ON EASTER Monday the Today programme broadcast a debate on Iraq, reviewing coalition progress one year after that country’s liberation. The three protagonists were Dr Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs; Dr Toby Dodge, an academic at Warwick University who has been an Associate Fellow at Chatham House; and the historian Andrew Roberts. The discussion was quite blatantly one-sided. Only Roberts backed the Iraq war and essayed anything other than a bleak view of the future. Both Dodge and Hollis were sceptical of the worth of intervention and dismissive towards the coalition.

Why did the BBC think two against one was a fair discussion? Was it because Today’s producers believed that the Chatham House Version, as offered by both Dodge and Hollis, was somehow closer to the objective truth than the partial and biased view of Roberts? The BBC’s general modus operandi would seem to suggest just that. Both Hollis and Dodge, along with others who share their broad, left-of- centre, Americo-sceptic approach are regularly deployed as “detached” experts who can provide “independent” analysis. But they are nothing of the kind — experts they may be — but they are also partial observers with very particular prejudices.

Thirty-four years ago the distinguished historian of the Middle East, Elie Kedourie, published an essay entitled The Chatham House Version. He pointed out that the conventional, consensual wisdom of the British foreign policy establishment embodied by Chatham House, which claimed to be the product of objective observation of the world, was in fact the product of a string of questionable assumptions, intellectual biases and personal prejudices.

Journalists like to believe that they are torch bearers for objectivity. But in the editorial choices that they make, the questions they ask, the words they choose, they betray a series of biases. Indeed these prejudices are all the more powerful because they pass unexamined by their holders.

In the BBC, the Chatham House Version of Dodge and Hollis is not treated as partial because it accords with the unquestioning assumptions of so many within the corporation, and indeed so many in journalism. You can hear these assumptions being rehearsed every morning in the questioning on the Today programme. Just as there is a Chatham House Version of world affairs which pretends to objectivity while being strongly biased, so there is a John Humphrys Version of the world which seeks to present itself as brusquely independent but is, in truth, deeply partial.

It is not my purpose here to criticise the technical skill of Mr Humphrys as an interviewer. Having worked with him at the BBC, on Today, I recognise that he is a crisp, pointed, tenacious interrogator. He is a much more accomplished interviewer than I will ever be a columnist. But while his technique is admirable, its deployment is questionable. There are clear indications of which way Humphrys sees the world in how he deploys his interviewer’s rapier, lunging with gusto at certain targets while barely ruffling the hair on the head of others.

On the Iraq war, Humphrys is a more than vigorous partisan. Critics of the action such as Menzies Campbell are treated with all the politeness of a vicar dropping in for tea. Defenders of the coalition, such as Jack Straw, are treated as though they were, at best, dupes led astray by the wicked Americans or, more likely, knaves whom no sane listener could properly trust.

Defenders of the Humphrys Version might argue that their man is only doing what journalists should do — displaying cynicism towards the arguments of those in power. That is, in itself, an ideological position, however attractive it may be to many. But Humphrys, and many of his colleagues, go well beyond that. In their world view certain beliefs and actions, many of them cherished by the powerful, are held to be self-evidently, unquestioningly good. The Middle East peace process is treated as an entity, almost like the Virgin Mary, which is beyond reproach. “Threatening it”, as Israel is accused of doing most days, is the gravest charge that can be laid against someone. But what we call the peace process is just one, of many, ideological responses to the challenge of the Middle East, and so far it looks to many of us to be just another singularly unsuccessful exercise in appeasement.

In the Humphrys Version of the world, however, the vigorous exertion of force by a Western nation in its own defence is assumed, almost reflexively, to be a mistake. The aggressive manner in which Mr Humphrys questioned American actions in Fallujah recalled, for me, the hysterical, and under-informed, journalistic attacks on Israeli actions against terrorists in Jenin.

One might have thought that, after the success of the Jenin operation in contributing to a reduction in suicide bombings in Israel, observers might have been a little more measured in their assessment of robust counter-terrorist measures. Indeed, one might have thought that the most important question to be asked about Fallujah is why the Americans had not acted more resolutely to deal with those defying civil order much earlier. But such a question is, almost literally, unthinkable in the Humphrys Version.

There’s nothing wrong with tough questions. The BBC should ask some more. Starting with an interrogation of its own assumptions.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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