Mark Steyn on the BBC

When a chap writes a book called Can We Trust The BBC? I think it's a safe assumption that the answer is unlikely to be "yes." So I trust you won't regard it as a plot spoiler if I reveal that, at the end of his brisk tome, Robin Aitken (a Beeb journalist for 25 years) reveals that, no, you cannot trust the BBC, at least not if you're of a broadly conservative disposition. On the European Union, on the Iraq war, on Northern Ireland, on Islam, on America, the BBC trends not merely well to the left of the Conservative Party but well to the left of Tony Blair's New Labour. Away from the news, its "creative" side is expressed mainly through the usual dreary provocations, such as "Weddings And Beheadings", its laugh-a-minute drama about an Islamist snuff-video cameraman, scripted by Hanif Kureishi, Britain's Oldest Most Promising Young Writer and a man who'll never run out of Beeb commissions. The BBC's privileged position in British life makes its bias of a slightly different order from any U.S. network's.

The Wall Street Journal, May 5th, 2007