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 …
Bbc correspondents’ comments raise impartiality issues
Monday can be seen in referendum terms as the day that the Remain side produced what it believed was an Exocet. Chancellor George Osborne released what he projected – to the point of pro-EU fanaticism – as a killer economic document which, on the basis of complex, algebra-led economic analysis, suggested that if the UK left the EU, every domestic …
Nick Robinson twists history to make Churchill ‘father of European unity’
An earlier blog noted that the first part of Nick Robinson’s series Europe: Them or Us had presented an account of the development of the EU that had badly distorted history by placing wrong emphasis in its role as a force for peace, and had amplified EU propagandists by projecting Winston Churchill as a warrior for a United Europe and …
Referendum Blog: April 15
BBC1 MAIN BULLETIN BIAS?: Gavin Hewitt, another former BBC ’Europe’ editor (he succeeded Mark Mardell in the role), popped up on the BBC1 News at Ten this week to look at the trade deal recently struck by Canada with the EU. This, of course, has been used by the ‘remain’ side as a warning of the problems of ‘exit’ because …