Cameron and the BBC - the gloves are off

Nick Robinson is a Tory.

There is no story in the Guardians tax but there is a huge story in Lord Ashcroft and the sniveling, duplicitous behaviour of his tax avoidance.

The Daily Wail is aimed at an average age level of an 8 year old and takes its readers for the same kind of innocents.

There are no left wing papers only centre. There are left wing documentary makers and perhaps that is the only arena in which we still see some sort of fight against the mundane and middle of the road.

HeadFairy, have you read it? The things you have mentioned are not in it. It sounds like you have been getting your information, on what is in the Daily Mail, from desperate Labour spin doctors, intent on building a progressive future on a pack of lies.

Oh purlease, you like reading that all working women are evil, teenage mums are evil, all women full stop are evil, and by the way, have you heard? Women give you cancer....

too right . The Labourites know it as well. That's why they get so angry at the mention of it. They wish they had a paper that was so popular.

Claig. Both you and I know the Daily Mail is a cracking good read and a great paper.

When is Andrew Neil's documentary on the Tea Party? I don't want to miss that.

I think if there was no "massive left wing bias" in some influential media, then the left wing would never get voted in again. That is why left wingers are so keen on taxing the public to fund media with a left wing slant. If that public subsidy stopped, the left wingers know that they would rarely if ever see office again.

I think it's too much of a simplification to say that the country is naturally right-wing.

Most of England is naturally right-wing, though not all. Most of Scotland these days is naturally left-wing. One of Thatcher's only mistakes was destroying the substantial Tory base in Scotland with the poll tax trials. This seems to have largely gone to the SNP, curiously enough, rather than Labour or the Lib Dems. Wales is naturally left-wing too. Of course cities tend to be leftier than rural areas - a phenomenon that is probably true in every country in the world.

Much of the middle-class actually became more left-wing during the Labour years. Blair's pivoting to the centre-ground, and not having to worry about their own financial security, meant that they had the time, energy and inclination to care more about non-economic issues. More of the English white working class became steadily more Tory since 2001, largely due to concerns about immigration I think. I don't really understand Scotland's voting patterns!

yes people are naturally more right wing, because right wing is about family, law and order, less taxation, less government interference etc. That is what most people prefer. It is only due to the media's left wing bias that the public are persuaded to vote for the progressives and their policies.

Most of the intellectual media is left wing (the BBC, Channel 4, Guardian, Independent, New Statesman etc.). The right wing is sneered at by MN posters who continually apologise for linking to the only paper worth linking to, the London Daily Mail.

The BBC coverage of the US elections in the next few days will be very interesting.

Observe the tone of the reporting. Do the BBC attribute the projected Democrat losses to a contempt for big government, massive deficits and pork barrel politics? Do they sneer at the very fair criticisms of the Republicans, which are obviously resonating with the American public? Will they talk about the concerns about high taxes discouraging entrepreneurs?

I think Andrew Neil's documentary on the Tea Party will be fascinating - but I don't hold out much hope for the reporting on the main bulletins.

longfingernails, I'll give you that one :o I'd forgotten about ripping up the sun... all it's good for in my book though. However, I do feel the right wing tend to be more jumpy about left wing bias in the media. There are far more right wing newspapers than left.

Maybe you're right (was it you who said it?) perhaps the country is inherently right wing. Is that because right wing politics tend to focus more on the individual and left wing politics traditionally more on the wider society.

Surely the job of political commentators is to comment on the actions of the government of the day (sometimes reporting on the unfavourable reactions of the public, business, Boris etc). We have a tory government so the bbc is accused by the tories of having a left wing bias. I seem to recall the reverse was the case during the blair years. Alastair Campbell rarely held back in accusing the bbc of having a right wing bias.

Yes I forgot about the Express and the Star. I never read them. I don't know what sales figures they achieve and how popular they really are.

The Director General of the BBC said that there had been a massive left wing bias in the BBC.

But as far as the election is concerned, I think every media outlet deliberately hyped Clegg up. The Guardian even urged its loyal readers, who had swallowed Monbiodiversity's columns for years, to vote for Nick Clegg. So I agree that nearly every media organisation during the election (including the left wing cheerleaders) was in favour of Nick Clegg and a Coalition victory.

cliag I think you can safely add the Express and Star to your list.

The Indie seems to have had a great idea with "i" - all the reports I have heard have been very positive. I wonder which newspapers it will hit? My first guess would be the Independent itself and the Guardian, but maybe some Times readers too?

Claig - I am pointing out a perception - she made the poitn during the general election campaign - She basically felt the BBC was not unbiased, but was favouring the right .....

Headfairy I think left-wingers, on occasion, have been known to get upset with the Sun! Despite the genteel manners of your average Labour supporter, some of them have been known to get a little intemperate on the subject:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8283549.stm

'Actually my Mexican colleague views the BBC as very right wing.....(she is a political science graduate)'

she needs to do more studying of politics. There are things she still doesn't understand.

The left wing is always anti-Murdoch, until he supports them like the Sun did Blair.

I think the only real right wing papers are the Mail and the Telegraph. The rest swap sides or are neutral or are left wing. But the BBC gets far more listeners and viewers than the Daily Mail gets readers. The BBC is funded by the tax payer and influences the public. So if it is true that there was a massive left wing bias in the BBC, as said by the Director General of the BBC, then that helps left wing political causes.

claig - again, I don't know. Perhaps they were the first to have a good media section and it's stuck. When I left uni in 1992 everyone looking for any kind of media job looked there, whatever their political bent, even if they had one, which I didn't - I just knew that was where to look. Don't think I even read the rest of the paper back then!

yes, agree with ilovemydogandMrObama. I must say I didn't think NR was left-leaning at all!

actually you don't need to buy the guardian to see the jobs you can do it on-line and I have never heard such rubbish as advertise in this newspaper and QED you are left wing ...
Actually my Mexican colleague views the BBC as very right wing.....(she is a political science graduate)

So why is it that the Guardian dominates in media advertisements? Don't the other papers think that it is a lucrative market or is it something else that means that the Guardian is number one for media types?

Sorry to hark back, but one thing I'm genuinely interested in is why right wingers get so upset about left wing bias in the media. As far as I can tell much more print media is right wing (probably because Murdoch owns most of it) The Mail, The Telegraph, The Times, The Sun. These are seriously big hitter large circulation papers which get a much wider readership and are therefore much more likely to influence the electorate than the Guardian. The Sun is considered a bell-wether for any general election isn't it? You don't hear left winger getting worked up about that do you?

Absolutely disagree that Nick Robinson leans to the left. He was chairman of the student conservative party at Oxford and was practically breathless in his enthusiasm when DC arrived at Downing Street.