Brexit and Apocalypse in the same BBC sentence…who’d have thought….balance and impartiality…who’d have thought?
Hotels, restaurants and tourism may face staff shortages
The hospitality sector raises fears of potential economic damage if EU immigration is heavily restricted.
Dover delays: Could they become the norm?
Port of Dover boss warns backlog of HGVs could become normal in the absence of free movement of goods.
It seems some people think the BBC is above scrutiny and accountability…enough is enough we hear….leave the BBC alone!
Nick Robinson: the referendum is over – now the BBC must fight a new Brexit bias
“Many people with strong views find it hard to accept that on the BBC they will often hear people they disagree with saying things they don’t like”
Welcome to another week of moaning about the BBC. “Stop being so pessimistic. Stop talking the country down. Stop ignoring the will of the people.”
A week in which the stopwatches and calculators are out, as first one side, then the other, time our interviews and add up the number of Remainers and Leavers and so-called optimists and pessimists we invite on air.
Robinson must be responding, been sent out to respond, to News Watch’s detailed take-down of the BBC’s Brexit coverage in which it was found to favour the Remain camp to a remarkable extent….BBC Business News coverage of Brexit ‘continues Project Fear’
A report by News-watch into the BBC’s coverage on Brexit covering the six month period after the referendum vote has found overwhelmingly negativity about Britain leaving the EU – breaching the Corporations rules on impartiality.
The report into the BBC flagship Today programme on Radio 4 found that of the 366 guest speakers who appeared in the Business News segment, 192 of them (52.5%) were negative about the impact of the vote and only 60 (16.3%) expressed opinions which were pro-Brexit or saw the post-referendum economic outlook as positive. There were 114 (31%) neutral contributions.
That there were three times more anti-Brexit speakers than pro-Brexit ones invited by the BBC to participate in the prestigious slot breaks its charter requirements to be impartial.
Robinson continues…
The referendum is over. The duty we broadcasters had to “broadly balance” the views of the two sides is at an end. Why? Because there are no longer two sides, two campaigns, two rival sets of spokespeople reading out those focus-grouped slogans.
The BBC’s job is not to look over its shoulder wondering whether a report, interview or discussion will provoke letters of complaint or a tide of tweets from Remainers or Leavers – who, like fighters who emerge after months of hiding in a bush, seem not to accept that the war is over.
That may come as a surprise to many who have taken a close look at the BBC’s referendum coverage….by no means was it balanced or impartial…it was profoundly pro-Remain, attacking the Leave statements with relentless vigour and forensic scrutiny whilst being very reluctant to challenge the highly alarmist and exaggerated claims made by the Remain camp as part of their Project Fear conducting only the most casual of ‘Reality Checks’ that were more fantasyland than reality.
What does Robinson mean by ‘balanced’? He doesn’t define it. All everyone expects is that each side gets a fair chance to state their case…maybe they did and maybe they didn’t on the BBC, but certainly when it came to the analysis it was guns out for the Leave campaign.
The BBC now does still have a continual duty to be balanced, meaning impartial, accurate and honest, but once again that is not the case. What we are served up with is a relentless diet of doom and gloom about Brexit, everything is a problem and things are only going to get worse. Jon Pienaar regailed us with his fake news about the ‘extravagant promises’ made by the Leave campaign [and er what were they?…They don’t exist]. Even this morning Mishal Husain casually suggested that Lloyds was practically packing its bags and setting off for the Continent despite the fact that Lloyds has stated unequivocably that London will remain its main financial centre…..“London will remain the major financial centre for Europe. It’s certainly going to remain the major financial centre for Lloyd’s.”….‘Lloyd’s will always be centred in London and that is not about to change.’…’The decision to leave the EU has no impact on Lloyd’s financial strength, which remains incredibly strong, with Fitch and A.M. Best ratings of AA- and A. S&P also affirmed Lloyd’s A+ rating on the same week as the referendum vote.’ Goldman Sachs may move several hundred jobs to the EU but it has 6000 here in the UK and similarly insists London remains central to its plans….“Whatever the outcome [of the Brexit talks], London will remain for us a very significant regional hub and a significant global hub. London will remain a very significant important centre.”
Oh and JP Morgan?…‘The head of JP Morgan has admitted he will not move many jobs out of Britain in the next two years as a result of Brexit, in a U-turn on his pre-referendum warning that a vote to leave the European Union could mean as many as 4,000 jobs moving across the Channel. Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of the Wall Street giant, said that the bank will need to obtain licences and permissions to operate across the EU, but that it can still service European clients from the UK. “This does not entail moving many people in the next two years,” he said in a letter to the US investment bank’s shareholders. Rather than seeing Britain as a basket case for leaving the EU, Mr Dimon now fears that if the EU fails to address its own problems then the union could break up, with much more serious economic consequences.’
Robinson has a nerve to say this…‘like fighters who emerge after months of hiding in a bush, seem not to accept that the war is over.’…when the BBC itself is promoting the idea that the referendum is not in fact over and instead of working to unite Britain and encourage a can-do attitude it collaborates with the Remain campaign to undermine Brexit…which can only in the end be the worst of all possible worlds as even if we were to return to the EU fold it would be on hugely disdvantageous terms….and it peddles the EU narrative on everything…such as Gibraltar.
The war continues and the BBC aids and abets giving plenty of airtime to the Remainers to make their own films attacking Brexit as if there was still a choice and Brexit can be reversed…
Robinson ends with an arrogant jibe…as usual it’s the other peoples’ problem…they just don’t undertstand…
We must, of course, ensure that we display no bias. The bias I worry about most is the bias against understanding.
We understand all too well…you are biased and you don’t want to answer for that bias preferring instead to act the victim and demand no one dare challenge you…sounds a familiar tactic beloved of the Muslim community….let’s hope you aren’t radicalised and start force feeding everyone the Guardian…oh, too late.









