unbiased 



How depressing to see a video of a Fox News commentator ranting against the BBC, those anit-American communist biased peaceniks, on the aftermath of the Hutton enquiry. I'm still not sure whether I should regard it as extremely funny or extremely sad and anger-inducing. I would like to believe this is not what the responsible press and the responsible people out there think like and process the world, but you only have to see around in a newsagent here to see equivalent views expounded in headlines on the papers with the highest sales and circulation. The BBC themselves are not exempt from a certain dose of ideological maniqueism, typecasting and just plain distortion. No news outlet is free from this, it is part of human condition; if we see things, inevitably we are seeing them from where we are and this perspective will infuse the opinion we form for ourselves of the things observed. But at least the BBC in general do try (at least often enough) to give a balanced view, insofar as that is possible and in the measure that they are not themselves blind to their own bias and agendas. It is not a mouthpiece for the government or the corporations. It is unique in that respect and it is perhaps understandable that for a right-winger American with his own agenda in colliding course with the BBC's in some aspect, not least commercial, it may look like the advance party of the Socialist State, the fellow travellers, the helpers of the terrorists. To me they often look, like so much of life in this grey soggy island compared to most of the rest of the world, like the voice of reason. Often mistaken and often flawed, but reason nonetheless.

We were brought up to believe that reason would make us better, that thinking, being sensible and sensitive and having empathy would make our world a better place. It doesn't seem to have done to any large extent. It is not the newspapers or programmes which aim at stimulating intelligent debate that sell the most,, it is the ones which appeal to our base instincts, our meanest streaks, our prurience

The display of jingoistic bigotry on the part of the commentator made me think, inevitably, in all our own bias, skewed perceptions, misreadings of situations and people that so often contribute to the poisoning of a situation, or aggravating of it. I would dearly hope that I, for one, am not blind to reason and the reason and reasons of others as the commentator in question, but often enough I've found myself and people I take to be intelligent and balanced, to be as groundlessly opinionated. We just cannot see where we are, that we are so. 

Posted: Wed - February 4, 2004 at 02:51 PM          

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