Irwin M. Stelzer writes for the Weekly Standard:
IT’S BEEN INTERESTING to follow the American elections from here in London, where it is the number one topic of conversation at dinner parties, at think tank meetings, and in taxicabs. No surprise, perhaps, in a town that is always obsessing about American policy, whether it is anger at U.S. steel tariffs, worry about whether the slow-down in the American economy will find its way across the ocean, or interest in the conquest of Hollywood by the celebrity team of Posh and Becks–the former Spice Girl and her footballer husband, to those of you who do not pick up your magazines at the supermarket checkout counter.
So great is the demand for more and more news about the doings of Barack, Hillary and, to a lesser extent, John McCain, that many of my British friends have switched from the more meager coverage provided by the BBC, most of whose announcers don’t have a clue as to what is going on, to Fox News, now available courtesy of its sister organization, the satellite Broadcaster BSkyB. Lo and behold, they say they find the Fox coverage deeper, livelier and less biased than that of BBC–no surprise, given the dull and left-leaning nature of the BBC, which was confidently predicting Al Gore’s victory in 2000 almost up to the moment George W. Bush took the oath of office.
