There’s been an interesting story recently which might tell us much about the BBC’s editorial bias. I was reminded of it by this article by William Rees Mogg in the The Times. According to him, senior judge Lord Hoffman, who has spoken out against the Strasbourg law court the European Court of Human Rights, “has supported the shift to judicial liberalism that followed the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998″
So, a liberal judge.
Who attacks a European institution.
What to do (for the BBC, who are attached to both)?
Well, interestingly, the BBC immediately reported Hoffman’s attack– they may have even broken the story to the wider public – but they made special points of saying where he might be acting from a sense of personal injury, “In 1989 Lord Hoffmann had a decision of his overturned”, or untrustworthy, Hoffman “had contributed to a decision that the former Chilean leader could be arrested and extradited for crimes against humanity, without emphasising his links to human rights group Amnesty International.”
As this kind of background is normally quietly left aside when reporting the thinking of liberal leftists, and in those cases the BBC simply rest on the seniority of the source, we can be sure that this time the BBC came down in favour of supporting a European institution. As Russell Crowe said to Marr on Sunday, pointedly and deliberately- “objectivity is a myth”.
