BBC on backfoot over Thompson trip to Downing Street
By politics.co.uk staff
The BBC has defended the decision of director general Mark Thompson to visit Downing Street for discussions over political coverage.
Mr Thompson, who recently caused waves by admitting the BBC had a “huge” left-wing bias during the eighties, was pictured walking into Downing Street with a memo from the BBC’s head of news.
The memo summarised BBC plans for a series of programmes on the government’s spending review.
A spokesperson said the meeting was organised to discuss which ministers would contribute to programmes in the series. It said similar discussions would take place with all main political parties.
But the move prompted anger among senior Labour figures, with Ed Miliband telling the Daily Mail the meeting was “deeply worrying”.
“During critical times such as now, for the United Kingdom, the BBC has an important role to play to clarify the issues for our audiences – to help them make sense of different ideas and points of view,” said Mark Byford, deputy director general.
“The spending review is one of those times and our aim is to provide insightful, objective programmes and expert analysis to help people understand the context and the potential options.”
The row comes at the end of a week which has brought the historic relationship between the BBC and the government into the spotlight.
Mr Thompson earlier told the New Statesman magazine that the BBC had struggled to fight off bias in the personal views of its employees.
“In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organisation did struggle then with impartiality,” he admitted.
“Now it is a completely different generation. There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC.”
Tony Blair’s autobiography, ‘A Journey’, then revealed that he had never intended for BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and director general Greg Dyke to resign in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly.
Alistair Campbell’s demand that “heads should roll” was made without his authorisation, Mr Blair wrote.
