a flotilla of nuclear-powered dinghies and lilos and unless we all give Tony our complete support and stop being so negative the world will end in seconds.

We have been warned…

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Posted: 7th, July 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink