Rich.

Americans prefer our patriotism spoon fed. And no thank you we do not wish to believe that our bombs kill children, even if by accident. It never happens because Fox doesn't show it.

Greg Dyke, Dir-Gen of the BBC also claimed that BBC coverage was impartial and accurate.

What a tawdry joke ! The BBC coverage was appallingly slanted, and frequently inaccurate or incomplete. A UK national disgrace.

Pot calling kettle less than pristine. Many people - including Brit bloggers - were just as upset with the BBC for being blatantly biased.

And if you go to their main page right now, you'll see that infamous NKOR propaganda poster. You know, the one with them shelling the US Capitol building except that the Beeb has cropped out the Capitol dome. So much for journalistic independence. This is jsut as bad as the LA Times altered photos. Hypocrites!

Johns,
Concur. Not as biased as Fox or US news, but still a strong pro-war bias at BBC.

The words "fair" and "impartial" are not necessarilly equivalent to "contrary". For the BBC to continually use the word "invaders" and all its attendant connotations could just as easilly be seen as "committed political position."

We Americans prefer our media outlets to be independent of the government and privately funded instead of by a draconian "tv license fee".

Fox is the best station to watch ...
if you want to know what the White House wants us to believe.

BBC gives you the side of the story the US and British government don't want you to hear.

In a sense BBC gaves both sides of the picture. The official goverment propaganda and the everything is going wrong slant. Something for everyone.

How about a Centcom hearing for objectivity! Weren't they wonderful?

Nonsense

The BBC gave a lot of leftie bias, a lot of sheer inaccuracy - eg denying that US troops had swung through Baghdad - lots of hostile interviews with Coalition people but no equivalent challenges to peaceniks or to Saddam's people.

The BBC were a flaming disgrace - just as they were in the Falklands campaign. There is an endemic left-wing bias in the BBC, not even any attempt at neutrality.

Oh - by the way. The Chairman and the Dir-Gen of the BBC are big-time Labour supporters. Scandalous.

I would agree that the BBC gives a side that the administration does not want you to hear. The resaon is, the administration prefers accuracy.

During the war you could watch the BBC proclaiming there were no US troops at the Saddam airport, then turn to Fox and see US troops already clearing the landing areas so they can be resupplied.

Unlike its behavior for all the years that I've listened to and watched BBC, this time around the Beeb abandoned objectivity for simple contrariness. Their on-air content seems to have been prepared based on the assumption that they had no choice but to stake out either of pro-war or an anti-war position. Obviously, that's not the case. Objectivity requires them to take neither position.

Even overlooking the spin, the BBC is making simple and sloppy mistakes at an alarming rate.

For the BBC to continually use the word "invaders" and all its attendant connotations could just as easilly be seen as "committed political position."

No...what it proves is you are a liar. Fox quoted Iraqis using the term invaders. Does that make them the same as BBC? What BBC commentors used was the term "invasion" which was also used on fox. If you know your history that is what the US government called the landing on Normandy.

1. The USA has several media options, only one of which is directly funded by the government- NPR.

2. This guy must have only tuned into Fox- he obviously didn't notice the other stations. Or maybe he's ignoring the ratings of the other US channels?
Is he perchance worried that the BBC's bungling of the war coverage might threaten its position?

Overall, this shows one way in which the internet operated as such a powerful tool- you can research the views and reports of all parties involved. You can check out Fox or the BBC or Indymedia, the Arab News, whatever your heart desires. :)

"eg denying that US troops had swung through Baghdad "

What the BBC siad is that they had not gone through the centre of Baghdad. given that some 30 streaming webcams showed that they were miles from the city center they reported the facts. Fox of course said they went through the centre whcih was demonstrably wrong. Centocm showed their route with map and it turns out no one in the city centre could have seen them.

You look like you have the bias my friend.

LOL! Just what makes people think that FOX is biased, anyway? What other news agency are you comparing them to, and how the hell do you know that THAT news agency isn't biased itself?

ALL news services have their biases -- FOX is just more upfront about the fact that it is biased towards pro-Americanism, pro-reason, pro-individualism, and pro-freedom (and those are such NASTY values, aren't they?). For the Beeb, or CNN, to call themselves "unbiased" is an enormous joke. I listen to the BBC radio at work all the time, and it is utterly consistent in being the complete opposite of FOX, philosophically.

Maybe the Baghdad Broadcasting Corp., especially their Arabic program, should take a vote of the staff on the Ark Royal.

Don't forget to check out biasedbbc.blogspot.com

The Beeb is also being sued according to a post on samizdata.net. They should turn it into class-action status if possible.

They're reacting this way because they've finally been caught. I sent an email yesterday about their blatant lies from an article that was linked by biasedbbc.

Did you know that NPR is a small state-funded outlet?

described US soldiers as "heroes" and "liberators"

What's wrong with that? They are heroes and they were liberating a people from a dictator.

Does the BBC disagree with that? There were British soldiers fighting this war too.

Are they not their heroes?

" FOX is just more upfront about the fact that it is biased towards pro-Americanism"

Fox is not pro-American, it is simply populist. It makes news according to the winds of opinion. This is a long trend called "uyellow" journalism.

Everyone loves car chases, but it doesn't exactly inform.

"Americans prefer our patriotism spoon fed. And no thank you we do not wish to believe that our bombs kill children, even if by accident. It never happens because Fox doesn't show it."

Huh? No station should show bombed, bleeding children. Why should we see that for? I'm not really interested in seeing anyone bombed and blown up. FOX News is, as they advertise, fair and balanced. It's just the media has been so purely liberal for so long that one ounce of a conservative voice gets everyone crazy.

Anthony: No one should expect the Centcom briefings to be any more objective than a corporate news conference or any random cluster of politicians and news crew on Capitol Hill. Their job is to present their position in the most favorable light. In other words, to spin. It is the job of the journalists in the room to deal with the spin. Journalists are rather naive to believe otherwise. (Although some journalists have cynically tried to make a story out of their offended and alleged naivete.)

Even without all the justified criticism heaped on BBC for the obvious partiality of its reporting on the war, they've made far too many amateurish mistakes for an organization with the skills and resources available to BBC.

All this blather about "bias" and "objectivity" is completely beside the point. My only criteria for news sources is "accuracy."

On this count, the BBC comes in somewhat behind Fox and slightly ahead of Comical Ali.

I watched Fox and other news outlets regularly through the war (though only very occassionally the BBC), and I have to say that Fox's supposedly "pro-war" reporting actually turned out to be quite accurate, because the war really was going as well as Fox claimed it did.

"No station should show bombed, bleeding children. Why should we see that for? I'm not really interested in seeing anyone bombed and blown up."

Yes I don't know why I should learn about the costs of war. War is about patriotic miusic and gunsights. Children don''t suffer and get killed in war...why is the BBC making this stuff up?..it hurts my head.

Pass the remote, I need to surf between WWF, Fox and the latest slice and dice horror movie.

Just for the record, all but a fraction of NPR's money comes from listener contributions, not the government. That's why they keep running those fundraising campaigns.

I tend to agree that Fox's bias isn't the problem but their problem is with poor accuracy. They also seem to fail to correct many of their stories.

The BBC is in in the stage of their evil that is similar to where American left-wing academia put itself in in the 80s with 'political-correctness'. They've exposed their totalitarian tendencies and desires so blatantly that they now have to either reform themselves or shift into total shameless mode (think Clintonism). Unfortunately it is obvious what they will choose.

Privatize them, now.

Don't recall BBC employees looting from Iraq...unlike those nice folks at Fox.

BTW, BBC growing at faster rate then Fox. hmmm.

Ian

While 'invaders' connotes an anti-war slant, literally it is the correct term as opposed to 'liberators' which is upfront politically loaded.

No news service is unbiased. For two reasons.
1) Humans involved.
2) Bias is a perception. Even an apathetic service with no vested interest in a certain slant cannot create an unbiased report, unless it avoids any analysis or focusing. Chronology of an event coverage, accidental and unintended verbal emphasis and such nuances and just random imperfections in selecting the optimal sides to represent the different viewpoints inevitably creep in, leading to bias perception.

Having said that, there are varying degrees of explicit and subliminal bias projected. On such a scale however, I think the BBC does fairly well, in my book. Fox News tends to be at the other end of the spectrum. But that isn't surprising. Murdoch is a pukka businessman. The Fox news service is simply a tool for brand consolidation and promotion. By catering to the popular yet unexpressed public sentiment and perception, it will only grow in popularity among the Joe Sixpack rather than the discerning viewers. As in any general population, the former greatly outnumber the latter and in a democratic society like the US, unhampered by cultural elitism to a good extent, have vastly greater influence as well.

The main problem in this war is that most of us are watching English-language media. Among the Anglophones, only Canada and Rep. of Ireland are not participating in the war and even those 2 are close to the countries which are..

Dave
The contrast you mention could be the very reason why US news is more biased. They are dependent on advertising revenue, which in turn, is based on viewership. A news service, more or less, telling you what you want to hear while maintaining some semblance of impartiality, is only likely to have greater success towards that end. The BBC, because the British government knows that the people know that the government funds the BBC, has to necessarily adopt a more "independent" stance to preserve credibility, irrespective of ideology among the top news executives.

Well, just for the record, Fox did show footage from the marketplace bombings. They also showed footage from the attack on the hotel.

But bear in mind, they weren't allowed in Iraq, except for the embedded reporters.

As for accurarcy, they seem to have been proved correct on the war. The BBC and most of Europe's press are the ones that seem to have trouble with accuracy.

"Yes, let's privatize them." [visualize hypnotist zapping mind-control rays here] "Only corporations can be trusted! Corporations work in everyone's interest! Corporations will lower prices and increase quality! Yes, let's give it all to the corporations!"

Fucking idiot.

> Yes I don't know why I should learn about the
> costs of war.

Oh, get over yourself. I know people die in car accidents each day, but do I need to see their dead boddies on the 10 O'Clock news each night? No. I know people die in fires each day, do I need to see their burning corpses each night? No. I know people have miscarages every day, do I need to see those tiny slimy little vaginal discharges everynight? No.

Give me a break, I've seen those sites with their "Al-jazeera" blown up children and limbs, I've read anti-war novels, I know the horrors of the war. All those images do is inflame audiences. If people see those images, they'll get an inaccurate viewpoint of the war. FOX has given stories on how many casualties there are in the war, and they give statistics and numbers (alike the statistics for dead American soilders). They've even had a lot of stories and updates on that one child who had his arms blown up and his parents dying.

If what you enjoy in a news program is a circling vulture with a camera hooked to it's head, then go ahead and watch that.

I agree that much of the US media is biased in various directions. The real horse laugh here is that the Beeb is claiming not to be. And that people buy their line of BS! Simply because they lack glitz and speak with British accents doesn't make them smarter. They were appalling, particularly their World News Service. They're taking Baghdad Bob at his word about the Americans not taking the airport even as it sat, fully under US control, was an amazing bit of misinformation. As was their reporter who claimed to report this from the airport when in fact he was not there.

This kind of garbage is above and beyond the semantics of calling the US "invaders" while we might prefer "liberators." Both are supremely self-serving. I'm find the BBC's sloppy journalism and its World Service's stated editorial anti-war slant to be far more troubling.

And yeah, Fox is a right wing mouthpiece. I don't like them much either.

And yeah, I know a bomb can kill a kid if it falls on them. What's the point of that argument? Simply by showing an certain image, one is instantly more credible and honest? Rather a simpleminded argument.

To those who would have the news show bombed children, in order to show the "truth" about war- this makes as much sense as showing the lurid sex acts of prostitutes up close in order to show the "truth" about life on the streets of the inner city. In other words, "we aleady know that happens".

Gyan, the joke is that you associate any kind of intellectual 'discernment' with any television network at all. No, people who watch FOX don't do it because they're not 'discerning' enough to watch PBS, they watch FOX for the same reason they like to avoid smelling dog shit.

//FOX News is, as they advertise, fair and balanced. //

Foxnews is not fair and balanced.

It certainly does a good job of reporting the facts but with it comes a whole lot of subjcted biased opinions about the meaning of those facts. It also lies ("the all stars") on a regular basis.

Here is a good link.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh041403.shtml

Did you consider Fox's coverge of Geraldo giving away military secrets fair and balance?

How did he get the info anyway? He was not imbedded?

As an aside, NPR is does indeed receive only a small part of its funding from your tax dollars. From page 21 of NPR's most recent annual report:

"NPR receives no direct general operating support from any national or local government source. NPR does compete along with other producers for specific project grants from federally funded entities such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. (Such grants typically account for less than 2% of NPR’s revenues in any given year. CPB provides public radio stations with direct general support, which accounts, on average, for about 13% of a station’s total revenue and may be used to help cover its NPR membership and program fees.)"

Fox's error rate was pretty high, but it is breaking new ground as a kind of "cheerleader network," so that is bound to happen.

All their reporting about civilian deaths focused on false premises about how this "couldn't happen," and must be faked. This is something their news acnhors/commentors kept saying even though the military experts they had weee careful not to make these statements.

If you look at the coverage they are back on car chases, the laci peterson thing, who knows, alien abductions next. I note they are really pulling back from covering the shia demonstrations, etc.

They do well with the Geraldo audience, but that isn't saying much.

americanstreet

A brilliantly reasoned and impartial analysis of American media habits. Thank you for proving my point.

Raoul, there's enough misdirection and deniability in that paragraph of where NPR gets its money ("receives no 'direct' general operating support") to make an O.J. laywer see the light. Nice try, you AND NPR.

"about war- this makes as much sense as showing the lurid sex acts of prostitutes up close in order to show the "truth" about life on the streets of the inner city. In other words, "we aleady know that happens"."

What a perverse statement and sick statement. Telling the story of a child who is hospitalized is reality (not "reality tv" like fox's monica show).

Not wanting to know the cost of war is what is sick.

Correction: My first time ever commenting in a blog. I was refering to Dave and ND, not Ian and Dave respectively in my first post.

Gyan, thanks for mocking Dave.
Hs the guy who claimed the BBC said "invaders" when it never did.

I don't know if you could honestly claim that any of the news services, once they started editorializing, was fair and unbiased, although some seemed closer to accuracy or just reporting the facts than others...I tended to watch a lot of Sky News and CNN via computer during the hot part of the war, in part because I could avoid their editorializing, and to some degree so I could avoid the really too rah-rah or anti-war editorial bias of a variety of news services. For breaking news, I tended to hang out here and at a few other blogs.

Many people tended to pick the news services which felt most comfortable to their POV....But I heard more British people complaining about BBC's slant than I heard Americans complain about NPR's particular bias...

Who's the most unbiased? I don't know! Because I have a point of view too, and my view will color my interpretation of the bias of others....but I must admit, from the complaints I heard, the bbc will have a tarnished image for me for awhile....just like the good folks at the American ABC....But that doesn't mean I trust Fox to protray nothing but the truth, either...

The truth is out there. It's our job as people who want to be informed to sift through the chaos and look for the golden nuggets of what is really happeneing....

So, Brian, you think it's useful to show the results of a policy decision (in this case to go to war), especially as how it affects children?

I take it that you would support showing sonograms of late-term abortions during any news story on that issue, just so we can see the results of that policy decision, no matter how inflammatory such images may be?

And shouldn't CNN and others shown graphic images of people who had been tortured and mutilated by Saddam's government, to show the effects of a policy choice to do nothing about Iraq, no matter how inflammatory such images may be?

Your attempts to hairsplit on these questions should prove quite amusing . . .

Americanstreet:

If you think use of the word "direct" in that NPR statement indicates that they're trying to conceal truckloads of government funding, please provide some evidence as proof.

I'm getting tired of all this stupid conspiratorial fingerpointing -- from right and left -- premised soley on someone's comfortable ideological bias.

BBC recruits its reporters directly from the Guardian. Their opposition to the war, prior to commencement, was barely disguised -- and once the war started they had to toe that earlier line. Invasion, never "liberation"; "coalition" in sneering, contempt-dripping, quotes.

Even the first report on Galloway, on their website, was titled "Galloway Denies Iraq Payment Claims." The focus was on the denial, not on the report of the treasonous payments. My god, could you imagine if someone had caught a Tory MP taking money from some right wing dictator? What would their headline have been then?

I love the BBC, love listening to the World Service on Short Wave; the chimes of Big Ben at the top of the hour can give you goosebumps. On Africa, they are unbeatable. But this time they were way overboard in their Anti-American, anti-war reporting. It was making me sick and I could not listen or watch. Thank god they have moved on to SARS and other stories worth hearing.

FOX is biased as well; but the BBC holds itself out as being above it all. This story only shows they have no clue about their own severe biases.

Knitting
I am kinda with you. I am a longtime news junkie yet I had no real opinion about objectivity of one news "brand" over another until I started following the blogs. Now I do have "prefered" brands, and certain "brands" that have managed to tarnish themselves... such as the BBC.
I did burst out laughing over the comment the poster made above about "BBC not being any smarter just because they are speaking with British accents!
Lara Logan, now of CBS, Shall we shag now or shall we shag later! (I know, she is from South Africa, but the ugly american in me still files her under British)

The BBC apparently operated under the assumption that the reports from the Hussein government were accurate and reliable. This was clearly not true. That should have been obvious to them based on their own prior experience in Iraq.

Yet they still felt comfortable broadcasting Iraq Infomration Ministry statements as rebuttals to information released by CENTCOM, the British and American gov'ts, and the commanders in the field. That's not objectivity, it's just being pissy: showing how "independent" they were and how exhibiting pointless distrust against people they don't like at the expense, unfortunately, of accurate reporting.

All I know is, I email back and forth with several Brits, and one and all they were disgusted with the BBC's reporting in Iraq. If I remember correctly, the crew of the Ark Royal demanded the news feed be changed from BBC to SkyNews, because they of their own experience knew the BBC was misreporting the news.

This is just a counter attack strategy from a leftist and Anti-American news outfit to throw the focus off its own poor performance. The BBC is trying to justify its own existance by showing that it is a counter-balance to the 'other' side.

Hmm, sounds like France's strategy.

> It certainly does a good job of reporting the facts
> but with it comes a whole lot of subjcted biased
> opinions about the meaning of those facts. It also
> lies ("the all stars") on a regular basis.

FOX has a lot of "commentary" where it has people debate about topics, but whenever those topics are discussed there is often a "far left" and a "far right" opposition. On CNN, for example, they ussually only have on a "far left" guest and allow them to "spin". What your probably seeing is an ounce of "conservative" view, and immidiately peg FOX as a conservative network.

> http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh041403.shtml

? I think you gave me the wrong link... I've watched the "armchair generals" on both networks, and on CNN they were often talking about how it would be "difficult" and "long", but on FOX they were always more optimistic and based their reasonings on facts.

> Did you consider Fox's coverge of Geraldo giving > away military secrets fair and balance?

While I don't agree with giving out military secrets, I don't think Geraldo was stated "top secret" stuff. It had already been talked about in other news media before Geraldo drew that map in the sand.

This basically confirms the arrogance of the BBC these days. These buttholes believe they're impartial, and everyone else is biased. They believe therefore that they are the standard bearers of journalism these days. If they parrot the Iraqi Information Minister's propaganda with unquestioning loyalty like they did, it's hardly "impartial" jourmalism. It's stupid journalism! They almost blatantly overstated any coalition difficulties, and loved to use words like "quagmire" and "vietnam". What a bunch of losers.

There seem to be a couple of underlying themes to many of the posts regarding media coverage of this war.

1. Without the use of guesome photographs or video coverage of dead or dismembered Iraqis, the U.S. media (as a group) is attemping to delude the American public about the true nature of war and its costs.

2. Anyone who would choose to watch FOX News for coverage of the war is fundamentally devoid of intellect, jingoistic, and morally corrupt (insomuch as they obviously lack the human compassion that CNN or PBS or BBC viewers have).

Some of the respondents have made well reasoned arguments that tend to support or counter these opinions. For that we should be grateful. However, many have chosen to divisively attack anyone and everyone who doesn't tow the line with their particular opinion. These actions are neither the providence of the left nor the right, but both equally.

Natural reaction to such displays is to latch onto the ones that are more in line with your views and to lash out at opinions that take the opposite tact. I can be amusing and even a bit envigorating, but rarely does it accomplish that task that most desire, bringing a different light to other's ways of thinking. Polarization is never much of a benefit unless your dealing with magnetic fields or directing light particles.

President Bush has been criticized by many on the left for looking at things in 'black and white' terms. What the more liberal colleagues (at least in these blogs) fail to realize is that too many times they portray their position as the 'white' and the right as the 'black'. They too often are unwilling to allow for any part of the opposite opinion to be true. And alas, the right gets caught up in the same predicament, neither willing to place an ounce of worth on the others thoughts or opinions. Public discourse isn't meant to ram your opinion down other's throats, but to exchange ideas and hopefully generate common understanding. Unfortunately, this rarely works out.

A philosopher (though I can't remember which) once said that 'there is truth in everything'. Isn't it possible that both sides hold some measure of the truth?

I, myself, lean towards conservative values, but that doesn't mean that I don't see and incorporate more liberal arguments into my ever evolving view of the world around me. However, without a civilized presentation, a liberal will be hard pressed to even get the vaguest acknowledgement from me.

Now that I'm done with that diatribe, I guess I should address the two issues that I started this post with.

1. Though I do believe that some people will be oblivious to the horrific nature of this war or any war, just showing them the pictures of maimed and dead women and children will not foster understanding. For whatever reason, pictures without proper context will only lead to highly emotional responses that lack any rational reasoning. Every reasonalble human being will be moved by such pictures, but perhaps not in the way that those who are espousing it would have us wish.

Others have talked about car accidents, prostitutes, abortion, etc., but let me lay out one other scenario. What would have been your reaction if the news had shown footage of every dismember body as it was pulled from the World Trade Centers? The charred remains of men and women horribly burned in the flames that licked the Pentagon? The limbs of the passengers that chose to fight to keep another plane from striking?

I don't know about you, but I believe my combination of sadness and anger would have boiled to more of a rage. Perhaps I wouldn't have been content with supporting my government in pursuing the perpetrators. Seeing the bodies of two little girls as they were about to travel across country to visit their dad, might just have pushed me into a rage. And when one is in such a mental state, reason quickly becomes a casualty. I wonder if much of the cycle of violence in Palestine isn't the result of such a perpetuation...

2. In my opinion, FOX News isn't the best news organizaiton in the world, but it isn't the demon that it has been made out to be either. I believe that the anchors (or any other personalities) on FOX are paid to be opinionated. For so long, we've expected our news people to set aside any of their own feelings when reporting a story that we're shocked by the 'cheerleading' aspect of the FOX personnel. I actually found that to be a little refreshing. I also liked the fact that FOX was openly skeptical of the obvious lies that were disseminated by 'Baghdad Bob'. When other news services would report his casualty figures as fact, I quickly became sure that they had lost their ability to discern fact from fiction.

I did not feel that clouded their reporting of facts as they had them at the time. I thought they were overly eager on reporting any potential WMD finds, and they went overboard on some story lines. However, I quite enjoyed the reports from Greg Kelly. I thought they were the most interesting of any embedded reporter that I saw (Bob Arnott's on NBC were good at times too).

Well, enough. Bring on the sharp-tongued replies...

|The real horse laugh here is that the Beeb is claiming not to be.
| And that people buy their line of BS! Simply because they lack
|glitz and speak with British accents doesn't make them smarter

Agreed 100% Adam is spot on.

As a UK resident, I have to say that the BBC's sneering attitude towards the Americans is a traditional one that lives up to the English vs American stereotype.

I cant comment on the US media coverage - but for the BBC to defend their anti-war bias by claiming that the US networks were more pro-war biased is rather an incredible argument.

I have to say that by and large the *content* of the BBC's news was usually fairly accurate (if stale) - however, the *presentation* of this content was another matter. The presentation was very biased. The studio analysts they had were largely a clueless bunch that just kept parroting the same doom and gloom predictions like "I think The Americans are in real trouble" - and generally painting a picture of a military organisation that didnt really know what it was doing and hadnt planned *anything* through. (Its interesting to note the BBC's usage of "The Americans" - as if to exclude the British troops)

There are 100's of other manifestations of this bias:

Their very aggressive - occasionally blatantly rude - questioning of American officials while merely nodding (as if in agreement) while some clueless anti-war talking head spouts on making George Bush / Adolf Hitler comparisons.

Their snide remarks of US propaganda from the CentCom briefings - comments like "I am not sure what exactly we can believe of what we are being told here...." yet at the same time offering ZERO commentary (let alone criticism) of any Iraqi reports.

Their "Have your say" sections on their website are a real joke. You will struggle to find one single pro-war comment amongst a stream of often-ridiculous anti-american diatribe. And if they DO happen to have some pro-war statement - it will be some equallyridiclous American yokel saying something way off base (like "I think we need to Nuke the whole Middle East because of what they all did to New York") - as if to discredit the overwhelming support Bush does have for the war.

Just tonight I watched the BBC's news report on the reconstruction of Iraq. While the reporter was talking about the problems in Iraq today - they were showing footage of
a) City scenes from DURING the conflict with huge black oil fires in the background (that I remember seeing in the 2nd week of the war)
b) City scenes of looting from just after Baghdad fell (I remember seeing the damn footage at the time!)
They were also describing the "rise of anti-american protest" with scenes where they were struggling to fill the camera shot with the 10-20 people waving a couple of placards.
They gave an inordinate amount of air time to an irate elderly Iraqi claiming vehemently that "Americans are just here to steal our oil" - yet no such "balancing" report like this http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030424-65672540.htm

For the BBC to claim "balance" is rather a joke. It would be funny if it wasnt for the sobering fact that our media have more control over what we think than our respective governments. The media's obsession with being a column of government enfuriates me.

-Pete

Hmmm. Points: The whole thing about the crew of the Ark Royale changing to Sky News... we'll if you're a member of the military on a warship in the Gulf, it could be argued that you're not entirely objective.
And did nobody watch that odd Chinese news channel on Sky Digitall which is in English?

The one thing that has come from all this 'siding with Sadam' by the British Parliment Member, the French, German, Russian, Chinese, etc., We now find out they were ALL on 'the take'. Making millions for helping Sadam. I'm sure the BBC was right in the middle of it. It all makes sense now. No one would make such a fool of themselves in front of the world for free. For millions/billions of dollars though???

They're just doing the typical 'distract your accusors by falsely accusing them of doing what 'you did'. A sad bunch of losers that we will never forget. I hope they can be punished.

By the way, why do you liberal socialist Bush haters embarrass yourselves for free, on this post?

//Their snide remarks of US propaganda from the CentCom briefings - comments like "I am not sure what exactly we can believe of what we are being told here...." yet at the same time offering ZERO commentary (let alone criticism) of any Iraqi reports.//

I took with a grain of salt the Centcom briefings understanding that we were at war and the media was a weapon in that war. I found our Centcom's spin transparent. I also thought they did a good job considering the audience.

As for Iraqi propaganda. Who cares?

The lack of perspective about Fox News on this thread is breathtaking.

Here's an edited version of a recent USA Today story on US TV ratings during the war.

During the war period Fox averaged 3.3 million viewers. CNN: 2.7 million. MSNBC: 1.4 million,

By comparison, the Big Three newscasts still draw millions more total viewers than cable news, NBC ightly News' war average is 11.4 million viewers, ABC's World News Tonight: 9.9 million. CBS: 7.5 million.

In other words, of all the news networks, Fox drew about 10 percent of total viewers. 10 percent.

So why does Dyke get so hot and bothered about it? For that matter, why do BBC defenders worry about Fox at all?

The free market will decide whether Fox grows or not. If it lacks credibility, if other networks do a better job, then they win and Fox loses. It's as simple as that.

Methinks that a certain political group protests too much.

1. All news is a product of biased reporting. It is reported by humans, and humans are invariably biased when it comes to almost any newsworthy subjects.

2. Careful observation of any news organization will tend to make the particular biases of that news organization fairly clear.

3. By reviewing reports from diverse organizations with conflicting biases, one is often able to draw a clearer picture of events than any single source is presenting. One must be careful to grade each source by its known biases and what gains it might make by the fashion in which it is reporting.

4. The chief value of blogs such as this one is that it calls diverse news sources to the attention of people who otherwise might not have the time to dig out all those different sources. This allows for a broader overview of the subject than is usually given by any single news source's articles.

5. This value is lessened drastically when people become partial or preferential to particular news sources and stop judging the output from those sources based on the source's known biases.

In short, yes, Fox is biased. Yes, the BBC is biased. Hypocrites in plenty can no doubt be found in the staff of both organizations. We who look at diverse sources and compare them over time and over the course of several events have probably learned a great deal about the particular biases of both Fox and BBC throughout.

Stop worrying about which one is 'better' or 'more accurate' and instead simply grade them as biased sources and remember to filter their content on the basis of their particular bias. Compare what you get with filtered opposition content.

All this tirading about whether Fox is better (by whatever standard) than the BBC, or vice versa, is detracting from the point that both sources are useful, provided that one understands the values by which the respective sources weight and report their news.

\\In short, yes, Fox is biased.\\

Fox is useful.
It is the best station to watch ...
if you want to know what the White House wants us to believe.

So I watch when I want to get better insight in to the Administration's point of view and current spin.

--Just for the record, all but a fraction of NPR's money comes from listener contributions, not the government. That's why they keep running those fundraising campaigns.--

Sorry, enloop, but as I linked to the bbc in my email, from the NPR site, $390 mil. That might be a "fraction" to you, but not to me.

--Yes I don't know why I should learn about the costs of war. War is about patriotic miusic and gunsights. Children don''t suffer and get killed in war...why is the BBC making this stuff up?..it hurts my head.

Pass the remote, I need to surf between WWF, Fox and the latest slice and dice horror movie.--

You don't need a slice&dice movie, Ul, just read the account of the torture of the children over the past 30 years. You want to see that, too?

If showing all of the casualties of the war in the most graphic detail is what is required for "unbiased" coverage, then the BBC should also be out there showing all of the thousands of bodies they're unearthing from the accumulated mass graves of Saddam's rule right now. Show both the cost of war and the cost of appeasement. Linger on each of their lifeless faces for several minutes, as they have with the unfortunate boy who lost his limbs in a Coalition bombing. I'm sure the BBC is already doing this, because it is completely infallible, pure and impartial.

OOPS! $390M was for CPR, the entire thing. Still trying to find NPR's cut.

However, this is a little disinge

NPR receives no direct general operating support from any national or local government source--

That's because they're under said CPR umbrella.

OK, $390 mil to CPR

5% to admin
6% to system support costs
remaining 89% split 75tv/25 radio

$86.775 mil????? And this is 1-2% of their total funding?

Split is this: Of the amounts allocated under clause (i)(IV) for any fiscal year -

(I) 70 percent of such amounts shall be available for distribution among the licensees and permittees of public radio stations pursuant to paragraph (6)(B);
(II) 7 percent of such amounts shall be available for distribution under subparagraph (B)(i) for public radio programming; and
(III) 23 percent of such amounts shall be available for distribution among the licensees and permittees of public radio stations pursuant to paragraph (6)(B), solely to be used for acquiring or producing programming that is to be distributed nationally and is designed to serve the needs of a national audience.

For the most part, in the US the BBC is irrelevant - big time - unless you're a leftist anti-American viewer.

It is no surprise that Fox garnered the most viewers in the US - leaving the BBC sucking hind-tit at the very bottom of the barrel - for one clear reason. Most Americans don't give a flip about 'objectivity' as defined by internationalists - they want to see and hear news from a pro-American viewpoint.

From this nation's beginning to this day, all news outlets align themselves with one or the other political viewpoint - hence the names of papers like, 'Democrat Review' and 'Republican Reporter', etc. It is no different today... with the exception that for most of the past three decades the leftists owned, and still do, the majority of major media broadcast outlets. But, that dominance is being torn down with the advent of Fox and the surge to pervasive conservative talk-radio - scaring the crap out of the left, which simply will not because they can not compete on equal footing.

Americans want news providers that align with their personal political perspective, and many of them see news without visible American patriotism as suspect - and rightfully so. They don't trust CNN, for obvious and increasingly clear evidence that CNN simply lies to support leftist views, and the BBC ranks lower than CNN with American viewers for the same reason. End of story - the BBC is irrelevant to a majority in the US.

Batratblue got it right.

It's just like blogs - if you want to understand Atrios, you have to understand Instapundit and, yes, even LGF.

Joe Sixpacks like me are completely capable of integrating multiple points of view and understanding the balance. The thing that cracks me up is that the BBC, and likely most non-Americans, really don't catch the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that comes from Fox. They know they are biased and flaunt it - do you really think the "Fair and Balanced" tagline wasn't INTENDED to create controversy? On the other hand, the BBC elite snobs feel they are better than the 'bottom' 95% of humanity and are proud of it.

In other words, Fox knows what they are doing and share the joke. BBC is the joke because they actually BELIEVE they are unbiased.

The BBC had the best coverage that I saw.

I don't get Fox in Canada, but I found CNN's coverage was often irritatingly propagandistic, so I bet Fox would have been much much worse.

As a news consumer, I don't want cheerleaders. I want information and analysis. I want inteviews with Arabs opposed to the war, so I know what they're saying, even though I don't agree with them. I want skepticism about Pentagon claims. I don't want too many retired generals filling airtime. I don't want to see the flag on the screen. I don't want patriotic music. I want the news, all of it, good and bad.

I wish we had Fox up here in Canada.

The CBC was Al-Jazeera North. The BBC was the pathetically sneering station.

Of course many Canadians hate the USA out of pure jealousy. In the same way, Canadians used to be proud of hating jews.

It is really amusing how people get bent out of shape about Fox News. Yes, they have a clear conservative slant but make no effort to hide it, and are not paid for with taxpayer money.
BBC's domestic reporting is one thing. BBC World service is a disgrace. Their Middle East reporting in particular is in the worst al-Guardian/Daily Wanker tradition. Their Israel reporting is beneath contempt.
And that doesn't even get into the Arabic Language service, which seems to make al-Jizzeera [sic] look like Fox News. At least one of their senior people was caught making a speech at a Hamas rally in Gaza, saying that he saw the duty of the journalist to fight shoulder to shoulder with them, or something to this effect.
If there is an audience that wishes to pay for this sort of rubbish, fine --- free speech and free market. If one needs to pay taxes (well, "TV license fees" --- a rose by any other name) to support a news network that is consistently biased in those directions, that is infuriating.
And the BBC's secretary-general Greg Dyke just has set a new benchmark for chutzpah, at least if you exclude the French language ;-)

Heard the one about the unbiased BBC reporter?

Yeah, neither did I.

In the market I am in, the only thing I have to hear on the radio is the BBC Wurrald Service. I gotta tell ya, they really sucked during and after the war. Their slant is totally one sided, leaning way left/anti-American. I used to like the BBC, as I am a big anglophile, but they really let me down and I will have a hard time rebuilding faith in them.

I am sure I am not alone.

Have another Molson's, eh! In my humble opinion, 50% of the news we saw and heard in ANY medium was contrived, irresponsible, grandstanding and ratings-driven. Here in the US, we have an "on/off" button or channel changer on the TV and radio, and we can actually choose whether or not to read a newspaper or magazine. We EARNED that right a long time ago, and even with all our problems, we help people around the world to have the same rights and freedoms... like Iraqi's.

Anyway, the only news you need in Canada is that the USA took care of it so that you sit on your dead asses and watch and whine.

During the war period Fox averaged 3.3 million viewers. CNN: 2.7 million. MSNBC: 1.4 million,

"By comparison, the Big Three newscasts still draw millions more total viewers than cable news, NBC ightly News' war average is 11.4 million viewers, ABC's World News Tonight: 9.9 million. CBS: 7.5 million."

Ummm way to go to slant the facts to your favor.
MSNBC,CNN, Fox News are 24 hour networks so if Fox has 3.3 million viewers it has that every hour for 24 hours a day.
Where as NBC Nightly News gets 11.4 million people for 1 single 30 minute spot for 1 day.
Its like comparing ABC's entire network as being horrible when you compare it to Frasier.

Even if we do a liberal count of viewers watching per hour on FoxNews it is 79.2 million people per day. Any one can tell you that 24hr news networks reach a far greater and broader audience than the NBC Nightly News.

Another attempt at a left wing liberal slanting the facts into lies.

"Anyway, the only news you need in Canada is that the USA took care of it so that you sit on your dead asses and watch and whine."

Yeah. True.

The extent of the BBC bias was bad enough.

But for Greg Dyke as Dir-Gen of the BBC to paint the Beeb as "above the fray" is far worse. It shows a complete lack of editorial responsibility.

It is bad enough being forced to pay the BBC licence fee. I object even more to supporting BBC's vain ambition to become a world TV news service. It is failing in terms of audience numbers, and failing Britain in terms of the biassed views it projects.

The same applies - in spade - to the BBC World Service. Let's hope the UK Foreign Office holds a post mortem.

Marko, you give way too much credit to Fox.

Shock, hope you didn't overexert your brain with that slant on Fox's viewership. 3.3 mil/hr == 79.2 mil/day ?? So, I suppose all 3 mil viewers dutifully change their channels after 60 mins and 3 mil new viewers change to Fox. Man, that's one disciplined audience. Brilliant analysis ...for a conservative.