This morning on the Radio 4 Today programme Ed Milliband was questioned with some thoroughness by Evan Davis and you could almost hear the collective jaws of the nation hitting the floor. This is not what the BBC does to Labour politicians. They are to be treated with kid gloves and never made to answer for their ineptitude. We all know this from long experience, the BBC has a massive political bias and so tends to lay into Conservative politicians at every opportunity whilst seemingly giving Labour politicians a platform for their misguided views.

There are three reasons behind this institutionalised bias:

• The BBC is run by Oxbridge graduates who have never worked in the real world. They have never had to compete or to generate a profit, they just spend money. So their whole political philosophy is at the unsophisticated student liberal/socialist level and this informs their every action and decision.
• The BBC is a part of the state. It is funded by the only hypothecated tax. So it favours the party that is a profligate spender on the state, which is Labour. And dislikes the party which seeks to limit the state, which is the Conservatives.
• The Hutton inquiry emasculated the BBC. After it they literally didn’t have the balls to ever bring a Labour politician to account. So Gordon Brown was free to destroy our economy whilst the BBC said next to nothing and certainly never forced him to explain his actions.

The BBC has immense power, it has nearly 50% of the total news reach in the UK with multiple national and local radio and TV channels as well as an immensely popular website. This excessive, monopolistic presence means that their political philosophy spills over into the media that they don’t own, so virtually everything you watch, read or listen to is polluted with the BBC bias.

So how do you keep yourself informed of what is happening in the world in a balanced way? American media is very limited, for instance less than 20% of the population of Mississipi have a passport and the media know their audience so tend to paint world affairs in a simplistic black and white. Also they are so pro Israel and anti Moslem that often their reporting is little more than propaganda. Much else in the world that is in the English language carries the BBC taint. So where do you go?

• The Economist. The world’s finest newspaper. Erudite, informed, analytical and intelligent, it treats its readers as if they are grown ups and as a result is read every week by most world leaders. It is a pity that more of them don’t follow the advice published in it. There is also an excellent website. If you read the Economist from cover to cover each week then you understand the world better than 99% of people.
• Google news. The UK edition of this is obviously heavily polluted by BBC influence, but if you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Other News Editions” you can then choose to see the world from a variety of different perspectives. This is very illuminating indeed and can give you very informed viewpoints that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
• Al Jazeera. Both website and television have startlingly high journalistic standards and have reach and access that often far surpasses that of the BBC. Their reporting on the Middle East, especially, is little short of fantastic, but don’t use them just for that. They have brought a breath of fresh air to news reporting and have a significant influence on world events.
• Private Eye, the satirical magazine has a strange mix of humour and hard reporting. Often they will publish what nobody else will and their anti establishment stance means they are not in thrall of Labour politicians, the police, royalty, freemasons, celebrities, senior civil servants and many others that most media are slow to criticise.
• The News, Politics and Economics section of the Pistonheads forum. So often here you get the inside view from people actually involved in the news stories, which can make it massively authoritative. Also you get some incisive analysis of many stories, plus the occasional, inevitable internet idiot that you have to filter out.
• ARRSE, the forum for members of the military. This is often incredibly informative because you hear the real views from the people involved. The same goes for PPRuNe, the aviation forum, which tends to become inaccessible when there is a major aviation story as all the world’s press dive in to use it as a source.
• Sky News. Some would say this is tainted by Murdoch, but anything is better than being tainted by socialism. Adam Boulton was the only lobby correspondent who tried to stand up to the gross excesses of the last Labour government and to question their massive economic ineptitude, something that is under appreciated.

Obviously there are more but I have selected the best for you. Meanwhile why did Evan Davis break ranks and actually question a Labour politician properly?

• The BBC have decided that Ed is unsuited for the job and are running a campaign to depose him in favour of someone less likely to lose.
• Craig Oliver is David Cameron’s new Director of Communications and is ex BBC, maybe he is starting to exert some influence.
• The BBC have finally realised that Labour lost the last election and that the country is being run by different people now, so they can start to grow their balls back.
• Maybe Evan just got out of the wrong side of bed and felt like laying into the first inept person he came across.