At least a little, anyway.

I’m not sure whether this signifies a thing, really. It may just be a tiny bit of window dressing. But nevertheless:

The BBC’s coverage of the Arab Spring has been heavily criticised ”“ by the corporation’s bosses.
Head of news Helen Boaden admitted that her journalists got carried away with events and produced ”˜over-excited’ reports.

She told a BBC Trust report that in Libya, where reporters were ”˜embedded’ with rebels, they may have failed to explore both sides of the story properly.

Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen was among those criticised in the study into coverage of the uprisings, which found that ”˜excitement’ did sometimes ”˜infect’ the reporting, which some viewers described as ”˜too emotive’ and ”˜veering into opinion’.

Ya think?

The head of the BBC since 2004 has been Mark Thompson, who does seem a mite to the right of the usual—or at least, less aggressively and determinately to the left:

September 2010 Thompson acknowledged some of the BBC’s previous political bias he had witnessed early in his career. He stated: “In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left”. He added: “the organisation did struggle then with impartiality”, though also suggested that there was now “much less overt tribalism.”

That doesn’t mean that BBC coverage is now fair. But it does mean (perhaps; those who watch the BBC can comment more knowledgeably on this than I can) that there is an effort being made to not demonstrate quite as overt a leftist bias as before. For example, on Israel, Thompson must be doing something right if he’s garnering this sort of criticism. Remember as you read this that Britain and Europe are far more anti-Israel than anyone except the far left (and neo-Nazis) in the US:

A number of commentators have suggested that Thompson has a pro-Israeli editorial stance, particularly since he supported the controversial decision by the BBC not to broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal in January 2009. Complaints to the BBC, numbering nearly 16,000, about the decision were directed to a statement by Thompson.

Journalist Yvonne Ridley* wrote in CounterPunch that “D-G Mark Thompson might not care much for the BBC’s reputation but he should have a duty of care to his staff because it looks as if his pro-Israel stance is now endangering the safety of his own news teams, many of whom find his views repugnant in any case” and with respect to his 2005 meeting with Ariel Sharon, wrote “Never before had any BBC Director-General embarked on such a meeting and references to it are removed continually from Thompson’s biography on Wikipedia, an indication of just how sensitive the whole event remains.” Tam Dean Burn wrote in The Herald (Glasgow) “I would argue that this bias has moved on apace since Thompson went to Israel in 2005 and signed a deal with prime minister Ariel Sharon on the BBC’s coverage of the conflict.” Journalist Muhammad Idrees Ahmad wrote in CounterPunch that “the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson can hardly be described as a disinterested party: in 2005 he made a trip to Jerusalem where he met with Ariel Sharon in what was seen in Israel as an attempt to ‘build bridges’ and ‘a “softening” to the corporation’s unofficial editorial line on the Middle East.

* For those who can’t quite recall Ms. Ridley’s impressive (and I don’t mean that in a good way) bio, here it is:

Yvonne Ridley…is a British journalist, war correspondent and Respect Party activist best known for her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam after release, her outspoken opposition to Zionism, and her criticism of Western media portrayals of the War on Terror. Ridley currently works for Press TV, the Iranian-funded English language news channel.