A WEEK IN POLITICS

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What has the largely left-liberal The World Tonight (Radio 4) been up to this week?
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19/4 Presenter David Eades
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The World Tonight, being the Radio 4 current affairs staple with the most international perspective, is its channel's most Europhile show. For the volcanic ash story, it turned straight to the European Commission, specifically its spokeslady (and former Labour Party official) Helen Kearns.
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For an Icelandic perspective, it turned to Alda Sigmundsdottir, introduced by David Eades as "an Icelandic blogger and journalist". As soon as I hear such a vague description from the BBC I always suspect they will turn out not to be politically conservative. Alda's blog is http://www.icelandweatherreport.com/. She also writes for The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' and The Huffington Post. So not conservative then.
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The programme then discussed the Lib Dems. Here balance entered, as Iain Martin, the centre-right commentator from The Wall Street Journal & Sunny Hundal, editor of Liberal Conspiracy (and, like Alda, regular contributor to The Guardian's 'Comment is Free') discussed the wave of Cleggmania that swept the nation, according to the BBC that is.

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20/4 Presenter Robin Lustig
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This edition didn't go to the European Commission for more on the volcanic ash story. Instead it went to Lord Adonis.
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2. Obama's bank plans were discussed with "Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF and co-author of a bestselling book on the crisis called '13 Banks'". He voted for Barack Obama.
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21/4 Presenter Robin Lustig
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This was better. The issue of unemployment led, in the wake of news of a rise. Martin Weale of the think tank The National Institute for Economic & Social Research. He never strikes me as a partisan for any party, and I've found no evidence that he is either. A real independent expert! Whatever next? Similarly, Jonty Bloom's report from Liverpool featured Prof Peter Stoney from Liverpool University (who is in favour of the free market) and Andy Beach from Unison & John Moores University (who isn't). The debate between Yvette Cooper, Theresa May and David Laws resulted in the following interruption coefficients:

Theresa May - 0.5
Yvette Cooper - 0
David Laws - 0

Theresa May was the only one Robin interrupted.
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An interesting interview on Brasilia (and other soulless planned cities) between Robin Lustig and Jonathan Glancey of 'The Guardian' (them again!) followed.

Unfortunately, the programme then returned to the volcanic ash story and its relentless Europhilia, bringing to us the issue of a 'Single European Sky': "Well the European commission has wanted for many years to introduce a unified air traffic control system for all of the European Union. It's known as the Single European Sky. After all, says the Commission, there's already a single market and a single currency so why not a single sky? I asked the Belgian MEP Dirk Sterckx, who is a member of the European Parliament's transport committee, what exactly would a single sky mean in practice?" Every time an MEP is introduced without any details of party affiliation I just know that he's not going to turn out to be a conservative. Indeed he isn't. Dr Sterckx sits with our Liberal Democrats in the European parliament. He is in favour of a single European sky, of course. What effect has The Great Volcano Crisis had on the argument, wondered Mr Lustig? "We've seen that the public turns towards Europe", Dirk said. And what of the reluctance of national governments to give up their powers? "Very illogical" he thinks. (There can be no controversy over the choice of the next guest: Mike Granatt "used to head the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the cabinet office". He has served as press officer for both Labour and the Conservatives.)
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For an American perspective on the upcoming second prime ministerial debate, Robin turned to Styrker Mcguire of Newsweek, Gavin Esler's liberal best buddy on 'Dateline: London'.
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22/4 Prime Ministerial Debate special, presenter Robin Lustig.
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This was pretty well handled, with a well-balanced panel of pundits, but...
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Before the debate:
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Norman Smith, intriguingly using (but completely mispronouncing) the word 'hyperbole' - a word I often apply to his way of over-painting problems for the Tories (Has he been reading me?!) - kicked things off. He used a fair amount of hyperbole here (such as "huge" and "absolutely colossal"), concentrating almost all of his opening remarks on the pressures facing David Cameron ("There is massive pressure on him". Even if Clegg were only to do OK, it would be "a disastrous outcome" for the Tories. "So enormous pressure tonight").

After the debate:
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I've already reviewed Norman's instant reaction/spin in a previous post.
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He returned after the 10 0'clock news to spin again. He conceded that both Cameron and Brown had done "considerably better" this week, but was soon back to his old ways, saying again that Clegg "emerged as the winner" (no ifs, no buts). Can you guess which clip he first chose to illustrate the debate? Clegg's atrocious attack on the "nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes" who sit alongside the Conservatives in the Eurolandic parliament. He then said "actually Gordon Brown had a number of good lines". There was no such praise for David Cameron though. Who's surprised?
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Ritula Shah was out with the public, or more precisely with students from Reading University. A "completely unscientific poll" in the students' union bar saw a landslide for Clegg. Then four of the students were gathered. One, an American, remained undecided, liked Clegg's foreign policy but said that, looked on objectively, Cameron probably won. The second likes the Lib Dems but said that Brown is "someone" he "supports quite strongly". The third also said she admires Brown. The fourth is president of the university's Labour Society! So 'dunno, Brown, Brown and Brown'. How very representative!!

Following Peter Kellner of YouGov and Rory Cellan-Jones on Twitter, blogs, facebook came "a satirist's eye". The satirist Robin talked to was Alistair Beaton. Wikipedia describes him as "a Scottish left wing political satirist". Robin forgot to tell us that "at one point in his career he was also a speechwriter for Gordon Brown." That said, he was very even-handed in his barbs. He won't be writing speeches for Brown after this!!

23/4 Presenter Ritula Shah
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This edition began with Greece and presented two sides of the New Greco-German War. For the German view we had Michael Gahler, "an MEP from Mrs Merkel's party". (Ah, he's been labelled so we know he's a conservative!) For the Greek side we got Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economics, university of Athens, who criticised German delays. He worked here in England for some time before, as his webpage puts it, he "escaped Maggie's England for Sydney, Australia".
This may suggest where he comes from politically!!
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Mark Simpson then reported from Northern Ireland on the debate over there, talking to justice minister David Ford from the Alliance Party. Some 80's music was then played, before Mark said "the theme was from the 1980s, and so was the line of questioning for Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams. Was he an IRA leader during the Troubles? He repeated that he wasn't and said it was pointless even talking about it". Sir Reg Empey, Peter Robinson and Margaret Ritchie followed, with the "hardline" (as Mr Simpson put it, using his only label) Jim Allister of the TUV adding a comment towards the end.
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Finally, the 0.2% rise in GDP was described by Ritula as "slightly less than expected". "Slightly?" Is a difference of 0.2% in terms of growth figures "slight"?

THE WORLD TONIGHT, PART 2

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15/4 Thursday night's The World Tonight was a three-hour special, containing the Prime Ministerial debates. Throughout there three chief guests to speak up for the three participating parties: former Conservative MP Matthew Parris of The Times, former press-secretary for the Lib Dems Miranda Green and Lance Price, former Labour director of communications. That's as it should be of course.
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What happened in the wake of the debate? Norman Smith's review stressed Nick Clegg's success but highlighted Gordon Brown's attacks on David Cameron. His summary said that Clegg did well, Cameron's people would be "a little disappointed" and...oh, that was it. Gordon Brown escapes judgement from Norman Smith yet again! Well fancy that!
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Mark Easton then discussed what they said on the home agenda. Easton raised concerns about only one of the candidates. The issue was short-term sentencing, which Mr Clegg had attacked. "David Cameron actually defending the use of short sentences, which is an interesting thing for him to do. After all they have become increasingly controversial and regarded as not particularly effective." Mark Easton casts doubts on a Conservative plan again but doesn't criticise Labour! Well fancy that!
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Robin Lustig then focused on one of the issues: immigation. Who did he discuss it with? Mehdi Hasan of The New Statesman. "Does it concern you that immigration appears to be an issue which many voters are raising?", asked Robin. (Only "appears to be" ?) "It does concern me," replied Mehdi. "I'm someone who supports immigration and is actually dismayed to see all three political parties take this rather hardline view."
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The pollster Peter Kellner of YouGov (famous for being Baroness Ashton's husband and a Labour supporter) was a later contributor but the final guest was actor and writer Kwame Kwei-Armah.*Robin began his introduction to him with these words: "I think we could get a non-political view now". Kwame gave the thumbs up for Clegg and Brown and the thumbs down for Cameron. I don't think he really was an impartial guest. As evidence of this, here's a count of how many times Kwame used particular variants of the party leaders' names. Note that never called Cameron anything other than 'Cameron' but called Brown 'Gordon' on four occasions and never just used his surname:

Nick Clegg - 1
David Cameron - 0
Gordon Brown - 1
Clegg - 1
Cameron - 4
Brown - 0
Nick - 2
David - 0
Gordon - 4

THE WORLD TONIGHT, PART 1

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How has that most consistently left-liberal of Radio 4 current affairs programmes The World Tonight been getting on recently?
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Mon 12/4 The programme reviewed Labour's manifesto. Ritula Shah's expert was none other than Prof Colin Talbot, who seems to be the BBC's favourite academic. For once he didn't attack the Conservatives, but instead (like Labour supporter Sir Gerry Robinson on The World at One) criticised Labour's policy on foundation hospitals, and public service reform in general. So an attack from the Left. Then Ritula jointly interviewed Labour-supporting Steve Richards of The Independent and Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome, displaying a little impatience with Tim and giving Mr Richards both the first and the last word. No BBC analysts were tasked with fisking the Labour manifesto.
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Tue 13/4 The programme reviewed the Conservative manifesto. The first difference in approach was that, whereas on Monday's programme the criticisms of Labour by the Tories and Lib Dems were briefly read out by Ritula, here we heard audio clips from Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg attacking the Conservatives. The second difference was that the BBC's Stephanie Flanders "has been running a fine tooth-comb through the Conservative plans" and was invited on to give her verdict. She was distinctly unimpressed. "Are we any wiser?" asked Ritula. "I'm afraid not", replied Stephanie. Thereafter, it was all about her repeated surprise at what wasn't in the Tory manifesto. She was surprised so often her eyebrows might very well have achieved lift-off and now be orbiting around Saturn.
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The third difference, following on from this, was the much greater time spent scrutinising the Tory manifesto than Labour's. Conservative education policy was closely examined. Vox-pops from London were canvassed on whether the idea of parental involvement in schools is a good idea or not. The results were mixed, but the final words of the final vox-popper, left hanging in the air, were 'I'd be sceptical'! That said, there was a balanced report on charter schools in New Orleans from the BBC's Zoe Conway followed by Dr Anthony Seldon, who was broadly supportive, though he also had some concerns. Tuesday's equivalents of Messers Richards and Montgomerie were Philip Stephens of the Financial Times and Nick Wood "a public relations consultant and former Conservative media director". The former was critical, the latter supportive. Guess which one was repeatedly interrupted by Ritula Shah?
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Wed 14/4 The programme reviewed the Lib Dem manifesto. Audio clips of criticism from Gordon Brown and David Cameron followed, meaning that the Lib Dems did as badly as the Conservatives in this respect. Only Labour didn't get this sort of treatment! That said the clips here were much shorter than those directed against the Conservatives, so it turns out that the Conservatives fared worst after all. Here both Brown and Cameron got just 8 seconds each to have a go at the Lib Dems. Compare that to Tuesday, when Brown got 29 seconds and Clegg got 19 seconds to attack the Tories. The Lib Dems (like the Conservatives, but unlike Labour) also got a review from Stephanie Flanders, who offered a balanced appraisal of it rather than the wholly negative review she gave the Tories. Will the Lib Dem reputation for honesty help them in the general election, wondered Robin Lustig. He asked Helen Coombs from IPSOS MORI.
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What of tax cuts? Mark Littlewood, of the economic think tank The Institute of Economic Affairs and former head of media for the Liberal Democrats, and Martin Ivens of The Sunday Times were the interviewees here. Mark is that rare thing, a free-market-loving Lib Dem, so he wasn't wholly without criticism of his party's proposals. Robin Lustig asked all from questions from the left-side of the argument.*
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Later in the programme, the BBC returned to one of its key election themes, as Robin said "Now here's a political question for you. What do the following prime ministers all have in common: William Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Anthony Eden, Harold McMillan, Alex Douglas Hume? The answer is that they all went to Eton. And if the Conservatives win the election on May 6th David Cameron will become the 18th Old Etonian to join the prime ministerial ranks." Paul Moss then reported on the links between Eton and politics, complete with the strains of The Eton Boat Song and a Tatler writer called Ticky Hedley-Dent (perish the thought that she was invited to take part because of her posh name!). Blairite David Aaronovitch put the boot in.
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ROBIN LUSTIG GETS IT WRONG

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Baroness Ashton was one of the topics on last night's The World Tonight.
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Robin Lustig said that "she has already suffered sustained sniping from some EU capitals." (Yes, there's that word 'sniping' again!) He continued, "There were complaints that she didn't visit Haiti immediately after the earthquake and that she failed to make it to the inauguration of the new Ukranian president." This is another bit of sloppy BBC journalism. Lady Ashton did make it to the inauguration of the new Ukranian president. The complaint was that in doing so she failed to make it to a joint EU-Nato defence meeting. That's two mistakes on just one detail of a single story from two top BBC reporters in just two days! It doesn't fill you with confidence, does it?
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Reporter Dominic Hughes then went on to dismiss the complaint about Haiti as 'relatively trivial' . His report ended with these words: "As MEPs filed out of the parliament's beehive-shaped chamber after Cathy Ashton's speech some were saying she's turned a corner, others that the time for sniping (yes, that word again - again!) has past and that they'll just have to get on and work with her." So, a win-win result for Baroness Ashton - if Dominic Hughes is to be believed.

THE NAPOLEAN OF BIAS

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Brown's performance at the Chilcot Inquiry was given a clean bill of health by Robin Lustig on last night's The World Tonight.
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And what did Newsnight's political editor Michael Crick make of this major story - the story of a sitting prime minister being questioned at a major public inquiry about his own role in the most controversial war for decades? We'll never know because Crick went missing in action. Like Macavity Brown during the Iraq War, Crick vanishes from any crime scene that might implicate Labour, yet he was all over Newsnight earlier in the week when the Tories were in the firing line. He doesn't mind occasionally (very occasionally) reporting gossip and trivia about Labour but anything serious, or potentially seriously damaging to Labour, and he's off!
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Instead of the Hidden Paw, we got his understudy David Grossman.
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The usual cast of characters followed, with Sir Ming Campbell being given the 'independent expert' treatment by Emily Maitlis.

WHEN THE RED, RED ROBIN...

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Robin Lustig may be one of the Beeb's gentlest interviews but his left-liberal bias is like an overpowering aftershave. You could smell it everywhere on last night's The World Tonight.
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Except when interviewing a 'climate change sceptic' or a rare right-wing academic, he is not much of an interrupter. Out of all the interviews that fall within the scope of my I.C. survey, not one has gone above an I.C. of 0.9. Until yesterday.
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Robin's interview with William Hague over Lord Ashcroft resulted in an I.C. of 2.0, with 6 interruptions in just 3 minutes. This is more than double the previous record, suggesting a high degree of personal interest in the matter from Mr Lustig. Mr Hague's plea, "It's high time the BBC now moved on", will clearly fall on stone-deaf ears.
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Mr Hague returned at the end of the programme for a three-way debate about foreign policy with Ed Davey of the Lib Dems and David Miliband for Labour. More anti-Tory bias was revealed even here, as Robin Lustig asked William Hague 8 specific questions, Ed Davey 5 and David Miliband just 4 (twice merely saying "David Miliband?" to the foreign secretary). Both Mr Hague and Mr Davey were interrupted twice, whereas Mr Miliband was interrupted just once. Mr Miliband also got the long, 'thoughtful' questions, whereas Mr Hague got the shorter, sharper ones.
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What topics did Robin raise in the debate? The EU's role in the world, non-proliferation and climate change.
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THE WORLD TONIGHT'S TYPE OF ACADEMIC

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The tendency of The World Tonight to tilt strongly towards the Liberal Left makes it the Leaning Tower of Pisa among the various Radio 4 current affairs programmes -though Today can of course make a strong case for the same status too. (Though in saying that said, this week has seen two Conservative politicians appearing on the programme. That doesn't happen very often!)

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When last night's programme discussed the coolness between China and the US over Obama and the Lama, Robin Lustig talked to two American experts. The first was Ken Lieberthal, former advisor to Bill Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. The second was George Perkovich, a former aide to Joe Biden who now heads the Nonproliferation Program(me) at the liberal-learning Carnegie Institute for International Peace. Both sounded like serious figures, but both come from the same place, politically-speaking.

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GLEES GETS CLUBBED BY LUSTIG

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I'm still catching up from last week!

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Wednesday's The World Tonight began by discussing the case of Ethopian pain-in-the-bottom Binyam Mohamed (and he may, or may not, have received some pain there himself). What was surprising here was drippingly-liberal presenter Robin Lustig's unusually aggressive interviewing of an academic. The academics usually invited onto The World Tonight, generally being a left-liberal lot, are rarely interrupted. What did Professor Anthony Glees, Professor of Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingam, do to deserve three feisty interruptions from Robin Lustig? He condemned judges for being harsh on the security forces and condemned Liberty (whose Guardian girl Corinna Ferguson (pictured) had just been given the gentle treatment from Lusty Robin). Lustig was clearly aghast.

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Tapping 'Anthony Glees' into my search engine brings up, first of all, a site called SpinProfiles that calls the professor "a right-wing British academic considered an expert on terrorism and radicalism" - and it doesn't mean that as a term of praise!

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Anthony Glees, the first 'right-wing' academic invited onto The World Tonight for some time, is given the full interruption treatment from Robin Lustig. That kind of says it all really.

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In fact, Professor Glees was completely reasonable and spot-on in what he said. Reasonable commentary is clearly not what the BBC wants to hear about its favourite Ethopian.

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Talking of the Binman, Friday's Daily Politics (the edition without Andrew Neil) discussed the issue with, of all people, sleazy Labour MP Keith Vaz. Pouting Jo Coburn's interruption coefficient here was a teeny-weeny 0.2.

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SPOILING THE PARTY

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This morning's Today programme discussed America's Tea Party movement with "Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and co-chair of the moderate Republican group the Republican Leadership Council". That was a little surprising.
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Not remotely surprising however was The World Tonight's treatment of the same subject on Thursday night's edition of the programme.
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This consisted of a discussion between Robin Lustig and Professor Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University. Prof. Wayne was extremely sniffy about the Tea Partygoers, downplaying the numbers who attend their meetings as well as questioning how representative they are of the public mood. Financed by "wealthy backers", they show, he said, that "we are still in the era of Ronald Reagan" (and he didn't mean that in a good way). Then came the inevitable: "There may be an element in this that's racial in character" with people who are "angry that there is a black man who they view in a very suspicious way" and about whom they have "some fantastic ideas".
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You can always rely on The World Tonight to dig out some liberal American academic to back the Democrats and reinforce the programme's left-wing world view.
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This same edition of the programme ended with a report from Southern Italy on the problems facing illegal immigrants in the wake of violent clashes with local people. BBC reporter Emma Wallis made no secret about whose side she was on, talking to a Catholic missionary who works with the illegal immigrants, three of the illegals and a sympathetic centre-left regional councillor, with only the local police chief standing out (very briefly) from the crowd. Emma referred to the 'hardline' Italian interior minister and how the 'centre right government', in the wake of the riots, is now 'paying lip service' to the 'centre left' policies of the regional council (of whom she so clearly approves).
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ROBIN SHOOTS AN ARROW IN DEFENCE OF GORDON

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There was a revealing intervention from left-liberal BBC presenter Robin Lustig on Thursday's The World Tonight. The issue was MPs' expenses and Robin had gathered together Ben Brogan of The Daily Telegraph (a rare invitation to anyone from that newspaper on this most left-liberal of Radio 4 programmes) and one of the BBC's favourite constitutional experts (familiar from sundry election programmes), Professor Vernon Bogdanor.
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Lustig had asked Ben a question that puffed up Gordon Brown's constitutional reform proposals. Ben reminded World Tonight listeners of Gordo's history of unprincipled behaviour over the expenses issue, which brought Robin Lustig crashing in with "Put his past record on one side, do you think there's something in it?"
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Why should Brown's (at best cowardly, at worst self-interested) behaviour be put aside? He allowed his ministers and favourites to scupper Freedom of Information legislation that could have smoked out and resolved this crisis some time before the Great Expenses Scandal erupted, thanks to Guido Fawkes and Ben Brogan's paper.
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The BBC is far too keen to put Brown's past record on one side.
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THE ROAD ALWAYS TAKEN

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Unlike Newsnight, which gave us the unusual luxury of two Conservative politicians last night (Dan Hannan and Michael Portillo), The World Tonight trod its usual left-liberal path.
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The government's defence green paper was discussed with Andrew Dorman of King's College London, and "committed European" Philippe Morillon, who served as a French Liberal MEP. A report from Chavez's Venezuela was followed by an interview on the same topic with former Costa Rican vice president (and interim president) Kevin Casas Zamora, a social democrat. Finally, President Obama's decision not to attend the latest US-EU summit in Spain was discussed with Spanish writer Miguel Morado, who the programme always turns to (exclusively) to discuss Spanish politics, and Dr Daniel Hamilton of John Hopkins University, who made noises supportive of Obama and who, it transpires, worked in Bill Clinton's State Department.
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Robin Lustig presided, liberally.
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BACK IN THAT PARALLEL UNIVERSE

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Three posts ago I moaned that The World Tonight of all the Beeb's main current affairs programmes was the only one to feature interviews with only opponents of the Iraq War (on its Wednesday night edition). Astonishingly, it did the same last night.
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In the wake of Tony Blair's big day at the Chilcot Inquiry, Robin Lustig interviewed anti-war campaigner and bereaved mother Rose Gentle, then Blair biographer and critic of the war Professor Anthony Seldon and, finally, former advisor to Robin Cook and critic of the war David Clark.
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Only on The World Tonight!
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SOMEWHERE IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE...

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Yes the Today programme has a strong left-liberal bias but it cannot hold a candle to The World Tonight, which has turned the sidelining (almost to the point of exclusion) of all right-of-centre opinion into an art form.
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And it goes beyond that. The programme always opposed the Iraq War and last night, running true to form, invited on two guests to discuss the issue. Unlike Newnight and PM (for example), which granted some space to supporters of the war, The World Tonight interviewed one critic of the war, Dr Mark Weller of Cambridge University, and then another, Sir Alan Beith of the Liberal Democrats (I.C. of 0 for Robin Lustig, unsurprisingly.)
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This programme floats along in its own parallel universe.

THE WORLD TONIGHT (SORRY CAN'T THINK OF A PUN AT THE MOMENT)

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The horrifying case of the Edlington child torturers was covered on last night's The World Tonight. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtl3.
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If you want a classic example of the BBC's innate tendency towards bleeding-heart liberalism, this is it. The whole tenor of Robin Lustig's questioning to his first guest was of how the poor torturers could be reformed, after all they've suffered. "The adjective that is often used of children who behave in this way is that they are 'damaged'. The opposite of 'to damage' is 'to heal'. You are saying that children can be healed?", he asked finally. "I believe than children can be healed," his guest replied.
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That first guest was introduced thus: "I asked Pam Hibbert, who used to run a secure children's' home for violent offenders, how will they spend the coming days and weeks." He repeated these words at the end of the interview. But that's not all Pam Hibbert is, if you google about a bit. She's was also a director of policy at Barnardos and now heads the Standing Committee on Youth Justice. I'm puzzled as to why Robin introduced her as if she were a just someone who used to run a secure children's' home.
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She was followed by the usual sort of liberal criminologist who also pops up at these occasions, invited to react to David Cameron's speech about the case being another example of Broken Britain: Professor John Pitts of the University of Bedfordshire. He doesn't believe in 'evil', obviously. Unlike Mr Cameron, he sees them as 'extremely rare' 'isolated incidents', not indicative of social change taking place, unlike many other things. Here's Prof. Pitts from an interview with the Guardian (with a little censorship on my part!) to show where he's coming from:
"The idea that the market won - that it's beyond the power of government to intervene to affect the kind of social change [necessary] - ultimately, it's all predicated on a belief that if only you can link these places or these people back into the market, 'Bob's your uncle'. The current economic crisis tells you the market doesn't sort it. It f**** it up unbelievably."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jun/04/youthjustice
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This same edition ended with another of its trademark paeans to Latin American lefties, this time Bolivia's communistic president Evo Morales (Hugo Chavez's mini-me, pictured above being sworn in as the country's 'spiritual leader'). Reporter Andres Schipani heard from some of Morales most passionate supporters and his finance minister Luis Arce and presented the president's achievements in glowing terms. To be fair, a few seconds were given over to a more sceptical Harvard professor Gonzalo Chavez but the report's character can be best summed up by how it ended, with the sounds of crowds of Morales supporters crying "Evo! Evo!" Schipani might as well have joined in.

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A CHRISTMAS ROBIN

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The week before Christmas saw The World Tonight maintaining its usual left-liberal bias, with Wednesday's programme being particularly noteworthy.

It discussed university funding with Professor Les Ebdon of the University of Bedfordshire - the man who, earlier this year, caused controversy by calling for potential students from poorer backgrounds to be allowed into university with lower grades than their 'less disadvantaged' peers (i.e. a social engineer). The disruption caused by snow in Britain was compared with Germany, and for a point of view on this Robin Lustig turned naturally to a 'progressive' journalist, Jurgen Kronig of the left-leaning broadsheet Die Zeit. We then had a report from Kevin Connolly on homelessness in Obama's Washington, whose academic 'talking head' was Isabel V. Sawhill of the Brookings Institute, a liberal-minded former official in the Clinton Administration.
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Tuesday's programme ended with a report from Emma Jane Kirby on President Sarkozy's calls for a debate on French indentity, following the booing of the French national anthem by immigrants at a football match. There was a spokesman from what Emma Jane called "his right-wing party" (shouldn't that be 'centre-right'?) but he was sandwiched between two critics of the president's strategy - both keen multiculturalists, one a leftie professor, the other (given the last word) from a racial equality group, who stressed that 'equality' was the most important thing (and that's the thought with which the report ended). The whole piece was completely skewed against Sarkozy, who was accused of pandering to the far-right - directly by the leftie academic, and almost as directly by Emma Jane herself. Zut alor!
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Christmas Eve saw a special on international drugs policy. Beginning with the former Social Democrat Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who thinks the war on drugs has failed, Robin went on to hold a discussion between Jorge Castaneda, introduced as a "former Mexican foreign minister" (for the PRI, under the last of the left-wing nationalists to lead that now-long-out-of-power party, Jose Lopez Portillo - the president who nationalised the banking system); Keith Humphreys, senior advisor on drugs control to President Obama (who had a few nibbles at the Bush administration); and Professor Neil McKeganey of Glasgow University, who formerly advised the Home Office.

MORE ON 'THE WORLD TONIGHT'

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Rounding up the remaining editions of The World Tonight this week, Monday's programme (hosted by Ritula Shah) was the best, if only because it featured a fine discussion on quangos between Sir Alistair Graham (that admirable ex-chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and chair of Berwick Labour Party) and Mark Wallace of the (also admirable) Taxpayer's Alliance. The discussion was prefaced by BBC favourite, Professor Tony Travers of the Beeb's favourite academic institution, the L.S.E. (who said that quangos had "mushroomed...particularly since the 198os").
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Of course, there was also plenty about 'climate change' (as if it ever stays the same!), with two AGW-believers tussling over the effectiveness of carbon-trading. One, Bruce Duguid ("head of investor engagement at The Carbon Trust") , was in favour; the other, Chris Hope ( "an economist at the Judge Business School at Cambridge University" ), thought carbon-trading was merely "a first step" and wanted more direct taxes on emissions ( "'trade' is more of a dirty word than 'tax'", said Professor Hope.) A report from Brazil followed on the U.N.'s REDD programme (The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, to give it its very full title), during which only supporters of the scheme spoke. (Well, what's new there!). It's "not cheap", we were told. I bet.
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Tuesday's programme was presented by David Eades. It featured another such report, this time from Obama's Chicago, where Robin Lustig had flown to find out just how 'green' a city it really is. Again, everyone spoken to was in favour of 'doing something about climate change', though there was a lively debate about coal-fired power stations. Commissioner Suzanne Malec-McKenna (appointed by Democrat mayor Richard Daley) was grilled by Lustig (with two interruptions) over the issue, after he (and we) had heard from two green activists and a Democrat alderman (Joe Moore) who are involved in the campaign against the power stations. Lustig's report was preceded by an interview between David Eades and Peter Stott of the Met Office - and a leader author of the IPCC report (though that curiously was not mentioned), who was on to assure us that man-made global warming is real and thay world temperatures really are soaring despite this and despite that.
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The day's inhuman bombings in Baghdad prompted a BBC invite for a professor at Baghdad University who has been seconded to the the Beeb's favourite academic institution, the L.S.E. (His name sounded like Sahd Zavad). This chap, who with all possible respect I would label a 'nut', attacked the "failing" policy of the Iraqi government and "the occupying forces" and, when asked who was guilty of the bombings, said "Of course if I were a member of the government the easiest and ready-made accusation is Al-Qaeda and the Ba'ath Party members. But it's not the truth." Who did he blame then? "Members of the government are involved", he asserted. Anyone else? "Foreign elements...Israel, Iran." Ah yes, Israel! The nutty professor had earlier also said this: "this new character in Iraqi politics - the violent nature of the political differences between the political parties as well" . New? Well, he's Iraqi so he should know but...I seem to heard something about there being a long history of political violience and savage killings in the country even before Saddam Hussein got into power, and after Saddam Hussein got into power Iraq was, shall we say, not exactly free of political violence, was it? Just who was this professor? Was he a Ba'athist supporter?
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A preview of the Pre-Budget Report (due the following day) saw a report on "anxiety across the public sector" from Jonty Bloom. He visited a community college in Newquay - "a success story and it wants to stay that way." Jonty said, "It all adds up to a very successful system but it's not been cheap and...the headteacher worries about where the money is going to come from next year." *

There was a rare interview with a Bush era state department official, Wayne White of the Iraq Intelligence Unit. David Eades interrupted him three times in less than three minutes. That rarely (if ever) happens with a Democrat on The World Tonight.
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ROBIN LEFTIG (2)

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Now back to Thursday's The World Tonight, again presented by Robin Lustig. This began by discussing the meeting of minds between President Sarkozy and Gordon Brown (because Gordon is now following Sarko's line on regulation). Who did Robin invite on to discuss the issue. "I asked the French MEP Sylvie Goulard should we now believe them when they say they agree?" Sylvie had a bit of a dig at Sarko and praised the EU. I've complained about this before (http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2009/11/world-tonight.html). Again Lustig neglected to tell us where she stands politically. Like last time (4/11), he did not tell us that she is a French Liberal MEP. (She's also president of the ultra-Europhile French European Movement). This is 'bias by (not) labeling'. The other guest was centrist Financial Times foreign editor Gideon Rachman.
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An initiative by three U.S. senators on 'climate change' (ie. man-made global warming) was discussed with Rob Bradley of The World Resources Institute, "an environmental think-tank in Washington" and the BBC's environment(alist) correspondent Richard Black.
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The World Tonight is particularly obsessed about Israel and the Palestinians. The Egyptian government's moves against tunnels into Gaza, which Lustig helpfully reminded us is thought of by every single one of its 11/2 million inhabitants as "the world's biggest open-air prison", were discussed with one man, Chris Gunness of the UN agency UNRWA. You may recognise the name, as Chris was a former BBC correspondent. He regards Israel as an "occupying power."
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ROBIN LEFTIG

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As detailed previously, Radio 4's The World Tonight has a good claim to be the BBC current affairs programme with the most pronounced left-liberal bias. In the next few posts I will be working my way backwards through the week's programmes, starting with last night's edition.
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This was presented by Robin Lustig.

The 'Copenhagen' features at the start of the programme centred on an interview with leading AGW-advocate Ed Miliband of the Labour government. This unchallenging interview earned Robin an I.C. of 0, not surprisingly. Then Andrew Harding filed a report from Mali, whose tone may be guessed from Lustig's introduction: "Well, if you want an example of what international financial help can do to help poorer countries confront the effects of climate change take a look at Mali in West Africa".
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The left-wing bias though really kicked in later, when Lustig discussed the contrasting approaches of the governments of the U.K. and Ireland to the current economic crisis. "Now there were two distinct approaches to getting out of an economic mess on view this week. Don't cut public spending too much or too fast was the British approach. Ensure that you're well out of the recesssion before you start trying to reduce government debt. But in Ireland the government sees it differently. £31/2 billion of public spending cuts, pay cuts of between 5 and 15% for public sector workers, a 20% pay cut for the prime minister".
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To say the programme took sides would be an understatement. "Would it work on this side of the Irish Sea? Well not according to Jack O'Connor of the Irish trade union SIPTU." Mr O'Connor was a 'talking head' and talked for 38 seconds, praising the British Labour government and condemning the Irish government.
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What happened next? Robin followed him with these words: "And these Irish street cleaners weren't too impressed either". Cue the only other 'talking heads', who also condemned the Irish government's moves (for 45 seconds).
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Is all Irish opinion opposed to their government's moves? Do opinion polls in Ireland show this sort of total opposition to the measures announced by the Irish government? Are The World Tonight's talking heads really representative of Irish public opinion, or only of Irish left-wing opinion?
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A discussion followed. "I asked Kevin Daly, UK economist at Goldman Sachs, and the journalist and historian Francis Beckett." Beckett is a true left-winger. Lustig did not mention any of this of course, but he's a Guardian, Independent, New Statesman-sort of journalist and a 'tribal Labour' sort of historian, who loves the unions and loves to bash the bankers.
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Mr Daly said something intriguing - that a large majority of Irish voters back their government's strong measures, according to the opinion polls (they are "very popular", he said) . If true, that flies in the face of what the feature's introduction was implying and suggests The World Tonight was trying to spin us a fast one. That the Irish government's strategy might be closer to that of an incoming UK Conservative government hardly needs saying.

BURN THE BANKERS!

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We all know, because the BBC has been telling us for so long that it's the case, that bankers are solely responsible for all the world's economic woes. With the nodding heads of John McFall and Vince Cable for support, they have convinced us to absolve the government of the UK in particular of any responsibility for the credit crunch or the subsequent recession. They very rarely ask why the UK recession has been so harsh and whether throwing money around like confetti in the belief that the good times would last forever, as Gordon Brown did for most of his ten years as chancellor, might just mean that we have are now pretty much skint as a nation. No, just blame the bankers for everything!
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As an example of bias interviewing on this issue just take Thursday's The World Tonight where the opening section dwelt on the subject again, beginning with an anti-banker interviewee, Labour's John Mann, then featuring a pro-banker interviewee, Owen Kelly of Scottish Financial Enterprise. Fair enough, but Mr Mann was allowed to talk without being interrupted (giving three long answers - 41 secs, 59 secs and 55 secs respectively), whereas exactly 14 seconds after Mr Kelly had begun his first answer Robin Lustig interrupted in a hostile fashion. Fair? Hardly.
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AN INDEX ON CENSORSHIP OF THE RIGHT?

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Last night's The World Tonight with Robin Lustig was as heavy as ever with guests from the Left and as light as ever with guests from the Right.
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It began by reviewing the day's proceedings at the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War. It then discussed the issues raised with two people, BBC regular Oliver Miles (former ambassador, opponent of the war, and writer for The Guardian) and John Kampfner, former editor of The New Statesman and now chief executive of Index on Censorship (also an opponent of the war). Why two anti-war voices were invited to comment is beyond me.
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The issue of European Union arrest warrants was discussed with Labour minister Jim Knight (I.C. of 0) and then with Jago Russell of the campaign group Fair Trails International (and previously a policy officer at Shami's Liberty.) Jago was, naturally, not against the idea of EU arrest warrants in principle, only in practise!
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David Rennie of The Economist provided some relief, even though he had bad news to tell us about the free-market-loathing, London-loathing Frenchman newly appointed as the EU's new trade supremo (in the wake of the post-Lisbon carve-up) and an almost-as-bad German protectionist installed as energy commissioner. What a nightmare!
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