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 …
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 …
Referendum Blog: April 14
LAW-BREAKING?: The third of World at One’s ‘details of how the European Union’s organised’ by Professor Anand Menon was broadcast on Wednesday, and focused on EU law, which he said was the ‘glue that holds the EU together’. Menon described how in 1964, the EU decided that its laws ‘had to be supreme’ because otherwise there would be chaos caused …
Referendum Blog: April 13
SINGLE MARKET BENEFITS BIAS: The second of World at One’s reports about how the EU operates was on Tuesday and focused on the EU budget. It was again presented by Professor Anand Menon, of King’s College, London, who, as pointed out yesterday, appears to be strongly pro-EU in his outlook. His approach was first to emphasise that, at around €9.8 …
Referendum Blog: April 12
BIASED PROFESSOR?: World at One started a series yesterday which presenter Martha Kearney said would explain how the EU ‘actually works’. The impression given was that these would be objective guides. The first item was by Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London. Was it actually impartial? You can decide, the transcript is below. But it most …
Referendum Blog: April 11
MARDELL BIAS?: Mark Mardell is the former ‘Europe’ editor of the BBC and thus has a special knowledge of EU affairs. News-watch research has established, however, that in the past – like so many at the BBC – he has been unduly scathing of Ukip and the case for withdrawal, emphasising in one report claims that supporters of exit were …
Referendum Blog: April 10
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 …