CEP: The professor Tony King report for the BBC Trust strains for the gnat while it swallows the camel

Professor King's Inquiry Report commissioned by the BBC Trust is a missed opportunity. In his legitimate concern to get the BBC to give coverage to events in Scotland and Wales and not stay overwhelmingly London-orientated Professor King has turned a blind eye to the much bigger discrimination and bias with which the BBC persistently and systematically treats England. This was brought to his attention in the course of his inquiry by the CEP but he chose to ignore it. In respect of England the BBC is guilty of institutional bias. The Inquiry has not addressed it.

'The BBC bias against England,' Michael Knowles of the CEP Media Unit has stated, 'takes two forms. The first is contained and delivered in that one telling phrase which sets out how the BBC formally organises itself: 'the nations and regions of Britain' . By nations the BBC means Scotland, Wales and NI. Not England. For the BBC England is not a nation. It is just a collection of regions. To treat England, the oldest unfied nation state in Europe, is this way is a political decision taken by both BBC Trust and management contrary to its Charter.'The BBC by the way it formally organises itself does not treat England in the same way as it treats Scotland and Wales, namely as a distinct nation within the UK. Without cause and without evidence it subordinates England to its concern to be what it considers 'British'.

'The second form this institutional bias takes,' Mr Knowles has stated, 'is the fact that there is a BBC Scotland, a BBC Wales and a BBC Northern Ireland. But no BBC England. Scotland etc are treated and reported, rightly, as distinct nations within the UK. The programming and reporting involved both expresses and promotes a sense of distinct nationhood. One has only to be in any part of Scotland five minutes to feel the full effect of it. It is deeply political and cultural in its effects. But all that is deliberately missing from England. Instead the BBC operates, purposely, a policy of division in relation to England. Unlike in Scotland and Wales it promotes what it calls 'regional identities' in England as oppsed to an English identity. It consciously avoids anything in its reporting, wherever it can, which might promote a sense of being English. It reports Andy Murray and David Coulthard as Scots, but Victoria Pendleton, Kelly Sotherton, Lewis Hamilton and Paula Ratcliffe as Brits. Tim Henman was never English as far as the BBC was concerned.

When challenged about this policy of discrimination by the CEP, the BBC has continued to reply that 'England is too big and too diverse' to have a dedicated BBC England. Is it? Bigger and more diverse than what the BBC World Service covers? Or bigger and more diverse than the Britain the BBC itself covers? There is no substance to this defence of its practices.

In the light of Professor King's review the CEP is calling for a frank and honest review of BBC policy towards England. 'A BBC Scotland and a BBC Wales expresses and promotes the distinct and historic identity, cultural and political, of those two UK nations. It is racially discriminatory to deny the same to England' declares the CEP.

Contacts:


Michael Knowles CEP Media Unit
Tel: 01260 271139 Email: michael-knowles@tiscali.co.uk