MORE ROBINSON BIAS: One of the most extraordinary questions of the EU referendum so far was posed by Nick Robinson when he interviewed Lord Patten on the Today programme on Wednesday (27/4). In essence, it seemed that the Today presenter – having first noted how wonderful he (Patten) thought the BBC was – invited the former BBC Chairman to say …
Referendum Blog: 28 April
PRO-PATTEN BIAS: After his interview of Nigel Farage on Radio 4’s Today, in which presenter Nick Robinson attempted in every way he could to say that Ukip was an irrelevant political force, Robinson then interviewed Lord Patten, the former BBC chairman about why, in effect, he thought it was vital for the Brexit side to lose. The contrast between the …
IEA BOOK SLAMS BBC BIAS
A book published today by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) about the future of the BBC contains a chapter in which research carried out by News-watch takes centre stage. The key areas of output investigated included the daily religious/spiritual segment Thought for the Day, broadcast as part of the Today programme. News-watch analysed almost a thousand editions and found …
Referendum Blog: April 27
GET FARAGE!: Here we go again…almost exactly a year ago, during the general election, Evan Davis slammed into Nigel Farage, interrupting him no fewer than 50 times and hardly letting him utter a single word about policy. Today, it was Nick Robinson’s turn on Today. Ostensibly this was an interview about Ukip’s chances in the various May elections, but Robinson …
Referendum Blog: April 25
CROWING FOR OBAMA?: Mark Mardell’ the BBC’s former ‘Europe’ editor and now presenter of World This Weekend, was in no doubt on Sunday about how important President Obama’s observations about the EU referendum were. He declared: The UK part of his farewell tour wouldn’t even count as a long weekend, but it might prove the most important 50 hours in …
Referendum Blog: April 24
MORE NEWSNIGHT BIAS: Newsnight continued their series EU Referendum Road on Friday night with a visit by reporter Katie Razzall to the Shetland Isles, the UK’s most northerly outpost. The full transcript is below. As with her previous report, it heavily favoured the ‘remain’ side – although not so obviously. The ‘in’ case was articulated by two figures: the managing …
Referendum Blog: April 22
ROBINSON ‘USES SAME EU PROPAGANDA AS OBAMA’: In this News-watch post about his television series Europe: Them or Us?, it was noted that former BBC political editor Nick Robinson had chosen to call Winston Churchill ‘the father of a united Europe’ , and in so doing, collaborated with – and amplified – the EU myth that the primary reason for …
BBC Bias: an EU referendum campaign progress report
News-watch has been carrying out detailed monitoring of news output since mid-January. A large number issues relating to impartiality have been noted, and overall, there is still, despite improvement, significant cause for concern that the ‘exit’ case is not being properly represented. On the plus side: There is definitely and clearly an effort to explore the respective ‘leave’ and ‘remain …
Referendum Blog: April 21
BUCK-PASSING? Nick Robinson’s second programme in his series Europe: Them or Us? highlighted numerous deep-rooted issues of BBC bias. In summary, he said he was presenting a history of the UK’s relationship with ‘Europe’ but in reality, he started from within a narrow area of the Westminster bubble and did not progress outside. He assembled a one dimensional progression from …
Referendum Blog: April 20
OSBORNE BIAS? News-watch has already noted that the marathon BBC coverage of George Osborne’s remain ‘Exocet‘ on Monday led the senior political reporting team to make claims that the ‘leave’ side did not have satisfactory documents to produce in response, and also that the weight of establishment opinion was strongly against exit. Political editor Laura Kuenssberg and her deputy Norman …