DUP's Campbell slams BBC programme for lack of balance on discrimination during the Troubles

His comments relate to a BBC documentary called ‘How the BBC Began’, screened at the weekend.

The programme features former BBC journalists including Paul Fox, who edited the BBC’s Panorama programme in the 1960s. He said that BBC bosses in London had given a veto on Northern Ireland coverage to the BBC in Belfast, resulting in censorship – claiming it was as difficult to film in Northern Ireland as the Soviet Union.

The programme is billed as the story of “how the BBC struggled to be impartial at critical moments in British history”.

The section on Northern Ireland featured former BBC staff critical of an alleged pro-Protestant bias at the corporation and its reporting of discrimination against the Catholic population in Londonderry during the time of gerrymandering on the local council.

Commenting on the programme, the DUP MP Gregory Campbell told the News Letter that in the programme: “a former director-general of the BBC says that the British public were not being told the truth about the troubles in the 1960s and 1970s in Northern Ireland because: ‘the bloody Protestants were running the BBC in Northern Ireland’.

“I do not know where he has been for the last 30 or 40 years, but he needs to come back and speak to people who can inform him that it is Protestants who are underrepresented in many areas of society and have been for years.

“Martin Bell and Denis Tuohy of the BBC also say that the BBC was prevented from telling the British public about discrimination against Catholics in education, work and housing. If they had come to me, I would have been able to speak about disadvantage in education, work and housing for Protestants both at that time and since, but again there is no sense of balance taken by the BBC in this programme”.

"Indeed, today when we look at organisations such as the Housing Executive, the imbalance in the workforce is incredible. This trend has been ongoing. Many Protestants are currently disadvantaged in the very sectors these retired BBC executives speak of.”

On the BBC’s Talkback programme, Mr Campbell criticised the programme for giving no “context whatsoever” – such as that “Protestants are now underrepresented in recruitment into the BBC. That’s a fact that we can demonstrate from Equality Commission monitoring reports”, he said.

The programme focused on BBC reporting of Catholics being driven from their homes in Belfast in the late sixties. Martin Bell criticised a decision to call the victims refugees rather than Catholics – “when all the people of Belfast knew who had been driven out”. Gregory Campbell criticised the journalists for not mentioning the fact protestants were driven from their homes as well.

On Mr Tuohy’s comments, the East Londonderry MP said “He might also have said, but didn’t, that to report on the systematic removal of thousands of Protestants from the West Bank of the city of Londonderry” – which wasn’t mentioned in the short segment on Northern Ireland.

In the programme, former BBC journalist Martin Bell also says that he was harassed and assaulted in Armagh after being addressed by the late Dr Ian Paisley at a prayer meeting.

A BBC spokesperson said: “The programme accurately reflects the recollections of former senior BBC programme makers at the time. This section refers to a specific period of BBC history and makes clear that the BBC changed shortly after.”

The documentary is available on the BBC iPlayer.