Mark Thompson 

 First the good News...

It’s been a long time coming (decades in fact), but at last the BBC’s director-general, Mark Thompson, has admitted left-wing bias at the BBC. There was ‘in the BBC I joined thirty years ago..in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics , which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left,’ he said. The station was ‘massively’ biased against Margaret Thatcher.

So far, so good. Even if one is or was not a fan of Margaret Thatcher, no publicly funded organisation like the BBC has a right to be biased against any point of view which enjoys widespread support. Minority views also need to be treated with impartiality, unless they are those which advocate downright genocide, like some moslem organisations in the Middle East, or murder, like the IRA.

                                                                                  Orla Guerin

As it happens, the BBC has long had a soft spot for those (of a certain kind, naturally) advocating genocide and murder.  Like its siamese twin in the public prints, the Guardian, it has for decades been soft on any leftist, anti-British or anti-Western ideology, organisation or state, however murderous, ranging from the IRA and the Soviet Union to New Labour. It continues to favour the Palestinian cause, including  such organsations as Hamas which want the complete obliteration of Israel and the Israelis. Its reporter Orla Guerin actually cried on the death of that evil man Yasser Arafat, a nephew of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who consorted with the Nazis and is reported as saying to a jewish acquaintance, 'Remember, Abbady, this was and will remain an Arab land..... the Zionists will be massacred to the last man.' Arafat did not noticeably disagree with his uncle in any important respect.