BBC bias: criminal law and global warming

The BBC has recently been the subject of two negative reports in the national press.  The first concerns a drama about what is known as the joint entreprise law.  This law allows for more than one person to be convicted of a murder which only one of them could have committed, and is useful in a situation where a murder is committed by a gang.

I have not watched the drama in full, and so I will admit that what follows may not be entirely correct.  A teenage boy called Johnjo drives his friends away from the scene of a fatal stabbing.  He is arrested, and it is made clear to him that he could perhaps be convicted of murder using the joint entreprise law.  He avoids this fate by pleading guilty to a lesser charge, and thereby ends up in prison for a crime he did not commit.

According to a press report, the programme attracted the following negative comment:

The BBC's Royal Charter states the the corporation exists to serve the public interest. It is not in the public interest to broadcast a drama with such obvious political motivations that do not educate, but instead try to rubbish a law that has helped put many violent criminals behind bars.

I am not an expert on criminal law, but it appears from the ending of the drama that there may in fact be some instances of where the joint entreprise law has led to unjust convictions.  If that is true however, then maybe it would have made more sense for the BBC to broadcast a documentary about those specific cases, rather than try to entertain us with an imaginary case.

Nevertheless, I am not convinced that it was wrong of the BBC to draw public attention to a controversial area of criminal law.

The other news report concerns global warming, and contains the following quote from the evil former government minister Nigel Lawson:

The fact is that, on this issue, the BBC has its own party line (indistinguishable from that of the Green Party) which it imposes with quasi-Stalinist thoroughness. 

The one occasion, last February, on which it permitted a balanced and civilised discussion is now seen by the Corporation as a colossal error for which it must grovel and undertake never to repeat.

This amounts to a policy of outright political censorship.

I will not comment further on this right now, but intend to do so at a later date.  The full essay by Lord Lawson can be read here.

Related previous posts include:
The archbishop speaks out