NON-BIAS BIAS? With the BBC, the devil is often in the detail. And even when figures from the Corporation set out to be ‘unbiased’, they fail dismally.  On Saturday, the Radio 4 Today programme lined up four of its most senior editors to analyse claims being made by the main two sides in the referendum debate.  Broadly, this is what they did and said:

Economics editor Kamal Ahmad analysed the claims of Vote Leave that EU membership costs the UK £350 million a week. His conclusion was the figure is much less; Vote Leave was not taking into account the UK’s rebate or the amount that the EU spends on the UK.

Home editor Mark Easton investigated similarly sweeping claims from Chancellor George Osborne that households would be £4,300 a week worse off by 2030 if the UK exited the EU. Easton decided the Chancellor was wrong because he was basing the forecast on an over-simplistic division of GDP, rather than actual incomes.  He also pointed out that the Treasury forecasts also assumed that most Britons would actually be significantly richer by 2030.

‘Europe’ editor Katya Adler examined whether Michael Gove’s warning that EU expansion would lead to an extra 88m people who are much poorer than those in the UK being able to settle here. Adler said that this was extremely unlikely to happen, not least because it was not certain that Turkey – with 75 million – would be able to join

Business editor Simon Jack checked David Cameron’s claim that 3m UK jobs were ‘linked to the European union’. Jack said that not all jobs would be at risk if the UK left the EU because they were dependent on trade with EU countries rather than EU membership.

Two claims each by the Leave and remain sides were thus debunked. That looks balanced. But closer inspection of the transcripts yields other problems.  First Katya Adler. The claim by Michael Gove, contained in article he wrote for the Daily Mail, was that the EU was considering applications to join from Albania, Turkey, Macedonia. Montenegro and Serbia, countries with a combined population of 88m, most of whom had significantly lower living standards and incomes than those in the UK. He said if the applications were approved, which seemed increasingly likely, these people would have the right to use UK facilities, including the NHS. His argument about the dangers to the UK from these countries was also framed in parallel with observations that the influx from countries which had recently joined the EU had been significantly higher than predicted. Overall, his warning was that the EU was on a course which could add substantially to the UK’s existing infrastructure and security problems, and if the UK remained a member of the EU, it could little or nothing to stop this. The bias point here is that Adler, in framing her response, chose to put the emphasis completely elsewhere. She said first of all that the barriers to entry to the EU by the five countries were unlikely to be resolved until at least 2020 and even then, agreement to their accession had to be unanimous among the 28 existing members. She also asserted that for Michael Gove to be right every man, woman and child – all 88 million of them –  would ‘have to move to the UK’.  Gove’s arguments in the Daily Mail feature, however, were not hinged on either point.  He was rather arguing that joining was on the cards (it is) and that potentially significant numbers of their citizens were likely to come, as had happened when other poorer countries had joined the EU.  Overall, of course, no one knows when or if or on what terms Turkey and the other countries will join the EU. But the purpose of Gove’s feature was to point out that this issue is live, that other similar accessions had already taken place, and that potentially, a further 88m would have access because of EU rules to the UK. Nothing of what Adler said disproved that, and especially her bald assertion that:

so, for Michael Gove to be right this would mean that all the citizens of these countries, every man woman and child would have to move to the UK.

Simon Jack’s ‘debunking’ of David Cameron’s claims about 3m jobs being dependent on the EU was also not what it seemed. The problem was that he looked at trade only through a very narrow prism. Brexit campaigners argue that EU membership forces the UK to rely too much on trade with EU countries; if there was an exit, trading possibilities and patterns would change and would result new business opportunities with countries throughout the world. The whole point of exit is thus to end reliance on the shrinking (in global terms) economies of EU members. Jack, however, did not even consider that, he looked only at what would happen within the current EU trading framework.  Yes, he pointed out that these jobs are dependent on trade with the EU, rather than membership of the EU, but the narrow prism he used meant that exiting the EU could have a negative impact, and pointed out that countries outside the EU but within Europe suffered from not being members.

Overall, Adler and Jack – far from definitively affirming or debunking anything – showed only that senior BBC reporters consider EU-related issues through skewed lenses of their own choosing.

Here is the transcript:

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 14th May 2016, EU Referendum, Four Correspondents, 8.37am

JOHN HUMPHRYS: The referendum campaign’s about as close as these things get – if there’s one thing we can say with certainty it is that there is a huge amount of uncertainty, and if there’s one refrain you here over and over again from the voters, it is this: why aren’t we being told the facts? Which raises the obvious questions: whose facts?  You’ll hear an ‘in’ campaigner asserting one thing, and an ‘out’ campaigner asserting quite the opposite.  Here’s a flavour.

GEORGE OSBORNE:          Britain would be permanently poorer if we left the European Union, to the tune of £4300 for every household.

UNKNOWN: We would be better off out, we would be richer and more successful.

DAVID CAMERON: Indeed, three million people’s jobs in our country are already linked . . .

MICHAEL GOVE:    What is a fact is that give more than £350 million to the European Union . . .

ANDREW MARR (?) Well, hang on.

JOHN MAJOR:          The fact that we are the access point to 500 million people market produces a great deal of investment in this country.

MG:     . . . you don’t have tariffs then both sides can accept but there’s no need to erect them . . .

GO:     And that would be catastrophic people’s jobs and their incomes and their livelihoods.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH:       All forecasts (word or words unclear) are wrong, you should take them all with a pinch of salt whether they come from the Governor of the Bank of England, the IMF or any other organisation.

JH:       So, how are the poor old voters expected to make up their minds if the campaign leaders can’t agree on even the most basic facts? Well, that’s where we come in.  We’ve rounded up four of our own editors to put you straight, well, to try to put you straight on for of the most contentious areas.  They, the editors that is, Kamal Ahmed, Mark Easton, Katya Adler and Simon Jack, and the facts, Kamal – Kamal Ahmed that is, our economics editor, your fact: ‘We send the EU £350 million a week’ that is what the Leave campaign says?  Is that true?

KAMAL AHMED:    Right, well I do love the whiff of a statistical chart in the morning, so I have been digging through figures behind this to save our dear listeners from having to do such a painful thing.  Table 9.9 of the Office of National Statistics Pink Book, 2015 . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Know it well.

KA:     That is going to be my start point for this.  The big point to make, I think, the beginning is the UK pays more . . . sorry, the UK pays more into the EU than it receives, that is the big first point.  Is it £350 million a week?  Let’s see.  So, £350 million a week is our gross contribution to the European Union, that’s just over £19 billion, but we get a rebate from the EU (words unclear due to speaking over)

JH:       (speaking over) The (word unclear, ‘famous’?) Thatcher rebate?

KA:     Yes, rebate is a bit of . . . a bit of a misnomer here, actually, because we never pay the money in and get the rebate, we actually get the rebate first, and then pay the money in.  That rebate is worth £4.4 billion a year, so that makes our actual contribution to the European Union £14.7 billion, which is actually £285 million a week. But hang on . . .

JH:       (speaking over) It’s still a lot of money.

KA:     . . . this is Europe, this is Europe John, got to be complicated, got to keep those Brussels officials in work obviously.  We also get erm . . . money from the EU to support the UK economy, farming, we get regional funds, there’s some money for science research, that amounts to about £4.8 billion a year, so that makes a net contribution that the UK gives to the European Union of £9.9 billion, or about £190 million a week. That is from the ONS statistics.

JH:       Right, so when they say on the side of their battlebus and in every other interview that you do with them, ‘We pay in 350 million quid a week’ that is not true.

KA:     That is the gross contribution, which does not take into account the rebate we receive from the EU and the money we receive from the EU by way of grants and support for research and science.

JH:       Right. Thank you for that Kamal.  Er, let’s turn to Mark Easton, our home editor, and your question, well it isn’t a question, your statement if you like, Mark, families would be £4,300 worse off by 2030 – that is George Osborne who made that claim, the Remain camp, of course.  True or false?

MARK EASTON:      Right (laughs) Okay. Erm, I haven’t got any charts for you this morning John, but I can tell you the Treasury claim is based on GDP per household.  What they’ve done is they forecast what they think GDP would be in 2030 . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Gross Domestic Product.

ME:     Gross domestic . . . all the stuff that we produce, what GDP would be in 2030, so they’re throwing quite a long way ahead, and they’ve done it for both staying in the EU, and leaving the EU and then calculated the difference. But GDP per household, it’s not the same thing as household income (laughter in voice) as most people would tell you – if you simply divide current GDP by the number of British households, you get a figure of around £68,000 per household, well, we know average household income, what we would regard as, you know, what money we’re getting in, as about £44-45,000 so the, the idea of a cost to UK families of £4300, it’s not cost in the way that most people would think of it.

JH:       So, we won’t actually be worse off by £4300? I mean, that’s the bald fact?

ME:     No, exactly, the, the Treasury model doesn’t suggest UK families are going to be poorer than they are now, in fact, the modelling suggests families will be richer in 2030 if we leave the EU, what they’re saying is their models suggest we wouldn’t be quite as rich as if we stay in the EU, and that’s a difference of £4300 per household.  The last point I think, to be made is that financial modelling, as we heard in the introduction there, is obviously only as good as the information and the forecasts that you put into it . . .

JH:       Right.

ME:     . . . and often they have been proved quite wrong.  One aspect of the modelling that’s raised eyebrows is that it uses the number of households now, today, to divide estimated GDP for 2030, taking no account of population growth or the effects of . . .

JH:       (interrupting) Ah.

ME:     . . . changes to net immigration for instance . . .

JH:       (speaking over) And, and you lead us nicely into our next thought then, er . . . contentious area, if you like, and that is up to 88 million people from nations much poorer than our own will have the right to live and work here, that’s what Michael Gove said in the Daily Mail just the other day, the Leave campaign of course, Katya Adler is our Europe editor – right or wrong Katya?

KATYA ADLER:      Well, Kamal likes to start the morning on a Saturday with statistical charts, I’m . . . quite fond of crystal ball gazing on a Saturday morning myself, so if we look into our crystal ball, Michael Gove is right, there are five countries that have started talks with the EU about becoming a member one day, that’s Turkey, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. The population of all those countries roughly adds up to 88 million, so, for Michael Gove to be right this would mean that all the citizens of these countries, every man woman and child would have to move to the UK, and it would also mean that (sic) the countries actually getting into the EU, which is not impossible, but it’s difficult.  The European Commission . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Especially with Turkey.

KA:     Especially with Turkey, but . . . for any of them, er, the European Commission has said there’ll be no new members in the EU until at least 2020, even then, erm, their membership would have to be approved by every single EU leader, by the European Parliament and by national parliaments. Every mem— every new member has to apply all EU current rules before they can join, that’s in 35 different policy areas, and you mentioned there Turkey, of course Turkey is the most controversial of the five, and the biggest, out of the 88 million, it’s 75 million.  And Turkey started its talks to join the EU ten years ago, in those 10 years it’s only managed to adopt EU rules on one area, that’s science and research.  Difficulty . . . well, we can look at human rights, we can look at limits on freedom of expression, the state of public administration and very key for the EU, Turkey has to recognise fellow EU member Cyprus, which it doesn’t. And then . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Alright . . .

KA:     . . . if we look at the politics of the EU these days, John, as well, we’ve got populist parties doing very well in many countries across the EU, fears of migration dominating politics, so no one really is trumpeting the case for Turkey’s membership at the moment.

JH:       Right, Katya, thank you for that. And our final question: 3 million jobs are linked to the European Union – this is according to David Cameron.  Simon Jack, our business editor, is that right?

SIMON JACK:           Yes.  But does that mean that 3 million jobs would go if we were to leave the European Union, er, absolutely not.  There are two pieces of work done on this, one was by the South Bank Institute, back in 2003, which said just over 3 million, there’s a new piece of work out last year by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, which puts it at over 4 million.  Now, obviously, those jobs are linked with the trade, no one assumes that the trade would disappear and go up in smoke the day we left, which then puts us into this rather vexed position of looking at what our trade would look like, and you may have heard of the Swiss model, the Norway model, the WTO, even the Albanian model.  But, the rule of thumb basically, is that the more independent the UK gets, the less access you get to some of the things that you actually want, that is the trade-off, so in the Swiss model, for example, banks are allowed to sell, you know, Swiss Banks stationed here can sell throughout the rest of Europe, they can’t sell from Switzerland, it’s a system called passporting. So we would see, potentially, some jobs go in The City. In a chat with the boss of Barclays the other day, he said, ‘Would this threaten London’s place as the pre-eminent financial centre – no.  Would it make life a bit more difficult – yes.’ So basically, 3 to 4 million jobs are associated with trade, not with our membership of the European Union, how m— . . . how many jobs would go depends on how much access you get and what model you think, er, which model would erode some of that trade, and that, of course a judgment where there aren’t any settled facts, and even the Albanian model that Michael Gove wanted, the Albanian Prime Minister thought, he thought it was a bit weird that the UK wanted that, so erm . . . I’m afraid the er . . . that was his very words, so I’m afraid the chat about the different models will continue when it comes to how many jobs are at risk.

JH:       And so will this debate, Simon, Katya, Mark and Kamal, thank you all very much, I think we can conclude that none, not one of those four claims have been stood up by our editors.  Kamal’s nodding at that so I’ll take that as approval.  Thank you all very much indeed, we may very well return to this over the weeks to come.

Photo by James Cridland

BBC BORIS BIAS:  Was Boris Johnson wrong to refer to Hitler in a point about the history of attempts to unite Europe? Was what he said as controversial as was projected? Senior Labour figures Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper certainly thought his mention was below the belt, and so did several figures in the Conservative ‘remain’ camp such as Lord Soames.

The tone of the BBC’s coverage also suggested that there were problems in his approach.  He had sent ‘sparks flying’. This is what newsreader Clive Myrie said in the BBC1 News at Ten bulletin;

The prominent Vote Leave campaigner in June’s EU referendum, Boris Johnson, has compared what he claims is the ambition of some in Europe to create a single Superstate to the aims of Adolf Hitler.  In an article for a Sunday newspaper, he said both the Nazi leader and the EU, shared similar goals but today’s politicians were simply using different methods. The shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn who backs the Remain campaign said his comments were offensive and desperate.  Here’s our political correspondent Ben Wright.

BEN WRIGHT: It’s a time for hard hats. Boris Johnson rarely does subtle but his latest intervention in the referendum campaign has sent sparks flying. A leading Leave campaigner, Mr Johnson said the last 2,000 years of European history had seen doomed attempts to recreate the Roman Empire by trying to unify it – Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods, he said.

Wright also included opinion from Hilary Benn:

I think to try and compare what Hitler and the Nazis did, the millions of people who died, Holocaust, to the free democracies of Europe coming together to trade and cooperate, and in the process to help secure peace on the continent of Europe is frankly deeply offensive.

BW: Europe’s history and Britain’s place in it has become a battleground in this referendum. Glowering over Parliament is Churchill, whose own views on Europe are being pressed into service by both sides. And the past is being invoked to stir our emotions, our gut feelings, and that’s why Boris Johnson mentioned Churchill’s wartime enemy. But of course, this referendum is really about the future, the political and economic repercussions of staying in or leaving the EU. And today the governor of the Bank of England, who does not do interviews often, decided to repeat a warning he made last week.

MARK CARNEY Bank of England Governor: What our judgement is, as a risk, is that growth will be materially slower and inflation notably higher in event of a ‘Leave’.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH MP Conservative Vote Leave: The Governor has strayed now into the expression of what is a simple, personal prediction. I don’t actually think that it is possible to say with any absolute accuracy that that will happen.

BW: Boris Johnson’s comments have whipped up a controversy this weekend. The Leave campaign knows that many big economic voices are sceptical of their case, but this referendum is about hearts as much as heads. Ben Wright, BBC News.

Wright thus two important claims based on his opinion as a BBC correspondent. First that Johnson was trying to stir up emotions and gut feelings ’and that is why he mentioned Churchill’s wartime enemy’; and second, that the leave campaign was trying to appeal to people’s hearts rather than their heads because they knew that ‘many economic voices are skeptical of their case’.

So what did Boris Johnson actually say that was so emotive and so calculated, according to Wright, to appeal also to people’s emotions?  In his interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Johnson actually said:

The whole thing began with the Roman Empire. I wrote a book on this subject, and I think it’s probably right. The truth is that the history of the last couple of thousand years has been broadly repeated attempts by various people or institutions – in a Freudian way – to rediscover the lost childhood of Europe, this golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans, by trying to unify it. Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically.

The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. But fundamentally what it is lacking is the eternal problem, which is that there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe. There is no single authority that anybody respects or understands. That is causing this massive democratic void.

Points about this are:

• Johnson’s remarks were based on his considered judgment as a historian who has studied and written about in depth European history.
• Attempts to unify Europe by Napoleon and Hitler had ended in tragic failure,
• The EU was also an attempt – by clearly different methods – to unify Europe, but it was also likely to ultimately fail because there was no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe, and there was no single authority that anyone respect6ed or understood.

What he did not say directly was that the EU and its operations are  ‘like Hitler’ or ‘like Napoleon’; his central assertion was rather that all attempts to achieve ‘European unity’ are ultimately doomed because there is no underlying allegiance to ’Europe’. Newsreader Myrie was this wrong and over-polarising in drawing the conclusion that Johnson had asserted that Hitler and the EU ‘had similar goals’. The Johnson claim was rather that the goal of ‘European unity’ was unattainable, whoever tried to achieve it, and it was based on false illusions about ancient Rome.  Ben Wright missed completely from his analysis the key point that ‘there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe’ and thus misled viewers.

The BBC did include in the sequence comments from Jacob Rees Mogg:

Boris was making a carefully calibrated comparison. And all these figures, Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Napoleon and Hitler were all trying to create a United States of Europe, though admittedly they wanted to do it by force whilst the EU is doing it by stealth.

The issue here is that the ‘remain’ side pounced on the Johnson remarks to suggest the Leave side was desperately trying to evoke comparisons to Hitler in order to discredit the EU. The BBC seemed to be too eager in its flagship bulletin to jump on the same bandwagon and constructed a report which seemed to be deliberately calculated to exaggerate the evocation of Hitler’s name.

Interestingly, earlier in the day, Andrew Marr appeared on his BBC1 show to strike a very different approach. In the newspaper review, Julia Hartley-Brewer said:

‘This is being overplayed. He’s saying the European Union are looking towards a federal superstate, and various people have tried this: Napoleon, Hitler…of course Hitler is the mention everyone gets, but what he is saying is true.’

Marr responded:

‘It’s much more nuanced than the headline suggests. I’m not normally one to say ‘Boris is very, very nuanced’ but he’s very careful. He specifically says ‘I’m not saying the EU people are like Hitler.’ He’s saying, ‘Again and again and again we’ve tried to have a united Europe and every single time it’s ended in tears’.

Actually, Marr also got what Johnson actually said wrong. He missed the key point about a lack of underlying loyalty. But the overall observation that his statement was ‘more nuanced’ than the headlines suggested was spot on.

Photo by BackBoris2012

On Thursday, BBC1’s main bulletins put heavy weight on the warning by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney that Brexit could lead to an economic downturn.  On Friday night, similar importance and prominence was afforded to equally strong ‘remain’ advocacy by former Prime Minister John Major and Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.   BBC economics editor Kamal Ahmad, as in his report the previous day, left no doubt how important these warnings were.  He stated:

‘Another day in this referendum campaign and another major international organisation warns Britain about the economic risks of leaving the European Union. Of course, here in the Treasury, they are pretty pleased that the IMF has broadly backed George Osborne’s assessment and it’s not the last we are going to hear from the IMF. Just a few days before the referendum, they are going to produce a report which will talk about employment, house prices and the Brexit risk. It is thought it will be equally gloomy.’

It is of course, true that such organisations and their leaders seem to be lining up to attack the ‘out’ case, and there is no avoiding that in news terms. But there are also huge question marks why this should be. Have their efforts been encouraged and coordinated by the government? There is widesapread suspicion that it is. And is it because – as the Guido website unearthed – they are all actually in the pay of the EU? These are legitimate questions to ask, but these possibilities and such exploration does not feature in the BBC reporting. On Friday night, Ahmad simply reported the Lagarde claims; his curiosity did not extend any further, and his main intent was to stress how importantly negative against the ‘out’  case the claims were.

The overall report contained counter opinion against John Major’s intervention from the Conservative minister Dominic Raab, and in reaction to the Lagarde claims from Priti Patel, also a government minister. But their responses were no more than about 50 words each. Raab said it was irresponsible not to talk about immigration in the light of new statistics, and Patel that the IMF figures could not be taken at face value e vital to talk. By contrast, newsreader Fiona Bruce said this about Sir John Major’s claims:

Sir John Major has launched a stinging attack on senior Conservatives heading the campaign to leave the EU. The former Tory Prime Minister said the Justice Secretary Michael Gove should be embarrassed and ashamed of his anti-EU rhetoric. And he called on Boris Johnson and former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith to apologise for peddling false figures

Reporter Eleanor Garnier added that this was:

‘… a big name making a big intervention. And making his own case for staying in the EU, he attacked claims made by Tory colleagues, Boris Johnson, the former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith, and the Justice Secretary Michael Gove, that leaving the EU could save millions of pounds a week.

JM: Those who make such demonstrably false claims, knowingly do so, need to apologise that they have got their figures so badly wrong and stop peddling a clear-cut untruth.

EG: And he warned colleagues who he says are raising fear and prejudice with their arguments over immigration, that it’s a treacherous road to go down. JM: Some of the Brexit leaders morph into Ukip and turn to their default position, immigration. This is their trump card. I urge them to take care. This is dangerous territory that if handled carelessly, can open up long-term divisions in our country.

EG: This is a significant intervention from the former Prime Minister. He’s naming people with ambitions to one day lead the Conservative party as reckless, and as this referendum campaign goes on the Tory-on-Tory attacks are getting more personal. The question – how united can and will the party be when all this is over?’

After Raab’s contribution (which was included without any other explanation), she concluded:

He rarely makes interventions, but this decision he says is final, and he’ll be hoping people are listening.

Fiona Bruce said about the Lagarde/IMF contribution:

‘Another powerful voice arguing today for the UK to remain in the EU was the head of the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde warned it could be at least “pretty bad”, and at worst, “very, very bad” if the UK pulls out. She said it would hit British growth, investment and house prices.’

Kamal Ahmad then went on to say:

‘Step-by-step, the government believes the economic case is being made. Today, another expert and another grim warning.

GEORGE OSBORNE: A particular welcome to Christine Lagarde and her team. KA: The IMF argued house prices could fall, borrowing costs increase, and the government may have to raise taxes and cut public services further.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE International Monetary Fund: Thank you very much, Chancellor.

KA: I asked Christine Lagarde for the outlook if Britain left the EU.

CL: The consequences would be negative, if the UK was to leave the European Union. It would impact people’s life. So that means, higher prices. Less growth means less jobs, so higher unemployment.

KA: Does the Treasury influence you? Are you pushed by George Osborne to be as bleak as you can be about the effects of Britain leaving the European Union?

CL: The IMF does not get pushed around. What we do is we study their numbers. We assess the validity. We talk to many other people.’

Ahmad then included the comment about the importance of Lagarde’s intervention already noted at the beginning of the blog above, and then had a soundbite from a ComRes pollster, who said:

Any individual voice or report or organisation is unlikely to have a major impact that we will see in the polls tomorrow. It is more a cumulative effect, that they add up, the narrative grows and it makes voters stop and think just before they go and vote on referendum day.

This carefully chosen and edited comment added to the importance of what Lagarde and the IMF had said.

Overall, therefore, the BBC’s flagship television bulletin put heavy emphasis on the warnings from Sir John Major and Christine Lagarde, and both the newsreader narrative and the respective correspondent reports amplified strongly their ‘remain’ messages.  There were clear mentions in both sequences about Vote Leave opposition, but this was afforded much less weight than the ‘remain’ contributions. Of course, there is no requirement for every edition of a daily programme to be balanced – that can be achieved cumulatively according to the news agenda. But over two consecutive nights the main BBC bulletin put very strong weight on ‘remain’ warnings. On both occasions, there was only minimal effort to explore counter and no attempt to explore counter arguments. Equally, there was no inclusion of material that aired whether the Lagarde/Major/Carney warnings were being orchestrated or influenced by the EU itself. These items do not demonstrate conclusively in themselves that the BBC is biased in favour of the ‘remain’ case, but taken with other evidence on this site, suggest strongly that there is serious cause for concern about the way the ‘out’ case is being under-reported or downplayed, and about how the ‘remain’ case is being deliberately and systematically amplified.

This is the full transcript of the sequence:

 Transcript of BBC1 ‘News at Ten’ 13th May 2016, EU Referendum, 10.06pm

Introduction

FIONA BRUCE:   Also tonight: The gloves are off: Sir John Major tells senior Tories they should be ashamed and embarrassed by their fearmongering over the EU.

Main Story

FB:         Sir John Major has launched a stinging attack on senior Conservatives heading the campaign to leave the EU. The former Tory Prime Minister said the Justice Secretary Michael Gove should be embarrassed and ashamed of his anti-EU rhetoric. And he called on Boris Johnson and former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith to apologise for peddling false figures. The Leave campaign responded ‘the public will decide whether to stay in the EU, not politicians.’ Eleanor Garnier reports.

ELEANOR GARNIER:        He’s a big name making a big intervention. With less than six weeks until the vote, the former Prime Minister’s gots a warning for the Conservatives on the EU.

SIR JOHN MAJOR Former Prime Minister:             A quarter of a century ago, it bitterly divided my party.

EG:        And making his own case for staying in the EU, he attacked claims made by Tory colleagues, Boris Johnson, the former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith, and the Justice Secretary Michael Gove, that leaving the EU could save millions of pounds a week.

JM:        Those who make such demonstrably false claims, knowingly do so, need to apologise that they have got their figures so badly wrong and stop peddling a clear-cut untruth.

EG:        And he warned colleagues who he says are raising fear and prejudice with their arguments over immigration, that it’s a treacherous road to go down.

JM:        Some of the Brexit leaders morph into Ukip and turn to their default position, immigration. This is their trump card. I urge them to take care. This is dangerous territory that if handled carelessly, can open up long-term divisions in our country.

EG:        This is a significant intervention from the former Prime Minister. He’s naming people with ambitions to one day lead the Conservative party as reckless, and as this referendum campaign goes on the Tory-on-Tory attacks are getting more personal. The question – how united can and will the party be when all this is over?

DOMINIC RAAB Conservative, Vote Leave:           We have this week had the official statistics showing a massive underestimate in the amount of immigration from the EU into the UK. I think it would be irresponsible not to be talking about that, because there are issues people care about. The pressure on jobs and wages, the impact on the NHS and housing.

EG:        He rarely makes interventions, but this decision he says is final, and he’ll be hoping people are listening. Eleanor Garnier, BBC News, Westminster.

FB:         Another powerful voice arguing today for the UK to remain in the EU was the head of the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde warned it could be at least “pretty bad”, and at worst, “very, very bad” if the UK pulls out. She said it would hit British growth, investment and house prices. Vote Leave campaigners say the IMF has been wrong before about the British economy and is wrong again. Our Economics Editor Kamal Ahmed reports.

KAMAL AHMED:              Step-by-step, the government believes the economic case is being made. Today, another expert and another grim warning.

GEORGE OSBORNE:        A particular welcome to Christine Lagarde and her team.

KA:        The IMF argued house prices could fall, borrowing costs increase, and the government may have to raise taxes and cut public services further.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE International Monetary Fund:          Thank you very much, Chancellor.

KA:        I asked Christine Lagarde for the outlook if Britain left the EU.

CL:         The consequences would be negative, if the UK was to leave the European Union. It would impact people’s life. So that means, higher prices. Less growth means less jobs, so higher unemployment.

KA:        Does the Treasury influence you? Are you pushed by George Osborne to be as bleak as you can be about the effects of Britain leaving the European Union?

CL:         The IMF does not get pushed around. What we do is we study their numbers. We assess the validity. We talk to many other people.

KA:        Another day in this referendum campaign and another major international organisation warns Britain about the economic risks of leaving the European Union. Of course, here in the Treasury, they are pretty pleased that the IMF has broadly backed George Osborne’s assessment and it’s not the last we are going to hear from the IMF. Just a few days before the referendum, they are going to produce a report which will talk about employment, house prices and the Brexit risk. It is thought it will be equally gloomy. Looking for votes, the Leave campaign on the road today with a message that the IMF had been wrong before and was wrong now.

PRITI PATEL MP Conservative, Vote Leave:           I don’t think we can take their forecasts at face value because of their background and also, on the basis that our economy is successful right now. I believe that if we vote to leave the European Union, Britain has a brighter, more secure and more prosperous future outside of the EU.

KA:        Shoreham on the south coast, here to ask the question, is anyone listening as everyone from the Bank of England to the IMF warns against leaving the EU?

VOX POP FEMALE:          Yeah, I would listen to that information and take it on board. It would help me make a decision.

VOX POP MALE:              Constantly, you are getting different information from one side to another. As a personal thing, no, I would not take any notice of it.

KA:        The governor of the Bank of England, the head of the IMF. There is evidence the economy is high up in the minds of undecided voters.

TOM MLUDZINSKI Director of Political Polling, ComRes:   Any individual voice or report or organisation is unlikely to have a major impact that we will see in the polls tomorrow. It is more a cumulative effect, that they add up, the narrative grows and it makes voters stop and think just before they go and vote on referendum day.

KA:        There is more to the UK economy than the referendum. The IMF said there were other long-term risks, high levels of household debt and low productivity. They will still be problems, however Britain votes on June 23. Kamal Ahmed, BBC News.

FB:         The BBC’s Reality Check team has been examining Christine Lagarde’s comments, and getting to the facts behind the claims on both sides of the referendum debate. You can find their work at bbc.co.uk/realitycheck.

FB:         There are signs tonight that the European Union’s efforts to stem the migrant crisis are beginning to have a significant impact. Numbers arriving from Turkey onto the Greek islands are down around 90% in April compared with the previous month, according to the EU border agency Frontex. It follows a deal struck between the EU and Turkey. But as our chief correspondent Gavin Hewitt now reports from Izmir, the deal is coming under pressure.

GAVIN HEWITT:              These are the Turkish beaches from where tens of thousands of refugees left for their perilous journey to Europe. Today, all that remains are discarded clothes. Almost no refugees are making the crossing to Greece. But the deal between Turkey and the EU to solve the migrant crisis is in danger of collapsing. Go into the fields near the Turkish coast close to Greece and you find Syrian refugees like Murat, who once dreamt of going to Europe but has given up. The Turkish-EU deal signed in March has all but blocked the migrant trail.

MURAD Syrian Refugee (translated) The sea border with Greece is now closed. If someone wants to go to Europe, they cannot. I did want to go, but now I can’t.

GH:        The Turkish coast guard patrols are much more rigorous. Just two months ago, 8,000 refugees crossed here in one month. So far in May, the numbers are around 300. And for those who make it to Greece, the route north through the Balkans is lined with fences and riot police.

PIHRIL ERCHOBAN Director, Association for Solidarity with Refugees:       There is no possibility to move further from Greece, and in Greece, the movement from the islands to the mainland became impossible now.

GH:        So, in Turkey, the tables where the smugglers did their deals are almost empty and the shops can’t sell their life jackets. The Turkish government says it’s honoured its part of the deal.

MUSTAPHA TOPRAK Governor of Izmir (translated) If the refugees go outside the cities where they’re registered, they’re told to go back. If they try to reach the coast and escape, the police will catch them.

GH:        The easing of the refugee crisis depends on a controversial deal between Turkey and the EU. Turkey clamping down on the migrants, in exchange for visa-free travel to much of Europe. But the European Parliament is insisting that first, Turkey must carry out further reforms. Turkey says it has done enough and the whole deal is looking fragile. So there is a risk of the migrant crisis returning. The developments are being followed closely in Germany, where most of the previous refugees went, and by the referendum campaigns in Britain. Gavin Hewitt, BBC News, Izmir.

Photo by Chatham House, London

DOUBLE BIAS: Yesterday’s coverage by the BBC of stories related to the EU referendum showed deep bias against the Brexit case. On immigration there was bias by emission, and on economics there was bias by exaggeration and by not including the Brexit side sufficiently

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, elected to warn – on the basis of internal modelling – that if the UK voted to exit the EU, it could lead to a ‘technical recession’. This led the BBC1 bulletins at 6 and 10pm.  Economics editor Kamal Ahmad placed heavy stress on the importance of the warning and concluded that Carney and the Bank of England’s gloom was shared by many other leading economists and economic forecasters.  There were brief mentions at the beginning of the report that supporters of exit contested the claims, and there was a short clip of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont stating that. But there could be no doubt that in the BBC’s estimation, this was a game-changing information. The focus was on showing that increasing numbers of authoritative figures were warning against Brexit, and that the exit side’s response was inadequate and limited.

In the same bulletins, another story that was relevant to the referendum debate was totally downplayed. Yesterday, the Daily Mail was among numerous news outlets reporting that the Office of National Statistics had released figures that confirmed that immigration from the EU to the UK was up to three times previous estimates. The report included this:

Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said the estimate showed migration was ‘running out of control’ and accused the government of trying to bury the news under other announcements.

‘The White Paper on BBC reforms was published today and David Cameron is hosting an international anti-corruption summit in London. They put it out on a day when they also put out something in the hope that you at the BBC will say ‘oh, we’ve got to really report the BBC’ and other bits they’re piling out. I’ve been in government long enough to know how these things are done,’ Mr Duncan Smith said.

His forecast proved to be correct. The heavy focus of BBC reporting yesterday (as well as on the Mark Carney comments) was on its own future, as is reported here. On BBC1 in the 6pm and 10pm bulletins, mention of the ONS figures was confined to a couple of sentences, and on the website, the main report on the figures here was focused on saying, in effect, that the claims by figures such as Ian Duncan Smith and John Redwood (who made similar points to IDS in the House of Commons) could be totally discounted because the ONS report dealt with temporary immigrants only.

Overall, the contrast between the handling of the Carney and immigration stories could not have been greater. The former was stoked up to the maximum extent so that the economic forecasting was elevated to major importance to show that Brexit was a dangerous option. The latter was heavily downplayed to the extent that the claims of Brexit campaigners were effectively rubbished on an official basis by the Corporation. Such efforts by the BBC to downplay the impact of EU immigration have been a constant feature of BBC reporting for many years, as previous News-watch reports have shown.

An exchange on the Today programme’s Business Update this morning illustrated the extent to which effort s are being made by the BBC to show that Carney’s warning should be taken seriously. This is the interview in full:

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 13^th May 2016, Business Update, 7.19am

JOHN HUMPHRYS:          Is Europe growing? I mean, the European economy, I mean specifically the Eurozone economy, and that matters.  Lucy?

LUCY BURTON:  Yes, we’ve got figures on the Eurozone economy later today, and of course they’re important figures to look at, because it gives us an update on its health.  Last month flash estimates revealed GDP increased by 0.6% in the Eurozone, 0.5% in the wider EU. Well Dr Peter Westaway is the chief European economist from Vanguard Asset Management, he’s with us now, good morning.

DR PETER WESTAWAY:  Good morning.

LB:         What do we expect to see today and why?

PW:       I think we’ll probably see a repeat of the 0.6 number, when you get these second estimates they tended not to be changed very often.  If it is changed there is a possibility it will be downgraded, people were a bit surprised by the initial numbers and there’ve been some weak industrial production numbers out yesterday which could, could weaken it.  But, but broadly speaking I think we’ll see the same picture.

LB:         And one of the big questions people have been asking is whether the ECB is doing enough to support growth in the Eurozone, or whether it’s really run out of options.

PW:       Yes, it’s difficult to say.  I mean they’re, they’re really doing as much as they can at the moment, they’re now implementing quantitative easing, they’ve started buying, they’re going to start buying corporate bonds as well as government bonds in June, they cut interest rates into negative territory which was a big surprise at the time, they’ll probably not want to do any more of that, so . . . at the moment we’re in wait-and-see mode to see how effective that is, but . . . the jury’s out on whether they’ll need to do more.  Helicopter money is being bandied about as a possibility, that’s, that’s effectively printing money and giving it to people, which . . . I don’t think we’re going to see that in Europe, but it’s been talked about.

LB:         And of course, talking about growth, yesterday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said that’s something we can forget about if there is a vote to leave the EU. Now just how solid an estimate can that be, because, of course, it’s never happened before?

PW:       No it’s, it’s really speculating about the unknown, but I think, to be fair to Mark Carney yesterday, most commentators have been saying that if there were a vote to leave the EU it would have a major impact on volatility in markets, just because of the uncertainty that it would engender.  And indeed, we’re already seeing a little bit of softening in the numbers, simply because of that uncertainty . . . uncertainty already happening ahead of the referendum.

LB:         And the MPC, which is the Bank body that sets interest rates said it’s going to keep rates at present at the historic low of 0.5% – but they did say they’re ready to take whatever action is needed following the referendum.  Now, briefly, what does that mean?

PW:       Well, what’s interesting about the UK outlook at the moment is that we really are coming up to a fork in the road on June 23. I think if there is a vote to leave the EU it’s pretty likely that rates are going to stay low for a long time, they could even be cut again.  On the other hand, if we vote to stay in, then I think it’s entirely likely that the UK economy could see a bit of a rebound, we might even see interest rates rising by the end of this year.  So it’s a real binary situation at the moment.

LB:         Thank you very much, Dr Peter Westaway from Vanguard Asset Management.

Photo by Images George Rex