Criticism of The BBC - 21st Century

21st Century

BBC News forms a major department of the Corporation, and receives many complaints of bias. Some people have criticised the BBC for being part of the establishment. The Centre for Policy Studies- a right-wing think tank – has stated that, "Since at least the mid-1980s, the Corporation has often been criticised for a perceived bias against those on the centre-right of politics." Similar allegations have been made by past and present employees such as Antony Jay, North American editor Justin Webb, former editor of the Today Programme Rod Liddle, former correspondent Robin Aitken and Peter Sissons, a veteran news anchorman.

Former political editor Andrew Marr has argued that the liberal bias of the BBC is the product of the types of people the Corporation employs, and is thus cultural not political. In 2011 Mark Thompson, the then BBC Director General, wrote, "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left." In 2011, Peter Oborne wrote, "Rather than representing the nation as a whole, it has become a vital resource – and sometimes attack weapon – for a narrow, arrogant Left-Liberal elite".

Speaking to journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch in 2009, Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Cabinet Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, claimed that BBC News needed more Conservatives: "I wish they would go and actively look for some Conservatives to be part of their news-gathering team, because they have acknowledged that one of their problems is that people who want to work at the Corporation tend to be from the centre-left. That's why they have this issue with what Andrew Marr called an innate liberal bias." The commentator Mehdi Hasan though, has pointed out the right-wing backgrounds of many BBC presenters and journalists, querying why even many "liberals and leftists" accept the right's description of BBC bias.

Former Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has criticised the BBC as part of a "Westminster conspiracy" to maintain the British political system.