MEDIA BIAS?

The BBC reported that Russia’s electoral commission “admitted media coverage for Sunday’s presidential election has been unequal.”

What a shock.

This reminds me of a little story John Pilger occasionally mentions about two Soviet officials in the time of the Cold War who went to the USA to see how the media worked in a free country™. The two officials were astonished and said that they were amazed – to ensure this level of compliance from their media they had to send people to prison and Siberian work camps, just how had the Americans achieved this?

The BBC defends its election coverage on the basis of the main parties being assigned a certain amount of time (a 5:5:3 or 5:5:4 share in terms of the three main parties).

This of course does not allocate any time to the public, millions of whom don’t vote because they don’t see the difference between the parties. And the smaller parties don’t get much time although they are given a certain amount of election broadcasts.

Then of course we come to the issue of protest. At the time leading up to the Iraq war, a study done by a German newspaper found that the BBC showed the least amount of dissenting opinion of any major broadcaster (only 2% compared with ABC with 7%).