How Impartial is That? BBC Monitoring.

I transcribed what follows from Wednesday morning’s ‘Today’ programme (8th May 2013), a broadcast which British readers will know is the Corporation’s most respected news and current affairs programme.  

 

I did so because, when I first heard it early on Wednesday morning, I was shocked by it. And I am not readily shocked by the BBC, an institution whose hopeless liberal bias is well-known to me, and which I tend to dismiss with a shrug most of the time, because life is too short to fret.

 

John Humphrys, the presenter involved, is by common consent the programme’s most incisive interviewer and presenter.  I think the exchange  is quite extraordinary, for several reasons. One is that the BBC seems to have a very odd idea of where the line of disagreement now lies in British politics, and of what is the consensus and what is not. On the basis of this discussion, the view that the law should still be employed to control the use of illegal drugs no longer needs to be represented in discussion (even by the presenter playing ‘devil’s advocate’, as they are so often said to be doing in other circumstances when they introduce opinions into discussions which are not being expressed by any participant) .

 

The nearest we get to a representation of this view is a comment on the unwillingness of politicians to consider the idea of drug decriminalisation. Even on the (shaky) assumption that nobody on the ‘Today’ programme knew this issue would be coming up (preliminary discussions on such items can often take 20 minutes, as the researcher is anxious to know what the guest will say so the presenters are prepared), this is pretty odd.

 

Then there is the whole jokey tone of the discussion, gravely offensive to anyone whose life has been destroyed because he, she or a family member has taken illegal drugs.

 

Finally, a partial view on the nature and operation of criminal justice is expressed by a guest without any challenge.

Imagine, if you will, this item being broadcast 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago on the same programme. Here is the point at issue:

Just after 6.49 a.m. on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme (for the next few days you may listen here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s8mnj), John Humphrys (JH) introduced a discussion by two think tanks supposedly ‘on either side of the political divide’ These are Madsen Pirie (MP) of the Adam Smith institute and Tom Papworth (TP) of the Centre Forum , a Liberal Democrat think tank I hadn’t heard of before.  Embarrassingly, both alleged antagonists broadly agreed on all their proposals. That was bad enough . After a few minutes of more or less complete agreement between these supposed foes, matily addressed by their Christian names,  Mr Humphrys said he was ‘beginning to wonder if they were on opposite sides’  Mr Pirie then said the discussion was ‘dying of agreement’).

 

At this point, Mr Pirie said he had something that he thought would ‘stir the pot’. Not exactly, as it turned out.

 

Madsen Pirie: ‘We have been losing the war on drugs for 50 years. It is about time we did something to win it. So we would like to see the proposal that the hard drugs be medicalized.  And that means that addicts would be able to get supplies within clinics run by doctors and nurses after medical examination, and the recreational drugs should simply be legalised.’

 

JH. ‘Now you know you’ve no chance of that . (TP giggles) Experience tells us that politicians run a mile from that sort of thing doesn’t it,  Madsen?’

 

MP. ‘Experience shows that politicians will probably carry on doing the thing that hasn’t worked for 50 years (John Humphrys chuckles) and calling for more of it to be done. We’d like something different to be done.’

 

JH : All right. What do you think of that one,  Tom?

Tom Papworth: I’m slightly disappointed that the Adam Smith Institute doesn’t want to just legalise it and tax it, really.’(JH: Laughs)

 

JH : ‘Well, there you go. Why not go that step further, Madsen?  Legalise it all and tax it?’ (in light-hearted voice)

 

MP:   ‘The point is that if you did decriminalise the hard drugs and legalise the recreational drugs you would be able to control the quality to some extent and much of the health damage that’s done by drugs is done by polluted drugs, contaminated drugs,  people taking the wrong dose. If it were done under medical supervision you wouldn’t have that problem. But the big thing is you would be taking crime out of drug addiction.’

 

JH: ‘And that is a very big thing isn’t it , Tom?  If you remove that then you do solve a huge number of social ills.’ (These words (if you remove…social ills’), are, in my view, spoken as a statement, not in the tone of voice normally used to ask a question. What do you think?).

 

TP: ‘A huge number of social ills,  and frankly it is a brilliant cost-saving measure for the government. The government basically spends billions every year locking people up for drug offences. The result of which is that you take people who have drifted a little bit into crime and you seal them into a university of crime for a few years and when they come out their future is definitely… (word unclear, may be “criminal”).’

JH : ‘Well, there you are Madsen. You’ve got his approval of that as well’