GREEN BIAS: A previous blog (April 7) highlighted that BBC2’s Newsnight had downplayed serious concerns about the role of the UK and the EU’s green energy regime in threatening the viability of the steel industry. Radio 4’s Today entered the fray the next day with an interview of Femke de Jong, the EU policy director of an organisation called Carbon …
Referendum Blog: April 7
Newsnight claim: ‘green’ costs are irrelevant to the future of Tata steel CABBAGE PATCH: Radio 4’s magazine programme More or Less, which seeks to debunk and correct the misuse of numbers and statistics, has been attempting to arrive at the truth about a claim by Eurosceptics that the EU has rules about cabbage growing that add up to 26, 911 …
Referendum Blog: April 6
PAUL MASON: For years, Paul Mason was the economics correspondent/editor of Newsnight. He was part of a team lead by the programme’s ex-Guardian editor, Ian Katz, and News-watch has assembled over the years evidence that pro-EU slant has been a serious problem, especially, for example, on the day that David Cameron announced that the EU referendum would take place (back …
Referendum Blog: April 5
EX-PAT BIAS BBC2’s Newsnight examined last night opinion about Brexit among ex-pats in the Costa Del Sol. Reporter Sekunder Kermani had drawn the short straw of being sent to sunny Malaga…and he made it clear that most Brits there were deeply worried about exit. He assembled from his contributors and his own comments a long list of reasons: pensions being …
Referendum Blog: April 4
INGLORIOUS ISOLATION: All this week, Radio 4 is carrying after World at One a series called Inglorious Isolation: A European’s History of Britain. In each 15-minute programme, a prominent ‘European’ is giving a view about the impact of the UK on his or her own culture. First off the block today is Italian architect Francesco da Mosta – and it’s …
Radio 4 World Tonight investigation finds more BBC pro-EU bias
A News-watch investigation into one of the BBC’s flagship news programmes has found it to be heavily biased in favour of Britain remaining in the EU. Twenty consecutive editions of the programme – one of the main ‘hard news’ formats on the BBC – between February 22 and March 19 were surveyed. The main finding was that staunchly pro-EU figures …
Referendum Blog: April 3
MARR BIAS? Today’s edition of the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 leaned firmly towards the ‘remain’ side. Three guests – former BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders, business secretary Sajid David and actor Jeremy Irons – all were given the opportunity to declare they favoured ‘remain’ and advanced without challenge from Marr their detailed reasons for doing so. Alison Pearson was …
News-watch Launches EU Referendum Blog
This new service will track on a regular basis programme items that seem to be biased towards the pro-EU side. The observations are not the result of detailed analysis. Rather, they are pointers based on News-watch’s experience in tracking the BBC over many years, and on past BBC performance. If you spot BBC bias, do let us know. You can …
BBC Environment programme flouts BBC impartiality rules
Costing the Earth; The Environment after Exit (BBC Radio 4 March 15 and 16) h/t Craig Byers of Is the BBC Biased? The programme, presented by Tom Heap, investigated the current impact on the UK of EU-related policies affecting conservation, fisheries, farming and renewable energy, and explored what might happen in the event of Brexit. The main fulcrum was whether, …
Analysis of Newsnight reveals strong imbalance against Brexit case
News-watch has completed preliminary research on 40 editions of Newsnight between January 13 and March 11 based on the full transcription and analysis of the relevant parts of each programme. Daily news and current affairs programmes such as Newsnight are not required to be balanced within each edition, but it would be expected that over a two-month period, the handling …