THE BBC SPIKING NEGATIVE STORIES on the antiwar movement?

Say it ain’t so! Here’s the full story, from the New Statesman, and here’s a key bit:

Just before the war against Iraq I began to receive strange calls from BBC journalists. Would I like information on how the leadership of the anti-war movement had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party? . . .

The anti-war movement wasn’t a simple repetition of the old story of the politically naive being led by the nose by sly operators. The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba’athist fascism as it dared and had formed a working alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, which, along with the usual misogyny and homophobia of such organisations, also believed that Muslims who decided that there was no God deserved to die for the crime of free thought. In a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, would allow themselves to be organised by the opponents of democracy and modernity and would march through the streets of London without a flicker of self-doubt. Wasn’t this a story?

It’s a great story, I cried. But why don’t you broadcast it?

We can’t, said the bitter hacks. Our editors won’t let us.

Radio silence was imposed on the sinister and in many ways right-wing behaviour of the far left and has continued into the campaign for this month’s elections.

(Emphasis added.) This sort of thing hasn’t gotten much more coverage in the United States. But given the BBC’s troubles, I hope its editors’ biases will get more attention in Britain.

UPDATE: LT Smash offers a report on the American version of this phenomenon.