The difficulty of getting the BBC to acknowledge its own biases

The following exchange I had with the BBC illustrates how hard that is.

Me to the BBC

In the reporting of the change to the abortion law in the USA, you repeatedly and consistently treated the matter as having to do with and only with “care” and the withdrawal of the right to it for women. That the matter might equally have been spoken of as having to do with the, say, “destruction”, of some distinguishable bit of biological matter—whether of a group of cells, a foetus, a baby—never seemed to have occurred to your script-writers/editors. Making it a matter of “care” only (and for the woman only and not for the cells that are potentially a person) in itself settles the rights and wrongs of abortion in abortion’s favour. It turns your reporting from ‘news’ to ‘opinion’; and because, plainly, you don’t recognise that, it is—apart from anything else it might be—deeply unintelligent.

BBC to me

The BBC does not take a view on abortion, and whether it should be banned or not. However the overturning of this historic ruling has prompted strong reactions on both sides of the debate, and we consider we have included viewpoints from both sides in our reporting.

We will continue to cover this story in a factual and sensitive manner, reflecting a range of opinions, as well as political analysis and expert comment.

Me to the BBC

When you say that the BBC does not “take a view” on abortion you are merely making a claim, one that waits to be tested by the things you say. It may be that, while you do not, officially or knowingly, “take” a view, you still express one. A view may, of course, be implied without being stated (or even recognised by the person expressing it).

My complaint is that in letting the word “care” (the ‘care’ sought by and denied to the woman) dominate your own comments on the matter, and without acknowledging that such ‘care’ for the woman entails … what should we call it? mis-care, dis-care, anti-care, lack of care? … for the embryo, you come down emphatically on the side of the abortionists. You may not “take” a view, you certainly express one. Just imagine the difference it would have made to your report if it had been dominated by some term that made the salient point not the care shown or not shown for the woman  but the harm done or not done to the embryo.

Your defence against my complaint is that you have included viewpoints from both sides. But that is beside the point. I never said you hadn’t. What I complained about was the one-sidedness  of the things said by your own reporters. Plainly, if they were one-sided, your report would have failed to be even-handed, even if you did also include viewpoints from both sides.

You cannot, it seems to me, successfully defend yourselves against my complaint without showing either that the word “care” did not dominate your reporters’ comments or that, if it did, you applied it as much to embryos as the women who carry them. But I do not believe you can show either.

Presenting the opposing viewpoints in a way that does justice to both is, I concede, no easy matter. But, in my own view, it cannot be accomplished by affecting neutrality while, as it were, smuggling in—even if unawares—support for one side. The way to avoid bias is not to pretend to be without convictions one way or the other but to candidly acknowledge what your convictions are. In short, it might be better if you did “take a view”, and admitted it.

BBC to me

… the report was specifically looking at what the impact of the Supreme Court ruling has on the services being provided in states that plan on outlawing or putting restrictions on abortion. The report also featured the views who people who are in favour of the Supreme Court ruling outlining their reasons for doing so.

Me to the BBC

Your second response to my complaint no more engages with the complaint than the first. Your second point in it repeats something in your first response, and is, as I said before, beside the point. Your first point is puzzling. You seem to imply that because your report was “specifically” about the impact the new ruling has in states that plan to restrict abortion, the terms you use yourselves to describe what is being restricted don’t matter. That is a non-sequitur, not made less so by the emphasis you put on “specifically” (which hardly does the work you seem to expect of it). Whatever the subject, you still have to take responsibility for the language in which you talk about it. You have no difficulty discerning what is tendentious in the way others might talk about sex or race. Why can you not see it in the way you yourselves talk about abortion? I have heard your newsreaders speak of Putin’s “so-called” liberation of parts of Ukraine. Why can you not see that the word “care” for abortion merits scare quotes too? You are, evidently, so far from seeing the point that in the very response to my complaint you use the word “services” in a way that attracts precisely the same objection that “care” does. The destruction of a group of cells that make up a cancerous tumour is unequivocally and uncontroversially “a service”. The same cannot be said of the same word used to describe the destruction of a group of cells that is potentially a person. Why are you, apparently, unable to recognise this? Your responses to my complaint look, so far, like ‘put offs’. If your complaints department can’t or won’t respond in a way that treats the matter with the seriousness which it is due, where do I go in order to complain about your complaints department?

BBC to me

You’ll need to explain why you think there’s a potential breach of standards, or if the issue is significant and should still be investigated. Please do so within 20 working days of this reply.

Me to the BBC

If the BBC has a duty to be even-handed between the pro- and anti-abortionists (as even its own responses to my complaint acknowledge) and if the terms in which it speaks of the matter favour one side, then, clearly, it is in breach of its own (as well as others’) standards.

And, if there are some issues (like, say, race and sex, which perhaps matter more to the left or the liberal) about which it recognises the importance not just of what it explicitly states but of the terms in which it speaks of them at all and, then, there are other issues (like, say, abortion, which perhaps matter more to the right or the conservative) about which it recognises no such importance, then again, it is in breach of its own (as well as others’) standards.

And, of course, these issues are “significant” and (though they lie too much in plain sight to be described as calling for more “investigation”) of course they call for more thought on the part of the BBC than it has given them in its two previous responses to me, which don’t even try to engage with the terms of the complaint they purport to reply to. The principle behind them seems to be ‘least said, soonest mended’, as if the Corporation would rather not be drawn into an argument it might find difficulty getting out of.

Abortion is a matter in which the BBC, by its own lights, is obliged to recognise rival ‘rights’ or ‘needs’: those of the woman asking for the abortion and those of the foetus, which can itself ask for nothing, except mutely. The Corporation is obliged to do justice to the claims of both sides. But if it calls abortion simply “care” or a “service”—without finding any way to acknowledge that it is so for only one of the two sides concerned, while being simultaneously the polar opposite for the other—it is, effectively, taking the side of the one against the other (and thus breaching its own standards). I don’t suppose it would any longer call what the young clients of the Tavistock Clinic received there unqualified “care” or a “service”. No more should it call abortion so.

The difficulty the Corporation seems to have in recognising this not-so-very-hard-to-see point perhaps sheds some light on its characteristic responses to the wider charges of bias that get made against it: its staff, even at the most senior level, share a language and assumptions that blind them to their own partialities. Should it decide it needs to recruit staff who are not similarly blind, I am open to offers.

*

I did get another reply but, though longer, it betrayed the same—as it seems to me—determination to avoid seeing the point or make any concession—even of the most general kind— that might look like the pathway to an admission. My complaint then went to Ofcom, where it disappeared, as far as I have been able to tell, without trace. The BBC’s so-called Complaints Department ought to be named Department for Evasions and Ofcom ought to have as its motto the inscription above the entrance to Dante’s hell: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Perhaps one for BBC Verify to look into?!

Duke Maskell writes on Substack, which can be found here.

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