BBC vs. Fox News: fair and balanced to you, too

MOUNT PLEASANT, South Carolina When Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, resigned last week, there must have been satisfied smirks at the offices of Fox News. After visiting the United States last year, Dyke had said that he was shocked by "the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriotism." He warned the British media: "In the area of impartiality, as in many other areas, we must ensure we don't become Americanized."

The irony will not be lost on the people at Fox News that Dyke had to step down because the BBC was found to be telling untruths that were politically damaging to the British government. The BBC has often been accused of having a liberal bias, and many interpreted its reporting of the Iraq conflict as being antiwar.

So it's official: the BBC messed up. But however much Fox News feels vindicated by the verdict, it should not ignore the fact that many foreign observers feel that the political right has taken over America's news media, and that the overt political bias of Fox News and Clear Channel Radio has become a serious obstacle to the fair workings of democracy.

The contrast between Fox News and the BBC crystallizes the difference between the cultures that gave them birth. Fox News was in many ways a brave experiment: a news channel aimed directly at a target political audience, albeit an audience that had previously been identified by Rush Limbaugh. The success of Limbaugh's conservative radio show, a daily diatribe against all that is liberal, caused a sea change in talk radio. In many parts of the United States it is now all but impossible to find a radio talk show that is not modeled on Limbaugh's pro-Republican format.

But few thought a mainstream television audience would accept the same opinionated personalities that make conservative talk radio work. The rapid growth in Fox News's audience caught other news channels off guard, and prompted a panicked shift toward the political right in cable news coverage. The buildup to war gave American networks the chance to outdo each other in patriotism and hawkish support for the administration. It was in this fevered climate that a shocked Dyke discovered the most ebullient of them all: Fox News.

If this fast-moving, money-driven change is typically American, then the monolithic introspection of the BBC scandal is typically British. The BBC, after all, was never a money-making enterprise; it was established by the government in 1922 to "inform, educate and entertain" the British people. It is paid for by an obligatory license fee. This protection from the forces of nature has allowed it to follow its own instincts in pursuing news stories and, some would say, has also allowed it to develop an institutional liberal bias.

It was not a fall in market share that finally forced the BBC to address the allegations - the corporation is immune to such things - but the Hutton inquiry. When Brian Hutton's report blamed the BBC for a series of blunders, Dyke and two other BBC employees fell on their proverbial swords in the traditional British way. The BBC can no longer assume the trust of the British people when it claims to be impartial. It must now prove itself.

In the United States such matters are handled differently. There will never be a Hutton deciding whether Fox News is politically biased. Its claim to be fair and balanced is no more than a knowing wink to its audience, and it has no higher master than the dollar. If the audience tires of the Fox News agenda then other stations will move in to fill the vacuum. If there is ever to be political balance in American news coverage it will happen by the law of the jungle, not the law of the land.

It is disconcerting to think that American opinion is being informed by such unpredictable forces. Yet in a typically American way, the political bias of its news stations is open, brash and strangely addictive. The British bias is subtle, covert and shielded by the myth of objectivity. There is no such thing. When Fox News claims to be fair and balanced, we're all in on the joke. When the BBC makes the same claim, they seem to actually believe it.

The writer, an English teacher, previously worked as a radio and television journalist in Britain.

< < Back to St

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.