MISCARRIAGE OF NEWS JUDGMENT
The media: Paul Johnson examines BBC coverage of the
Birmingham bomb appeal
THE BBC is a curious institution. It calls itself 'British', as though in some metaph- ysical way it embodies, stands for or represents Britain and her people. It lives entirely off our money, since it does not earn its own living and insists that every family in the country, including the poorest, pay a heavy tax merely for owning a television set. Yet it rarely misses an opportunity to spit in the face of the British people and denigrate the things we hold dear. It seems to swarm with people who feel it their public duty to kick Britain on every possible occasion. How else can we explain the commissioning and transmis- sion of the disgraceful Secret Society series on BBC 2, which was given a 100-per-cent bias rating by the Media Monitoring Unit? It is worth recording the unit's verdict: `The bias . . . undoubtedly intentional, was consistent throughout: anti-Nato, anti- British Intelligence, anti-police, anti- Establishment. There were no redeeming features.' Why should the British Broad- casting Corporation have a 100-per-cent bias against the British police and the British intelligence services? It is a ques- tion worth asking.
The BBC also appears to have de- veloped a dislike for our judicial system. I watched the BBC Six O'Clock News cover- age of the Birmingham bomb appeal last Thursday with astonishment and mounting anger. This concerned one of the most serious and horrible crimes in our history. Some 21 people were killed in the explo- sion on 21 November 1974. More than 160 were injured, some crippled for life. Other deaths followed: for instance, Mrs Ivy Roberts says her husband Reginald `faded away' with grief after they lost their own child, Maureen, killed shortly before her 21st birthday. The 'Birmingham six' note the tag characteristic of hard-left agitprop campaigns — were promptly arrested (five of them by British Transport Police in Heysham, Lancashire, not, as is often alleged on the Left, by Birmingham detectives desperate to solve the crime at any cost). They were fairly tried (not in Birmingham but in Lancashire) and con- victed, in the words of the trial judge, Lord Bridge, on `the clearest and most over- whelming evidence I have ever heard in a case of murder'. The evidence against them was so strong that the Court of Appeal, after a fair review, refused the six men leave to challenge the convictions. Eventually, after a ten-year campaign, and the production of what appeared to be new evidence, the Home Secretary referred the case to the Court of Appeal. Three of the most senior judges, including the Lord Chief Justice, went over the new evidence and the old evidence in the greatest possi- ble detail. During this lengthy examina- tion, allegations of witnesses tending to shake public confidence in the integrity of the police were given wide publicity in the media.
For all these reasons it was of the greatest possible importance that the ver- dict of the appeal judges, and their reasons for reaching it, be properly covered. The judgment was long, so long that the three judges took it in turns to read it out. It was well presented in most of the papers I saw: the Daily Telegraph had a particularly impressive two-page spread covering va- rious aspects of the case. The BBC Six O'Clock News also gave the case consider- able attention: not only was it the first item but nearly 15 minutes was devoted to it. Yet much of this consisted of a further presentation of the 'evidence', exhaustive- ly covered during the appeal itself, that the men were innocent, and hostile reactions to the verdict of the court that they were guilty. It is true that the verdict itself was summarised and brief references made to the court's reasons for disbelieving the additional witnesses. The bulletin, as it were, covered itself. But the whole thrust of the programme left one with the im- pression that justice had not been done. Once again we heard from Mr Tom Clark, described by the court as 'a most uncon- vincing witness and an embittered man'. We again heard Mrs Joyce Lynass, dismis- sed by the court as a 'witness not worthy of belief, tell her tale about being threatened. And, once more, there was Chris Mullin, the left-wing Labour MP, telling us that the six men could not be guilty because he knew who the real guilty men were, had interviewed them in fact but — surprise, surprise — could not reveal their names. Then on top of all this we were shown the distress of the anguished relatives of the convicted men and a brief interview with their distraught bishop.
In my judgment this was a classic case of an unbalanced news bulletin. Much of the material in the court's verdict was of great importance as well as intrinsic interest, and should have been given. If it was right for the BBC to show us the people giving evidence in the convicts' favour, discre- dited as they were, why did they not also show us the many and credible witnesses who gave evidence against them — includ- ing the detectives to whom they confessed?
If we were to see the families of the imprisoned men, heartbroken and tearful, why were we not shown those whose lives have been shattered by the deaths of a father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter whom the six men murdered?
The families of the dead have the strongest possible motive for wanting to be certain that the real mass-murderers have been punished and, so far as is known, all of them are satisified with the original ver- dict. As Mrs Roberts told the Daily Tele- graph: 'People seem to have forgotten the victims and their families.'
Television news bulletins are necessarily compiled in some haste and lack of balance is sometimes accidental. But in this par- ticular case, so it seems to me, the message the bulletin conveyed — that the Court of Appeal's verdict was unsatisfactory - sprang from the BBC culture itself. It is one of the axioms of that culture, which broadly speaking reflects the assumptions of 'progressive' people, that policemen have a propensity to beat confessions out of those they arrest and that judges are predisposed to believe the police rather than anyone else.
Now the nub of the criticism levelled at the BBC by myself and others is that such a culture should not exist. It should be dissolved and replaced by one of strict objectivity. It is particularly important that the culture should be driven out of the Corporation's news bulletins. The principal aim of the BBC Chairman; Marmaduke Hussey, is to restore the cult of objectivity, once the BBC's pride. That is also the aim of John Birt, and explains why BBC malcontents are so anxious to circulate hostile stories about him. I suggest that both Hussey and Birt should look at a tape of that bulletin and see whether or not my criticism is justified. I believe it is and that they have both got a lot of work ahead of them.
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