BBC Bias Rant no. 42

Sorry - another whinge from me about the BBC. (Well, why shouldn’t I? I pay my compulsory BBC subscription licence fee.)

Radio 4’s six o’clock news last night (listen again, about 29 mins in) was covering Gordon Ramsey’s comments about seasonal and locally sourced food. BBC environment correspondent Roger Harrabin was explaining the issues - because clearly we couldn’t work them out for ourselves. In his view, there were some problems:

1. Any ban would quite possibly be unworkable, e.g. seasonal where? and how local?

2. The “moral issue”, which encompassed the ubiquitous nod to climate change (though pointing out that only a tiny proportion of greenhouse gas emissions are generated by food transported from Africa) and also the point that such a restriction of trade would hurt producers in poorer parts of the world (a fair point, actually).

And that was it, other than the statement that the economists’ answer would be to tax carbon. Which economists exactly? Just the ones the BBC tends to use, I suspect.

See what was missing? Of course, there was no mention of consumers making their own choices over where their food comes from. Individual freedom and all that. Hard to believe that the BBC, an organisation funded by a mechanism that gives its consumers no choice, could miss that one *cough*.

Update: Welcome to friends and others from Biased BBC.