BENIGN EU?: At the heart of the BBC website’s EU coverage is a new animated feature by correspondent Damian Grammaticas that purports to give an objective two-minute overview of how the EU operates. This is the text of the feature in full: Where to begin unpicking how biased this is? The first overall point is that Grammticas avoids any mention …
Referendum Blog: May 9
WAR MONGERING?: Nick Robinson – for once – did a credible job this morning (9/5) in trying to pin down foreign secretary Philip Hammond over David Cameron’s dire warning that exiting the EU could endanger peace and security in Europe, with the continent at the mercy of ‘forces of nationalism’ – a claim that led in the Daily Mail (for …
Referendum Blog: May 7
PEACE MYTH (CONTINUED): The concluding part of Newsnight’s European Dream series, presented by Gabriel Gatehouse, confirmed that this was based entirely on the EU’s own roseate version of its history. In reference to Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, the EU’s chosen founding fathers, he declared at the beginning of part three: In the analysis that followed, Gatehouse explored the problems …
Referendum Blog: May 6
MORE HISTORICAL BIAS: Newsnight has been looking this week at the history of the EU in a three-part series called The European Dream. As in other similar programmes – Europe Them or Us on BBC2, and The Inquiry on the World Service – it was pro-EU propaganda closely mirroring myths projected by the EU itself. Gabriel Gatehouse claimed that the …
Referendum Blog: May 5
MORE EU PROPAGANDA: Previous News-watch blogs have shown how Nick Robinson’s BBC2 programme Europe: Them and Us presented a false history of the EU in line with the EU’s own self-perpetuated myth that its existence has been an essential ingredient in keeping the peace since the Second World War. Listeners to BBC World Service have this week been heard their …
MARDELL: ANTI-BREXIT BIAS CONTINUES
Analysis of 15 editions of World This Weekend from January 24 – May 1 The programme is presented by the BBC’s former ‘Europe’ editor, Mark Mardell. Under his watch, the programme has worked consistently hard to present the arguments for ‘remain’, given more time to ‘remain’ supporters, and has featured most heavily stories which favour the remain side. It has …
Referendum Blog: May 4
MARDELL BIAS: Mark Mardell was the BBC’s first ‘Europe’ editor, appointed to the role back in 2006. The circumstances are very relevant to the EU referendum now underway. Back then, the EU was trying to foist on the member states the so-called EU Constitution and many governments – including that of Tony Blair, as well as those in Ireland and …
Referendum Blog: April 29
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 …