Those who yearn for impartiality in BBC reporting can never close our minds to any side of a debate in our quest for fairness. For many years the bias has been pretty much one-way traffic – because it is inbred, it has become woven like fine silk through the cloth of reporting. So let us consider a contrary view.
Enter Stage Left Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary and soon to be ex-MP. On Twitter this morning he described the Today program as “biased” and “feeble” in its questioning of George Osborne.
“Another wholly feeble and biased Today programme rounded off with a fawning interview with a Tory pundit!!”
Earlier in the week he said, again via Twitter, that an interview with Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove was “disgracefully feeble”. Obviously feeble is his new favourite word, but leaving aside my view that Twitter isn’t an appropriate medium for a senior member of HMG to be sounding off on any issues, let’s examine in depth the points raised by the ex-BBC chappie.
Except there aren’t any.
To start with Evan Davies was fair by all accounts, but even if that wasn’t true, if the Left are to begin throwing accusations of bias in the run-up to losing the election then bring your evidence to the table and we will all listen fairly. Unsubstantiated Twitterings don’t cut the mustard.
Welcome ASE!
The Today programme isn’t particularly biased by BBC standards but it certainly is feeble. Who wants to wake up to some politician repeatedly dodging questions from a BBC interviewer interspersed with twaddle like thought for the day?
You don’t think Bradshaw’s whingeing tweets in any way cast doubt upon the assertion made here yesterday by Andrew McCann that the nation’s principal broadcaster has lost the diaphanous veil of ‘impartiality‘ it claimed to have had. Every effort has thus far been made to portray the Tories in the worst possible light?
ASE,
Congrats on your first troll 🙂
Aaaaaaand we have a winner! I’ll treasure the moment, David.
Glad to bring such pleasure to you both. But on the matter of the disconnect between Andrew McCann’s view of total BBC surrender to Labour and your own enthusiasm for a Labour Minister’s attack on the BBC…what, exactly?
Eh up!
Did someone say McCann?
BBC ‘PM’ and its anti-Tory bias:
There was a classic example of this a few minutes ago, presented by the BBC’s Ms. C. Quinn.
She is based at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester, not to report on what the Tories are saying, but to to pick out charity stallholder critics of the Tories.
So, for instance, on the theme of ‘broken Britain’ she only provides the views of one anti-Tory charity lobbyist, and another anti-Tory person’s views. No doubt her husband, Nigel Morris, deputy political editor of ‘The Independent’ ,does the same sort of thing
A perfect Beeboid example of Cameron’s ‘too many twits make a tw*t’ theory!
Perhaps he is still a little sore after his Straight Talk interview with Andrew Neil?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nbz9w/Straight_Talk_Ben_Bradshaw_MP/
Evan Davis let Osborne off very lightly – there were no questions about his drug taking as Gordon Brown had to face from Andrew Marr.
First the Tory mayor of London is given a cameo on the BBC’s lead soap, and now this pro-Tory bias. It seems entirely plausible that the BBC are trying to suck up to the Tories in order to save the licence fee.
A spliff at uni decades ago vs. potentially running… er.. bankrupting nuclear country whilst off your face on mood altering medication to try and make you look ‘better’ on TV? We’d be in better, or at least more open hands if they exhumed Howard Hughes.
Methinks some are indeed inhaling.
Class A narcotics are rather more than a spliff, Mr Guest, if Johnson and Osborne’s contemporaries are to be believed (and rather more evidence exists than for the malicious rumours about GB). I would have thought supporting one of the major sources of criminality in this country would normally disqualify one from public office (but not if you are Tory, so you and the BBC would have us believe).
If this does erupt when they are in government it will be very interesting if the BBC can keep up its pro-Tory bias.
a bit off topic but on the bbc’s website, they always seem to use ‘good’ pictures of Brown (angled up from below with the union jack extending behind him, etc) whilst they use ‘unflattering’ pics of cameron (pic with a flushed face, uncertain expressions, etc). A labour cabinet MP whining that the BBC are pro-tory is just typical of the perverse logic you’d expect from politicians – labour, tory, or otherwise, playing mindgames and PR wars with people.
A British general, disillusioned with the Socialist regime, joins the Conservative party. So how does the BBC treat this story? It interviews two people from the Socialist regime and no one else!
I like the principles you set out, ASE – I initially came here to identify actual bias, it will be a marked change from the usual one-way traffic we get on here
Does this case not show that both sides are happy to just throw out allegations to suit their own agendas? I fully expect labour to be very anti-BBC in a year or two
This surely is the ultimate proof that the BBC is biased against the Tories. Labour is so used to having its own way with the BBC, so to speak, that when the slightest thing goes against Labour up pops little Ben to cry “bias” !
Little Ben not doing so well this morning… on the BBC… for not knowing anything about the Polanski case (that would by Culture Minister…) and failing to appreciate Twitter posts go into the public domain (that would by Culture Minister…).
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