Dominic Cummings, former Tory advisor and now the director of the New Frontiers Foundation gives his view of the media coverage of the Bush victory.

The BBC and mainstream media were so hopeful and sure of a Kerry victory that they have repeatedly distorted news, while simultaneously accusing the Republicans of lies, and have demonstrated that they are incapable of distinguishing between (a) their centre-left opinion and (b) an attempt at discovering objective truth.  As Dan Rather famously said, the New York Times “is not Left, it’s centre”. 

In programme after programme, you see BBC interviewers attacking the Right using the language and arguments of the Left, yet when they have, say, Robin Cook on the Today programme, they always ask questions like – “so why do you think the latest move by Bush is a disaster?”  They never ask a question like – “since you supported the Kosovo war and that was done without a UN mandate because the Russians vetoed, why do you now argue that America needs a UN mandate?”  If the subject is Europe, the Right is attacked with Blair’s arguments, but, say, Blair is attacked from the point of view of “why don’t you do more to sell Europe to the public?” – he is never asked, “given the EU’s stagnant economies and declining demographics, economies and universities, shouldn’t Britain steer clear of a project that seems to many as though it’s going down the tubes?”

In all the debates about bias with BBC executives and journalists, they simply never understand the force of this point – they simply say “we aren’t biased, we balance programmes fairly”. They have, along with Jon Snow et al, entirely misunderstood how people outside their dinner party circuit think – they get away with it in Britain because of the enormous crisis of the Conservative Party since the late 1980s but they have not got away with it with the US election.  Jim Naughtie’s report this morning describing Bush’s policy as “divisive – even unilateral [ie. unilateral is worse than being divisive]”, Humphrys saying yesterday that four more years is “a bit scary”… It is inconceivable that anybody other than “an ideologue”, “an ultra-religious person”, “self-intersted big business” etc could possibly think the Iraq war a good idea or Bush referable to Kerry. 

They just don’t get it.  If the CP in Britain could rejuvenate, the same people from the Independent to the BBC would get a similar shock to the one they have just had.

As a tiny example of the psychology of BBC employees, check this blog by a BBC employee who laments the victory of “a bible bashing chimp”

http://bayman.blogspot.com/

The BBC’s behaviour discredits them as analysts and raises major questions about the license fee paid to a state broadcaster populated mostly by people of a particular political perspective who wrongly think their views are “mainstream” and “centre” rather than centre-left and who consistently distort political debate.  There are exceptions – people who are on the Left but are also neutral, and people on the Right who are also professional (like A Neil), but the overall thrust is clear.  We consequently have a far less diverse and professional media than America and our democratic culture is paying the price. 

This combination of poor professionalism and bias from senior BBC people is, of course, one of the reasons why they handled the Gilligan affair so incompetently – an organisation that every day criticises or sneers at other institutions’ errors made under the spotlight blundered themselves in elementary ways and blew what was objectively a potentially strong hand. 

The next BBC story line?  “America is full of (a) stupid people, and (b) religious maniacs – only this can explain the irrational result.” 

We can safely predict that the BBC’s coverage will continue along the lines of their recent series on Al Qaeda (The Power of Nightmares, advertised by somebody saying that “it simply does not exist”).  It is very unlikely that we will see programmes asking European politicians – “just why is it that America enjoys such higher standards of living than Europe, why is it that their dominance in higher education and hi-tech industries continues to increase, and why has the EU Commission recently published a report saying that three-quarters of EU graduates that study in America do not return to Europe?”  The current mentality will not change until there is another major terrorist attack, after which the BBC mindset will be stunned by the public’s reaction…