according to Guardian blogger and media commentator Roy Greenslade, blogging about a new broadcast monitoring service called Newswatch that:
has emerged from a research body founded in 1999 that famously carried out an analysis of the BBC’s coverage of the European Union and found it unduly biased in favour of the EU.
…and undertakes to:
use a range of robust analytical tools to study the British broadcast media. Our methodology is firmly based on established academic principles utilising core quantitative and qualitative research techniques.
An interesting approach indeed, because there are lots of different types of bias, ranging from the obvious to the subtle (but nonetheless insidious) that is much harder to pin down and expose, particularly where the BBC doesn’t realise it is being biased (institutional bias anyone?).
One of the problems with keeping tabs on the BBC is that there is just so much of it – the BBC news factory churns out upwards of forty-eight hours worth of stuff every day – far beyond the ability of any individual, or even a group like Biased BBC, to keep track of, which often leads to complaints about bias being brushed aside with the smug reassurance that:
If only you’d listened to everything on that topic you’d find there’s nothing to worry about…
Sound familiar? Enter Newswatch!
Newswatch spent fourteen weeks prior to the European Council meeting in June monitoring Radio 4’s Today programme for balance in their coverage of the run up to the EU reform treaty (i.e. the revised EU constitution after the application of spin) – a daunting task involving minute by minute analysis of over 240 hours of material.
You’d expect that Today, a daily three-hour long flagship BBC news programme, would provide comprehensive coverage of a topic as important as the EU reform treaty – they probably even think they did – but reading the summary version of Newswatch’s first report (the full report apparently contains over eighty pages of analysis) it turns out that Today’s coverage of the EU Reform Treaty was far from comprehensive, and that what coverage there was was biased, unimaginative and plain sloppy.
Some highlights from the Newswatch summary:
- This was a period of major EU activity, But coverage of EU affairs on the Today programme
slumped to a record low of 2.7% of available airtime for most of the 14 weeks, despite high profile
promises by BBC news management in the wake of the Wilson report that EU-related
output would be boosted, and claims by the Director General that it has been; - On June 23, the day that agreement was reached, Today devoted four times more airtime to
the Glastonbury Rock Festival than to coverage of the eurosceptic case against the revised
working arrangements. Coverage of the eurosceptic case amounted to only seven interviews (22
minutes and 40 seconds of airtime) over the entire 14 weeks; - UKIP, a main conduit of views about withdrawal and further growth of EU powers, was not
asked any questions at all during the survey about the revised working arrangements. Remarks
by UKIP spokesmen in four appearances by the party occupied only around five minutes out of
238 hours of programming. On the sole occasion when there was a debate about UKIP concerns
– relating to whether the EU brought benefits to the UK – the UKIP spokesman was treated
unfairly; - BBC correspondents, in their reporting of the moves towards the new treaty, regularly
articulated the negative sentiment within the EU about Britain’s reservations, but very rarely
explained or even mentioned eurosceptic concerns. On some occasions, BBC Europe
correspondent Jonny Dymond, the biggest contributor to Today’s coverage of the revised treaty
document, appeared to push the EU perspective on events disproportionately, to the point of
bias; - The case for a referendum on the new working arrangements – which, according to polls was
supported by 80% of the UK electorate – was handled sparsely, unfairly and ineptly. There
were only two dedicated interviews on the topic. In each, there were elements that
contravened BBC editorial guidelines. James Naughtie treated Ruth Lea, the guest who put the
case for a referendum, more toughly than Professor Jo Shaw, who argued against one being
held. - Coverage of EU affairs in general in the 14 weeks of the survey was mainly outside peak programme listening hours, with evidence that negative EU stories were regularly placed in the 6am-7am slot.
There’s more good stuff in the Newswatch summary report, and I expect a great deal more in the full report. It will be interesting to see how this rigorous approach to analysing the BBC’s output develops, and how well the BBC and other news outlets report the findings of such meticulous analysis of our national broadcaster’s flagship radio programme.
Andrew
I wouldn’t take this Newswatch outfit at face value. It may have an impressive website, but on closer inspection it shows all the signs of being something of a Potemkin company.
First, there’s the ‘Managing Director’, Barclay Thompson. Who he? Well, there’s a Barclay Thompson who runs a firm – Bizvision – that rents out desk-space in a serviced office building in Middle Street, Brighton. By coincidence, Newswatch is based at the same address. Looks like entrepreneurial Barclay has just rented out another desk – this time to himself.
Then there’s moving spirit, David Keighley. Who he? He comments quite a lot here as DavidK. He’s Newswatch’s meejah man. Trouble is, his most senior meejah job has been as PR-man for TV-AM.
Which is where he met Associate (that means she has a day job somewhere else) Kathy Gyngell. She’s the widow of TV-AM boss Bruce Gyngell…. DavidK’s old boss.
Small world innit.
JR, none of that is really relevant. What matters is that they are in a position to spend time doing the analyses. What matters is the quality of the work being done.
It doesn’t matter that it’s a few people at desks, and not 1000 people in grand buildings. At the average University you have good academic work being done by a few people at desks, often in very humble surroundings.
In fact, your response betrays a BBC/statist mindset — you don’t take it seriously unless there’s a large number of people there (no matter how useless and unproductive most of them are), all with offical Grand Poobah titles, a huge bloated budget, and all the trappings of state.
Oh JR! I thought you specialised in picking off carefully selected weaker members of the Biased BBC commenting pack, rather than going for the more blatant ‘shoot the messenger’ approach!
Does it matter if Barclay Thompson rents out office space? Like most people he probably has to pay some bills – problematic for those without a £3.5 billion guaranteed income to tide them over.
In dismissing David Keighley you omit to point out that he’s also ex-BBC (as well as a veteran of a number of commercial broadcasters). What happened? Wasn’t his Arslikhan good enough to scale the BBC tree? Or could it be that someone interested enough to spend time and effort analysing the Today programme for EU bias wouldn’t fit in that well at the BBC?
As for Kathy Gyngell, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t dismiss someone with a first class honours degree from Cambridge and a masters degree from Oxford quite so quickly – perhaps not impressive by your BBC standards (is that why Views Online is so often poorly written and poorly punctuated?), but perhaps it’s her involvement with the Centre for Policy Studies (publishers of Antony Jay’s excellent Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer if you recall!) that repels you so.
Honestly JR, I know it’ll take you a while to rebut a thorough analysis of 240 hours of Today output – but that’ll count for a lot more in the court of public opinion than your airy wave dismissing its authors! Maybe you could make a start over the weekend… 🙂
Let’s sum it up: if you can’t counter the arguments, descend to ad-hominem mud slinging. JR really ought to be a politician.
I wouldn’t take this John Reith character at face value. He works for the BBC. 🙂
Mr reith said:
“First, there’s the ‘Managing Director’, Barclay Thompson. Who he? Well, there’s a Barclay Thompson who runs a firm – Bizvision – that rents out desk-space in a serviced office building in Middle Street, Brighton. By coincidence, Newswatch is based at the same address. Looks like entrepreneurial Barclay has just rented out another desk – this time to himself.”
I fail to see any significance. What is it?
Significance? There ain’t none. It seems to me that John Reith tried to dig up some dirt on the Newswatch people in order to discredit them, and failed but decided to post his results anyway.
Elsewhere on this blog yesterday Reith was triumphantly blurting out statistcs on AIDS to prove some point.
Reith will do anything but actually acknowledge the gross bias of the BBC.
It matters not to the BBC whether or not BBC reporters stick to guidelines. In fact one of their defences is that these guidelines are not rules, and that they do not need to stick to them.