Is BBC news racist or just biased against the English?

I am grateful to O'Neil's elsewhere for pointing me in the direction of this letter in the Belfast Telegraph:

BBC 'racism' is clear through sports coverage

On Tuesday, October 12, Northern Ireland played the Faroe Islands in a Euro 2012 qualifying match, with an early kick-off at 4pm.
The match finished 10 minutes prior to the start of the main national news on BBC1 at 6pm, but there was no mention of the match in the 30-minute bulletin.
If the match had involved England, instead of Northern Ireland, would the match have got a mention on the national news?

Then the next day, Northern Ireland won eight medals (three gold, two silver, and three bronze) at the Commonwealth Games, but it did not merit a mention in the main national news which started at 6pm on BBC1.
If it had been England's best-ever day at a Commonwealth Games, would it have got a mention on the national news?

These are just two examples of the institutional racism that exists at the BBC. What is the BBC going to do about it?

COLIN HASTINGS

I disagree with Mr Hastings. Not mentioning Northern Ireland's, or Wales' or Scotland's achievements on news programmes is hardly racism, no matter how flexibly one wishes to stretch the term. There might be a fair accusation of bias, but the bias isn't against Northern Ireland, or Wales or Scotland, but a bias against England.

The fact is that if I want to know what has happened in Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland I can watch the national news on Newsline, Wales Today or Reporting Scotland, the one nation that doesn't have a national news programme is England (it has many regional news programmes but not a single national one), and therein lies the difficulty for BBC News at Six and News at Ten; they have to double up as both the UK "national news" and the English national news and tend to fall between two stools.

Giving details about Northern Ireland's sporting achievements, which will be repeated on Newsline 25 minutes later, crowds out English News; not giving the details of Northern Ireland's achievements upsets people like Mr Hastings.

My main news viewing is S4C's Newyddion. Produced by the BBC it is a mixture of Welsh, UK wide and international news which always gives a Welsh prospective on stories from outside Wales. It is similar in mix to the Scottish Six that was proposed in days gone by as the best way of presenting Scottish News.

Surely the best way forward is for the BBC to translate Newyddion's format into English in Wales, to have a Scottish six and ten, to have similar programmes for Northern Ireland and to allow England to have an English National news programme twice a day!

The BBC, the Election and Devolution

I have just watched the latest edition of Newswatch, a programme that deals with complaints about the BBC's news coverage. This week's edition, as might be expected, had a section about election coverage.

In the programme the deputy head of the news room, Craig Oliver, the Beeb's man in charge of fair election coverage said something like these people [the party reps] are debating the running of our country. Weather taxes should go up, the Health Service and the Education of our children.

Except for Wales, Scotland and the North of Ireland the Health Service and the Education of our children are not major issues in this election – they are issues for next year's elections to the devolved bodies, because they are devolved issues.

If the man who is charged with fair election coverage isn't aware of the devolution differences which should be noted in the coverage of this election, what real hope is there for fair and impartial reporting from the BBC?

Bird Flu and the Credit Crunch

As I have said before, I don't understand economics. The economics that I have some inkling of relate to the pound in my pocket, the price of bread & milk and hoping that the money doesn't end before the month does.

Cross fingers, touch wood etc, despite the headlines I don't think that the credit crunch has affected me yet. So why am I panicking like the rest of the herd?

This time last year I was worried that my family and I were going to be wiped out by avian flu. It was a crisis that was mentioned day in day out by every newspaper, TV and radio channel. We were doomed, all doomed; but me and mine survived, as did everybody else!

Isn't the current economic crisis just a repeat of last years news? The 24 hour news agencies HAVE to have a crisis to report in order to justify their existence.

Wouldn't pulling the plug on BBC News 24 and similar channels that peddle pessimism, doom and gloom every hour of the day be a cheaper option than nationalising the banks?

Be careful what you wish for...

There were plenty of complaints by AM's last Wednesday after a BBC Trust report criticised how the corporation covered news in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A lack of reporting on BBC "national" news about what was going on in the Assembly and failing to report what its members are saying was the main complaint down in the Bay.

Since the report was published there has been some improvement. I bet that at least one AM is cursing this change of policy though, as News 24 has reported Alun Cairns' unfortunate greasy wops remarks in each of its hourly bulletins today.

Does the BBC have a pro-England news bias?

Under a headline Allegations over BBC pro-England news bias the Western Mail reports:

THE BBC is to launch a major inquiry following allegations that Wales is poorly served by its UK network news operation, the Western Mail can reveal today.
Tomorrow the BBC Trust will announce that two experts specialising in politics and the media will examine the coverage of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on flagship news programmes such as News at 10 and other bulletins presented by newsreaders like Huw Edwards and Fiona Bruce.

The BBC won't have to spend too much on their inquiry. The answer is clear, there is very little information about events in the smaller nations of the UK on programmes such as News at Ten. Indeed if one depended on the BBC's British output to find news about the Welsh Assembly almost the only thing that would be known from this year is that the Assembly killed a holly bullock.

However I believe that the Western Mail's headline editor is mistaken, and that the BBC is asking the wrong question in their review. Rather than a pro-English bias the BBC news service has an anti-English bias.

Wales and Scotland have their own national news services, there may be questions about quality and the inability to attract sufficient viewers, but a Scot or a Welsh person can choose to watch Scottish or Welsh national news and current affairs programmes. The only country in the UK that doesn’t have its own national news coverage is England, an English person is totally dependent on the UK service to find out what's happening in England.

Since devolution, politics in England is clearly different to the politics of Wales, Scotland and the North of Ireland. One of the weaknesses of the BBC's (and other channels') news and current affairs programmes is that they don't acknowledge this by providing a service specifically for England.

If there was a national news service for England one of the effects would naturally be a more balanced representation of what is happening in all of the nations of the UK in what was left of UK wide current affairs programming.