A new website, BBC Complaints – www.bbccomplaints.com – has been launched by News-watch. Its purpose is to help hold the BBC to account: to ensure that, as is required by law (expressed in its Charter and Public Purposes), it is properly impartial in its coverage of news and current affairs; to fill an important gap by creating a new, independent …
NEWS-WATCH SURVEY: MASSIVE BIAS BY OMISSION OF EU ISSUES IN BBC GENERAL ELECTION COVERAGE
Analysis by News-watch of the BBC’s EU-related general election coverage in selected flagship news programmes reveals massive bias by omission. There was a failure to explain in any depth the EU-related policies of the main parties, despite the fact that the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the EU were a central part of election manifestos. For example, questioning of David …
BBC Reform? Don’t Hold Your Breath
Is the government planning radical reform the BBC? Don’t hold your breath. Despite a bit of high-profile sabre-rattling, and intensifying speculation in the press based on ‘government leaks’ that this is on the cards, the answer is probably a huge resounding ‘no’. Figures close to new culture secretary John Wittingdale have clearly been the source of the recent rumours about …
Harding’s defence of BBC election coverage ‘does not stand up to scrutiny’
In characteristic take-no-hostages style, BBC News chief James Harding has defended in the Corporation’s General Election coverage. His message – delivered in his trademark pugilistic style without a scrap of supportive evidence to BBC-loving chums at a media conference – was exactly in line with that from senior BBC figures on such occasions: ‘Move along there, nothing to see. We …
BBC News chief defends General Election coverage against bias claims
James Harding, the director of BBC news, gave this speech in which he sought to defend the Corporation’s General Election coverage to the spring conference of the Voice of the Listener and Viewer on June 2. News-watch is preparing a full response to the sweeping generalisations he made about lack of bias. It will be posted imminently, and will be …
Al Murray campaign in Thanet against Farage ‘backed by BBC’
Al Murray, the pub landlord, clearly wanted – to put it politely – to pour cold ale all over Nigel Farage’s South Thanet campaign when he decided back in January to stand against him. His boast was that the country needed a leader who could wave a pint around and invent common sense solutions. Some of it was good old-fashioned …
Conservative BBC reform? Don’t hold your breath
The BBC made it abundantly clear who they wanted to win this election. The interview by Mishal Husain of Nigel Farage which was highlighted here, is a typical manifestation of their subtle-as-a-brick approach. To protect the licence fee and their imperialist, state-protected dominance of the UK’s media, they desperately wanted in power an alliance of Labour, SNP and the Greens. …
UK voting system means that anti-EU voters are denied representation
One of the early and most enthusiastic supporters of the Electoral Reform Society was the Rev Charles Dodgson, aka author Lewis Carroll. The ERS has been arguing for proportional representation since 1884, and for all that time they have been viewed as little more than well-meaning cranks. The Liberal Democrats, of course forced a vote on the issue during the …
Craig Byers: Why Cardiff University’s claims of BBC ‘right-wing’ ‘impartiality’ are not to be believed
Photo by jem The work of Cardiff University’s Media department is continuing to provide comfort to BBC supporters in ‘refuting’ claims of a left-wing bias at the BBC and to be cited as ‘proof’ of a right-wing BBC bias by some left-wingers (especially on Twitter). Cardiff’s 2012 report, ‘proving’ the BBC to be right-leaning, anti-European and anti-Islam (yes, I know!), …
Newsnight immigration feature casts worried Brits as xenophobes
The BBC’s blizzard of election-related stories that spin immigration as a topic that doesn’t matter is impossible to track. Lift almost any stone and there’s another example. A Newsnight feature last Wednesday was billed by presenter Emily Maitlis as ‘a long hard look at the subject’. This, it transpired, was a special piece of BBCspeak. It meant that Newsnight – …
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