Last week in BBC Watch, it was noted that as referendum polling day fast approached, that in 17 years of monitoring the BBC’s coverage of the EU, one factor had scarcely changed: the casting of Nigel Farage and the party he leads as xenophobic incompetents. By both implication and direct association, that means – as a core feature of the …
Referendum Blog: June 20
HUMPHRYS PRO-IMMIGRATION BIAS: John Humphrys on Saturday presented a 27-minute Today feature on immigration. It was unusually long and amounted to a documentary inside the Today format. What was the purpose? Humphrys opined that the topic was causing a debate of a kind that he had never seen in his 50-year career. He said he wanted to explore whether concern …
Craig Byers: Mishal Husain distorts immigration debate
I’ve been a little bit surprised at how little has been written (so far) about Mishal Husain’s BBC Two documentary Britain & Europe: The Immigration Question. I’ve seen barely a comment about it anywhere. For me, however, it was one of the most striking ‘landmark’ programmes of the BBC’s entire EU referendum coverage. Why has there been so little comment? Was …
Sir Cliff saga shows BBC is ‘impervious to criticism of its journalism’
The BBC’s sensationalist coverage of the South Yorkshire police ‘investigation’ of Sir Cliff Richard over alleged sexual impropriety stank to high heaven from the beginning. Now that the 75-year-old singer has been totally exonerated, it stinks even more. The Richard saga began in August 2014, when – according to an official report by retired Chief Constable Andy Trotter, one of …
Referendum Blog: June 15
EASTON BIAS: At what point does a BBC ‘editor’ such as Laura Kuenssberg (Politics) or Mark Easton (‘Home’) cross the line between offering expert opinion and expressing their own political prejudice? Easton certainly strained that line on his report on the impact of views about immigration on referendum voting intentions in an item for BBC1’s News at Ten last night …
Referendum Blog: June 14
BERLIN BIAS:BC Radio 1 decided to visit Germany in its Newsbeat bulletin yesterday evening. The referendum vote is now fast approaching…and the need for balance, it would be thought, would demand a variety of opinions would be included. Wrong. It was what could best be described as a deluge of pro-Remain propaganda. Reporter Greg Dawson first set the scene by …
Referendum Blog: June 12
MORE ANTI-FARAGE BIAS: An earlier blog noted that the coverage by BBC1’s News at Ten of remarks made by Chancellor George Osborne in his high-profile interview by Andrew Neil, was sharply skewed to the ‘remain case’, and, indeed, that the editing out of Neil’s questions made his comments into what amounted to a party political broadcast. The earlier blog also …
For Europe, Against the EU
The case for leaving the EU has never been put by the BBC in a programme wholly dedicated to the ‘out’ case. By contrast, the Corporation has, over many years, broadcast an unbalanced barrage of pro-EU material – as is documented on this site – and in March 2015, presented in prime time The Great European Disaster Movie, made by …
Referendum Blog: June 11
DID BBC FAVOUR ‘REMAIN’ IN VOTER REGISTRATION PUSH? The specially-extended deadline to register to vote in the EU referendum passed on Thursday night. According to the BBC, an extra 430,000 voters registered, approximately half of whom were under 35. The official registration site crashed on Tuesday not long before midnight under pressure of sheer volume as the actual pre-set deadline …
Referendum Blog: June 10
PRO-OSBORNE, ANTI-FARAGE BIAS: Two successive days, two key studio events in which the respective sides in the referendum debate put their respective arguments. One was George Osborne’s appearance (Wednesday) with Andrew Neil and the other, the ITV programme on Tuesday evening in which a studio audience put questions to Nigel Farage and David Cameron. BBC1’s News at Ten covered both …