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Granada Television
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Since its first transmission to the people of NW England on 3 May 1956, Granada Television has grown to become Britain's biggest independent broadcaster, owning half of ITV's franchises and serving 37 million viewers in over 60% of Britain's homes.  From its Manchester headquarters the company now owns a vast empire that includes: London Weekend Television; Yorkshire Television; Tyne-Tees Television; Anglia Television; Border Television; and Meridian Broadcasting (99.92%).  Additionally Granada has major shareholdings in: ITV2 (55%); ITV Digital (50%); ITV Sport (50%); London News Network (50%); MUTV (33%); ITN (20%); GMTV (20%); TV3 (45%); plus outright or part ownership of a host of TV production, broadcast, property, publishing, retailing, and Internet companies, with a valuation at July 2000 of £10 billion.

Granada TV, Manchester - Britain's dominant independent TV company.  Its institutionalised  Left-wing bias was instilled at birth by its founder, communist activist Sydney Bernstein.

Producing some 9,000 hours of television annually, Granada dominates UK independent TV production.  The company sells its programmes to ITV, C4, C5, Sky, the BBC, and broadcasters in 120 countries.  As ITV's main supplier it rules the roost, accounting for 1,500 hours of ITV's output and over 85% of ITV programmes, attracting audiences over 10 million (excl. sport), and empowering it with irresistible leverage over what programmes ITV Network Centre commissions for network transmission.
    Television is the communication medium of the age, possessing untold ability to mould public opinion and affect the function of democracy.  Clearly, any broadcaster that possesses such manifest power should endeavour to exercise political even-handedness.  However, despite owing its very existence to the 1954 Conservative government's decision to allow commercial television in the first place, Granada is, and always has been, an unashamed crusader for the Left.

It is no accident.  Granada's founder, Sidney Bernstein, was a fervent socialist whose political activities and association with communist agitators in the early 1930s had even led to his being watched by the security services.  Whether intentional or not, his decision to establish his television empire 200 miles from London within a few yards of the Manchester Guardian led to a political alliance between the two organisations that half a century later would play a significant role in the successful tarnishing of the Conservative government of John Major. 

Born the son of a wealthy immigrant, Bernstein had made his own fortune from establishing a successful cinema and theatre chain. But despite the joys that his Granada cinemas brought to the masses, prior to bidding for one of the new broadcasting licences Bernstein had actually supported the Labour Party's opposition to the introduction of commercial television, such was his Left-wing idealism. This was acknowledged by the Guardian itself following Bernstein's death on 5 February 1993, in an obituary by Dennis Barker entitled: Granada’s hard core:

   
 '[Granada] was one of the first ITV stations to be started, and 30 years later was the only one of the four still in existence.  The fact that he advised a previous Labour government that Britain would be better off without commercial TV did not prevent him running a lucrative business based on the principle of a "tight ship". 
    He was a Labour Party supporter almost all his life, a member of the party and a member of Willesden Council for Labour as a young man, and a substantial donor of funds later on…
    Some of his critics affected to be amazed when the staunch Labour supporter accepted a peerage from [Labour Prime Minister] Harold Wilson in 1969.  They were even more amazed when he seemed reluctant to use it as a platform for his own views on politics and business.'

Bernstein's critics might well have been 'amazed' that he passed up the opportunity to vent his political views in the Lords, but few of his confidants would have expressed surprise, knowing as they did that such open discussion of his beliefs would have betrayed the way he ran Granada as his own political fiefdom.  The fact is, no sooner had Bernstein established Granada as a competent broadcaster he interfered at every level to ensure that his programme makers faithfully reflected his doctrine.  One person who knew him particularly closely was his former deputy chairman, Denis Forman, who gave his own insight in a second obituary carried by the Guardian:

    'Sydney's word was law and his will was adamantine.  It was commonly said that, even in minor matters, he had a whim of iron…  Above all, it was in the matter of programmes that his editorial style took command…  Not all programmes, for he left comedy and light entertainment entirely in the care of his brother Cecil..  But drama he dominated from the start, with a determination to rid television of the cosy Aunt Edna image that was then in vogue in the BBC… 
    His other influence was in introducing a type of radical journalism which challenged the BBC's comfortable cohabitation with the establishment…  Authority in any form had to be questioned and the answers made public on the television screen.'

The Left-wing broadcaster and columnist Anthony Howard gave his own appreciation of the man in an obituary for the Independent:

'Bernstein was undoubtedly the dominant influence on the growth and development of commercial television in Britain.  Paradoxically, he had opposed its introduction.. Only when the breaking of the BBC's monopoly seemed inevitable did he take action - and that, characteristically, was to warn the Labour Party of his intentions before announcing that his company 'had applied to the Postmaster-General for a licence to operate a commercial television station.'

Howard described Bernstein's first break into cinema during World War Two, where he was engaged to oversee the production of propaganda films as Churchill's Films Adviser to the Ministry of Information:

'The offer, from Duff Cooper, the new minister, was a brave one, for MI5 had reported that Bernstein was 'a security risk'..  Although Bernstein certainly had a number of Communist friends.. there is no evidence that he himself was ever a member of the Communist Party (though at one stage he certainly had close affiliations with it)…'

Howard concluded his piece with a cloaked acknowledgement of the strength of Bernstein's political beliefs - and television's ability to communicate them:

'He could probably have made his mark in any walk of life, certainly in politics and possibly also in newspapers.  It was the British public's good fortune - if also, perhaps, the British Left's loss - that he should have chosen instead largely to subordinate his political convictions to the pursuit and control of the 20th century's two successive most potent instruments of mass communication; first the cinema and then television.'

But far from 'subordinating' his political convictions to run Granada, and far from being 'the British Left's loss', Bernstein instilled in the northern broadcaster an institutional political bias that manifested itself in a politicisation of its output that has been to the Left's immense gain, especially in northwest England, where, thanks to the combined influence of its biased reporting and the Guardian's domination of local newspapers, the Conservatives continually fail to make any impact even during those general elections when the country swings their way.
    The truth is, apart from a veneer of impartiality, shored up by an occasional cosmetic swipe at Labour, Granada's output has remained so committed to its founder's Left-leaning politics that one struggles to recollect a single Granada documentary or drama that has challenged them.  Indeed, Granada's factual programme makers are thought not to have knowingly employed a single Conservative journalist in nearly fifty years of broadcasting, betraying an institutionalised political prejudice, which, if applied racially, would easily exceed the worst excesses of white South Africa during apartheid's darkest days.

Part Two