tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/bbc-bias-10285/articlesBBC bias – The Conversation2023-01-26T15:08:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1986072023-01-26T15:08:57Z2023-01-26T15:08:57ZThe public or the state: who calls the shots at the BBC?<p>What’s the difference between a state broadcaster and a public broadcaster? The dispute over the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64383742">close relationship</a> between the BBC chairman, Richard Sharp and the former prime minister Boris Johnson, has seen some people – including on one occasion a BBC presenter – refer to it as a “state broadcaster”. The BBC is usually called a public service broadcaster (PSB) – and other PSBs around the world still look to the UK model as an example of good practise. The difference is significant and matters. </p>
<p>The formal distinction seems straightforward. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_media">State broadcasters</a> – as found in countries such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television">China</a>, Iran, parts of the Middle East and increasingly <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/hungary">eastern Europe</a> – broadcast in the interests of the state. They have leadership directly appointed by the government, high levels of government editorial control or censorship, direct political funding, and are directly accountable to the government.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting">Public Service broadcasters</a>, meanwhile, operate in the interests of the wider public. They enjoy editorial independence from government and are usually funded via some sort of mechanism designed to insulate them from direct political control but provide a degree of open accountability to the public that funds them. How that is achieved, however, can be complex and involve compromises. </p>
<p>The latest debate over political influence at the BBC raises some difficult questions about <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/bartlett_public_purpose/files/mazzucato_et_al_call_for_evidence_bbc_funding_final35.pdf">independence and accountability</a>. </p>
<h2>Forms of governance</h2>
<p>Public broadcasters need to demonstrate they are impartial and not politically aligned or directed. At a moment of highly polarised politics, with the increased scrutiny and criticism it brings, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-controversial-business-of-researching-bbc-impartiality-26401">this is difficult</a>. Users from both the left and the right <a href="https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/viewfinder/articles/myth-of-the-bbc/">regularly criticise the BBC</a> for not representing the world as they see it.</p>
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<p>As a consequence, the <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/times-telegraph-trust/">BBC has suffered a decline in trust</a> in its services. With that comes scepticism about its impartiality and independence. </p>
<p>Traditionally, the BBC – like other public institutions – has enjoyed editorial and operational autonomy while being institutionally accountable to government through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the National Audit Office (NAO) and <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/172937/dcms-committee-to-question-bbc-chiefs-on-licence-fee-impartiality-and-earnings/">parliamentary select committees</a>. </p>
<p>For decades it was overseen by a government-appointed board of governors, separate from the management. This mutated in 2007 into the BBC Trust – still separate from management but with greater resources to scrutinise the executive. </p>
<p>In 2016, David Clementi, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, undertook a further review of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-review-of-the-governance-and-regulation-of-the-bbc">BBC’s governance</a>. He recommended a unified board, with management and non-executive directors around the same table, and a chairman appointed by government. Separate oversight moved to the <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/information-for-industry/bbc-operating-framework/performance/bbc-annual-report">media regulator Ofcom</a> (whose chair is also government appointed). </p>
<p>For most of its 100 years, a form of direct government appointment of non-executive governors, trustees or directors has been the norm. It has largely worked. Even when <a href="https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/bbc-world-service-soft-power-and-funding-challenges/">the World Service</a> was directly funded by government, it was widely recognised that its journalism was independent. </p>
<p>But in the current climate of distrust in both <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk">media</a> and the <a href="https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/2022/10/21/how-did-trust-in-the-uk-government-change-through-the-covid-19-pandemic/">UK government</a>, such arrangements are <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/bbc-is-neither-independent-or-impartial-interview-with-tom-mills/">increasingly interpreted as interference</a>. The BBC sometimes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jun/08/does-the-government-want-the-bbc-to-be-a-state-broadcaster">attracts accusations</a> of being closer to <a href="https://twitter.com/LePlonge/status/1618560078965248002?s=20&t=rRD46Gie9b7DfkiAMHMcbw">state broadcasting</a> than a model accountable to the public. </p>
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<p>The suspicion is less about direct political interference than soft influence through appointments such as Sharp as chairman shortly after he brokered a £800,000 loan for the then prime minister and the appointment of <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2022/12/robbie-gibb-bbc-impartiality-control">non-executive directors with recent government experience</a> including Robbie Gibb, formerly director of communications for then Conservative prime minister Theresa May.</p>
<h2>Question of impartiality</h2>
<p>Governments of the past have often appointed those they believe to be politically sympathetic. But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/aug/24/emily-maitlis-says-active-tory-party-agent-shaping-bbc-news-output">there is a sense</a> that the current Conservative government has taken Margaret Thatcher’s famous inquiry of “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/iron-lady-margaret-thatcher">Is he one of us?</a>” to new levels. </p>
<p>The BBC’s management has been openly <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2021/11/in-defence-of-tim-davies-crusade-for-bbc-impartiality">focused on impartiality</a> – largely interpreting this as political. The chairman is on record as saying he believes the <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/news/23168835.bbc-chairman-richard-sharp-says-broadcaster-fighting-liberal-bias/">BBC’s staff have a soft-left bias</a> which needs addressing. </p>
<p>Their problem is that the current crisis demonstrates that impartiality is as much about independence and accountability as it is about political balance. And those are harder to measure. </p>
<p>Further, the unified board means those responsible for demonstrating the BBC’s editorial independence on air, by reporting on itself, are around the same table as colleagues trying to defend the corporate interest. Chinese walls were easier when the governors or trustees sat separately from the management. </p>
<p>To stem further decline in trust, the BBC will need to demonstrate political independence at the highest level – beyond what has been required in the past. And it needs to find ways of demonstrating broader public accountability beyond Parliament and watchdog Ofcom. The public cannot practically oversee the BBC – but greater openness away from the committee rooms and <a href="https://twitter.com/alfiethreetimes/status/1618206721306165249?s=20&t=rRD46Gie9b7DfkiAMHMcbw">boardrooms of London</a> would help.</p>
<p>Some senior executives at least recognise this. The new CEO of BBC News, <a href="https://variety.com/2022/tv/global/deborah-turness-nbc-bbc-news-1235152389/">Deborah Turness</a>, announced on her arrival she wanted to bring greater transparency to how news judgments are made. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2022/deborah-turness-message-to-staff-first-day">In an all-staff email</a> she said: </p>
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<p>The question I would like to ask you all to think about here, is this: to ‘the pursuit of truth with impartiality and accuracy’, how might we credibly add, ‘and with transparency’ – to lead the world in delivering what consumers say they need, if they are to continue to trust us.</p>
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<p>Greater independence, open accountability and transparency in operations are hard things to deliver. But they can reassure the public and build trust, they are increasingly recognised as <a href="https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62185/1/Tambini_Problems%20and%20solutions_04_author_2015.pdf">core elements of the impartiality</a> expected of a public broadcaster, and needed to insulate them from any misguided accusations of straying towards state broadcasting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sambrook worked for the BBC for thirty years, finally as Director of Global News and the World Service.</span></em></p>The row over the BBC Chairman’s relationship with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has opened fresh questions about the level of political influence and independence at the broadcaster.Richard Sambrook, Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1925142022-10-14T14:00:18Z2022-10-14T14:00:18ZBBC at 100: a century of informing, educating, entertaining – and trying to keep politicians honest<p>The BBC as it is known in Britain – as a breathing part of our political and social life, the soundtrack to our private lives, our thinking as citizens and our voice to the world – was born out of conflict. </p>
<p>It was a reaction to the nihilistic slaughter of the first world war, created by a tiny band of young visionaries in 1922, who rejected the grinding propaganda of the war. Theirs was a vision for a new public space, using the technological boundlessness of broadcasting – that was in itself ignorant of hierarchies and conventional barriers – for good purposes. </p>
<p>One of those pioneers, <a href="https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/365695">George Barnes</a>, defined a quality that would become the essence of the BBC – it would be an instrument to “radiate amusement and instruction”. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/directors-general/john-reith">John Reith</a>, the first director and later first director general of the corporation, wanted it to be “the expression of a new and better relationship between man and man”. Equal access to all for information would enable individuals to “be in a position to make up their own minds on many matters of vital moment”.</p>
<p>It was to make everyone’s lives richer, their choices more intelligent, and to make society function more equally and indeed efficiently. In doing so it would help people think of the world as coherent whole, not “merely atomised particles”. The pioneers believed in the capacity of ideas to transform lives and societies.</p>
<p>But the corporation as an institution, a guardian of proprieties, was also forged in the fire of political conflict – the shattering divisiveness, four years after its founding, of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/editorial-independence/general-strike">general strike</a>. While 11,000,000 miners fought against a decrease in their pay, the government sought to break the strike and Winston Churchill campaigned to take over the BBC for government influence to crush the miners.</p>
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<img alt="Early BBC TV logo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=172%2C8%2C1096%2C808&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489762/original/file-20221014-17-kxet9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A mirror to its audiences: over the years, the BBC has attracted criticism from all sides of politics.</span>
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<p>It was at this most precarious moment that the BBC emerged as a “public service”. The BBC told a divided nation what was happening during an acute crisis. And, while later criticised for being too much on the side of the government, it did manage to put representatives of both sides of the case on air. </p>
<p>Most importantly, people came to trust it to tell them as accurately as it could what was happening and, in that sense, to be completely on their side. Impartiality – never perfect and always improvable – was embedded in the project. The BBC would tether everyone to reality (as well as daftness and beauty). The BBC had gone on an expedition whose outcome was unknown to try and hold power to account and be on the side of the public.</p>
<h2>The government and the BBC</h2>
<p>The history of the BBC is littered with explosive conflicts with the government of the day. It is a sorry (yet glorious) tale of attacks on the BBC for bias, unfairness and being a pest. </p>
<p>At the beginning of the second world war, BBC mandarins negotiated an inevitably close relationship with the government, but fought hard to <a href="https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2222">maintain editorial independence</a> within an overall sense of national effort. The BBC made the best of Britain’s shattering defeats of 1940-42 – but never tried to deny them. </p>
<p>After the war, the relationship saw many tests. Famously, during the 1956 Suez invasion the BBC reported the failure of the UK and French expedition and was punished by an irate government with a <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/6992">licence fee cut</a>. </p>
<p>There was fury over the BBC’s reporting of the <a href="https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/15701/1/The-BBC-Persian-Service-and-the-Islamic-Revolution-of-1979.pdf">Iranian revolution in 1979</a> and more than 30 years of anguished debate between the government and the BBC over Northern Ireland that culminated in direct censorship – <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm">outlawing the direct broadcasting</a> of the voices of “terrorists”. </p>
<p>Governments struggled with something close to civil war in Northern Ireland as it escalated, and the BBC battled locally, nationally and internationally to describe the origins and impetus of the conflict and explain what was happening into a divided community. </p>
<p>Coverage of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0160mtw">apartheid</a> in South Africa and the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/11684868/Margaret-Thatcher-papers-BBC-assisted-the-enemy-during-the-Falklands-War.html">Falklands War</a> further placed the BBC in the government’s firing line. During the Iraq war, BBC claims that Tony Blair’s government had deliberately used misinformation to exaggerate the case for conflict <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3441181.stm">brought down a director general and chairman</a>) after the allegations were rejected by a judicial inquiry. A few years later, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/talking_to_the_enemy.html">BBC reporter David Loyn</a> was condemned as a “traitor” in parliament because he was embedded with the Taliban. </p>
<p>But the BBC handled the threats in a way that kept its independence, assessing and evaluating them but not mostly being cowed. “Without fear or favour” is a dangerous place in the contemporary world – but it keeps us safe.</p>
<p>Even now, 91% of UK adults see or hear something on the BBC every week. And contrary to what many believe, 80% of people under 35 young people still <a href="https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/annualreport/ara-2021-22.pdf">consume BBC content</a>. Globally, the BBC attracts <a href="https://www.mediaweek.com.au/bbc-reveals-its-biggest-global-audience-ever-468m-a-week/">468 million people</a> per week and is the <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/bbc-most-trusted-news-source-2020">most trusted provider of news</a> by some distance.</p>
<h2>Attacks intensifying</h2>
<p>As Britain faces a cost of living crisis and a wildly unpopular government, the case for a universal BBC, holding power to account as it has done for so long, and informing while amusing and distracting, has never been stronger. In an age of deliberate misinformation and malcontent, you might expect government to want a trusted, reliable institution such as the BBC to anchor people in reality. However, the political attacks have only intensified in recent years. </p>
<p>Even Margaret Thatcher, who had fierce arguments with the BBC, understood its value at home while projecting soft power to the world. Yet the current ruling Conservative party has slashed the BBC’s funds by <a href="https://www.vlv.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/VLV-Briefing-note-BBC-Funding-Settlement-final-17-January-2022.pdf">30% over the past 10 years</a> with a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tv-licence-fee-settlement-2022">licence fee settlement</a> agreed before inflation kicked in. These politicians have arguably put the future of the corporation in danger, cheered on by a print media that has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/aug/28/james-murdoch-bbc-mactaggart-edinburgh-tv-festival">set itself in direct competition</a> with a cult-like ideological fervour.</p>
<p>Alarmingly, there appear to be people in the heart of government who really do not believe that they should not be asked difficult questions. Boris Johnson’s government for a while tried the trick often favoured by authoritarians of avoiding scrutiny and refusing to appear on BBC programmes. </p>
<p>Johnson even reneged on a promise to join other party leaders in being <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-westminster-news-dominic-cummings-blog-post-8070908/">interviewed by Andrew Neill</a> in the run-up to the 2019 election. More recently, business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/12/jacob-rees-mogg-accuses-bbc-breaking-impartiality-rules-mini/">suggested</a> that his interviewer’s line of questioning broke the BBC’s impartiality rules.</p>
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<p>The British public trusts broadcast news more than other news media, because the BBC and other public service broadcasters make programmes about Britain – imbued with British mores and humour. It also makes programmes that become worldwide successes. The UK is the <a href="https://variety.com/2016/tv/global/u-s-u-k-tv-exporters-australia-1201713741/">world’s second-biggest exporter</a> of TV content, thanks mainly to the BBC.</p>
<p>The government should consider that focusing its energy on endangering the corporation risks betraying the trust that the British public – and so many people around the world – vest in their public broadcaster. A century on, those values that drove the corporation’s founders still resonate. Happy Birthday BBC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean Seaton is the Official Historian of the BBC. She received funding from the AHRC for work on the history of the BBC, she held a British Academy "Thank-Offering to Britain" fellowship for work on the BBC and the holocaust. She is the Director of the Orwell Foundation but receives no funding or payment from it.</span></em></p>The official historian of the BBC mounts a passionate defence of Britain’s public broadcaster.Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1737842022-04-06T08:43:34Z2022-04-06T08:43:34Z100 years of the BBC: the rebels who reshaped broadcasting – and paid the price<p>In his 1941 book <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-power-behind-the-microphone/author/p-p-eckersley/">The Power Behind the Microphone</a>, Peter Pendleton Eckersley, the BBC’s former chief engineer, described his “dream” for the future of radio and television:</p>
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<p>I see the interior of a living-room … flush against the wall there is a translucent screen with numbered strips of lettering running across it. The lettering spells out titles which read like newspaper headlines. These are the titles describing the many different “broadcasting” programmes which can be heard by just pressing the corresponding button … I can, if I like, see the repeat of an old favourite … I lower myself into a chair and press the proper numbered button on a remote control panel … The voices are suddenly in the room, startling in their naturalness … Wonderful service the Wire Broadcasting Company gives me for half a crown a week; only a shilling if I cut out television and the newspaper. </p>
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<p>Eckersley predicted that flat-screen television sets would one day provide audiences with a whole menu of programmes, available on-demand at the touch of a button. Consumers would be able to subscribe to their choice of service, with providers offering television, radio and news at high fidelity. All this would, he believed, be provided by “wire”: a cable network supplying all the content that anyone could desire.</p>
<p>Eckersley’s foresight is all the more remarkable given that, in 1941, the BBC had a monopoly of all broadcasting in Britain and provided listeners in the UK with a choice of only two radio networks. It had mothballed its fledgling television service for the duration of the war.</p>
<p>Clearly, Eckersley was a visionary. He was one of the true pioneers of British broadcasting. But he was also one of the first victims of an internal conflict that has come to define the BBC – that thing that happens when trailblazers meet the establishment head-on. This is the story of those early mavericks.</p>
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<p>During the 1930s and 1940s, Eckersley became persona non grata at the BBC, and an outspoken critic of the broadcaster. In his 1941 book, he lamented that broadcasting in Britain had become … </p>
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<p>… such a feeble thing compared with what it might be. It is a great bore, dull and hackneyed and pompously self-conscious. Its effect is more a drug than a stimulant. Choppy programmes break off a concert to tell us, on all wavelengths, the price of a fat cow; a prayer ends to give, at dictation speed, some news for little ships. Self-satisfaction oozes between salacious jokes, hardly tolerable in a music-hall, while views are given in prosy essays read in a high-pitched whine of emasculated liberalism. Issues are dodged which even a commercial press has no fear to expose. The B.B.C. stands, either remote and dictatorial or pawky and condescending, oblivious of opportunity, hopeless in its timidity.</p>
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<p>When I began writing a new, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/this-is-the-bbc-9780192898524?cc=gb&lang=en">unauthorised history</a> of the BBC, I was aware that we were heading into a centenary year of celebrations. Official histories, special programmes and public events will inevitably emphasise the remarkable contribution made by BBC staff and performers to British culture, society and politics over the last 100 years – and rightly so, as there is much to celebrate. </p>
<p>But I wanted to assess the Corporation by looking into its controversies as well as its achievements. One way to think more critically about its history is to consider the role of nonconformists and rebels like Eckersley; dissident voices within the organisation who sought to do things differently.</p>
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<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
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<p>Sometimes, these people were able to effect fundamental and lasting changes within the BBC, helping it adapt to the challenges that it faced. But often, the BBC chewed them up and spat them out. From its earliest days, the BBC was newsworthy, and the resulting conflicts sometimes attracted significant attention from newspaper columnists, particularly from those sections of the press that opposed the idea of public broadcasting.</p>
<h2>Reithian values</h2>
<p>The man behind many of these very public arguments during the BBC’s first two decades was its chief executive, John Reith; an imposing figure who dominated the Corporation and seldom tolerated dissent or opposition. Reith has often been celebrated as the original mind behind “public broadcasting”, establishing a “Reithian” approach – centring on the idea that this new medium should inform and educate its audiences, as well as entertain them – that set the tone for British radio and television for decades.</p>
<p>Yet historians have also long been aware of the problems that Reith’s complex and sometimes dictatorial personality created for the BBC, and of his difficult legacy. Thinking about the BBC’s rebels and the way that different generations of managers have handled them over the years can help us understand some of the current challenges that the BBC faces as it celebrates its centenary. </p>
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<p>The BBC was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1920s/">formed in 1922</a> to control and discipline what was then a poorly understood new medium of mass communication. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/directors-general/john-reith">Reith</a>, then a young engineer, was appointed to manage what was called the British Broadcasting Company (it became a Corporation at the beginning of 1927, when it received a royal charter and became the property of the nation).</p>
<p>Reith saw the introduction and consolidation of broadcasting as an essentially technical problem. Radio was considered to be a public utility, a bit like water, gas or electricity, and nationalisation the best means to supply it. The challenge was to get it into every home in the country, cheaply and efficiently. The programmes that it provided for listeners were, to some extent, a secondary consideration.</p>
<p>Engineering became a prestigious and important branch of the early BBC. Unlike today, when most of the UK’s broadcasting infrastructure has been sold off or outsourced to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/bbc-rids-itself-of-broadcast-network-1270309.html">private companies</a>, originally the BBC owned and operated most of its own hardware. As the BBC’s first chief engineer, Eckersley set about building powerful transmitters, linked together in a national network, that would provide good reception across the entire country. </p>
<p>Eckersley also took the lead in introducing a second BBC radio network, which he hoped would bring listeners a genuine choice of programmes, and experimental international broadcasting, which would lead to the creation of the “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/people-nation-empire/empire-and-europe/">Empire Service</a>” and eventually the BBC World Service. </p>
<h2>Divorce scandal</h2>
<p>But before any of these projects were complete, in 1929 Eckersley was named in a divorce case. Reith believed this would damage the reputation of the BBC, and he gave Eckersley no option but to resign.</p>
<p>Reith was a strange man, authoritarian in his approach to management, hostile to criticism, and tortured by self-doubt. Reading his diaries in manuscript, and even in their expurgated <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4992744-diaries">published form</a>, gives us some insight into this. At times, Reith comes across as paralysed with self-loathing, at others oblivious of his own emotions and those of the people around him. As one BBC colleague, Lionel Fielden, a BBC talks producer, <a href="https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7313173W/The_natural_bent">later put it</a>, Reith had “one of the largest inferiority complexes ever known to man and, as is the way of such things, it [made] him arrogant”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-why-enhancing-the-public-broadcasters-fact-checking-would-strengthen-its-impartiality-170891">BBC: why enhancing the public broadcaster's fact-checking would strengthen its impartiality</a>
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<p>Eckersley certainly believed he was a victim of Reith’s reluctance to tolerate creativity and initiative among his subordinates. “My friends told me that, divorce or no divorce, some way would have been found to get rid of me because I was not sufficiently subservient,” he <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-power-behind-the-microphone/author/p-p-eckersley/">wrote in 1941</a>. Eckersley thought that Reith wanted to “eliminate from his staff everyone who would not understand or sympathise with his point of view. What a heterogeneous collection they were at the beginning and what a lot of weeding was necessary”. </p>
<h2>Pioneers forced out</h2>
<p>Some of the people who left the BBC over the years that followed went of their own accord, unwilling to work in the sort of place that the BBC was becoming. As Fielden, the aforementioned talks producer, recalled in <a href="https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7313173W/The_natural_bent">his memoirs</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the formative years before 1932, the BBC was a new and exciting dish, sizzling over the fire, with Reith, as <em>chef de cuisine</em>, and perhaps too many cooks spoiling the broth: by 1932 it was the heavy though doubtless healthy pudding which it remains – rather soggy now to my taste.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fielden went off to help establish broadcasting in India, then part of the British empire, where he felt similarly frustrated by the bureaucracy and the forces of conformity that dominated the <em>Raj</em>. </p>
<p>At the BBC, Fielden had worked under <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/timeline/hilda_matheson.shtml">Hilda Matheson</a> in the talks department. Matheson was another key BBC pioneer, and she also fell out with Reith and left. She had worked for MI5 during the first world war and joined the BBC in 1926. She took the lead in expanding the range of material that the BBC covered on air. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Portrait photo of a woman from the 1920s." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454776/original/file-20220328-21-1reybi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photograph of BBC pioneer Hilda Matheson by Howard Coster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw202906">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>When it became a Corporation in 1927, many of the earlier restrictions on “controversial” broadcasting were relaxed. Matheson invited influential and pugnacious figures from the world of politics to speak on air, including Winston Churchill and Harold Nicolson, as well as cultural figures like H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.</p>
<h2>Bias, resignations and reformers exiled</h2>
<p>However, bringing controversy to the microphone was a risky business when the BBC held a monopoly over all broadcasting in Britain. Who should be allowed to talk, and how could some sort of balance between differing opinions be struck? Establishing what was to become <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/nov/12/what-does-impartiality-mean-bbc-no-bias-policy-being-pushed-to-limits">an enduring pattern</a>, those on all sides of politics began to complain that the BBC was biased against them. </p>
<p>Notably, right-wing politicians and newspapers criticised the BBC’s talks for being too plentiful, too boring and too left-wing. In 1931, the Daily Mail claimed that BBC talks were promoting socialism, communism and the USSR. Reith demanded that Matheson limit the range of topics tackled on air and cut back the number of broadcast talks. Matheson resigned rather than comply. </p>
<p>Other nonconformists were exiled to places where they could no longer challenge Reith’s authority. When the left-leaning producer E. A. Harding made a special “New Year Over Europe” programme in 1932, which mentioned in passing the vast amount the Polish government was spending on its military, a minor diplomatic crisis ensued, with the Polish ambassador lodging a formal complaint. Reith decided to banish Harding from London, <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/Prospero-Ariel-Rise-Fall-Radio-Personal/1157945886/bd">reportedly telling him</a>: “You’re a very dangerous man, Harding. I think you’d be better up in the North where you can’t do so much damage.” </p>
<p>Harding went on to build an innovative features production group in Manchester, making programmes based on the voices of “ordinary” people and illustrating themes in their lives. During the economic downturn <a href="https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107595.html#:%7E:text=The%20value%20of%20British%20exports,and%20cost%20even%20more%20jobs.">of the 1930s</a>, features producers from the BBC North region helped communicate the plight of the unemployed, often in their own words, to listeners around the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Portrait image of a man in a suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454975/original/file-20220329-27-1amoht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Print of Gladstone Murray, Assistant Controller of the BBC and former Chief of Canadian Broadcasting, in 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw51492/William-Ewart-Gladstone-Murray?">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Another rebel who faced exile was <a href="https://discoverarchives.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/gladstone-murray">Gladstone Murray</a>, the BBC’s head of publicity, who was sent even further north – to Canada. Murray, who was Canadian by birth, had served with distinction during the first world war as a fighter pilot. He worked capably at the BBC from 1924, creating useful links with journalists and seeking to protect and enhance the Corporation’s public profile. Some thought it was his drinking and liberal use of his expense account that led to his fall from grace. Others believed it was his dynamic approach to press work, which Reith and others viewed as undignified, that sealed his fate.</p>
<p>Either way, he was about to be forced out when in 1936 he received the offer of running the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We now know, from material in the BBC’s archives, that Reith agreed to keep the allegations about his behaviour quiet, and to let him take the Canadian job. In Canada, perhaps surprisingly given the way he had been treated, Murray proved a good friend to the BBC. He helped cement the links between British and Canadian broadcasting in the run-up to the second world war and in the crucial early years of that conflict, before further allegations concerning his drinking, expenses, and links with the British secret service led to his downfall. He was shunted into a job with an impressive title but no real power, and eventually left the CBC. He went on to run a public relations business and to act as a prominent anti-communist campaigner during the cold war. </p>
<h2>Rex Lambert: paranormal investigator</h2>
<p>One of the other notable nonconformists to leave Reith’s BBC was Richard “Rex” Lambert, editor of the Listener, the BBC’s “magazine for intelligent listeners”. In his spare time, Lambert was an aficionado of the paranormal, and he investigated the celebrated case of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/vh35kXxrrqPRYn1mMJJb17/the-curious-case-of-the-talking-mongoose">Gef the talking mongoose</a>. Gef, supposedly either a spirit or an extraordinarily clever animal, lived on a farm on the Isle of Man. The family who owned the farm claimed that Gef made noises, moved things, spoke to them, and could sing in several languages. In 1936, Lambert published his findings in a book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/12136624-the-haunting-of-cashen-s-gap">The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap</a>. This prompted Sir Cevil Levita to seek Lambert’s dismissal from the board of the British Film Institute, on the grounds that he was insane.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man points at a spot of earth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454930/original/file-20220329-19-umy0sv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Lambert investigating an alleged location of Gef the talking mongoose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard._S._Lambert_psychical_researcher.png">Harry Price and Richard Lambert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lambert responded by taking Levita to court for slander. Fearing the negative publicity that would result, the BBC attempted to pressure Lambert into dropping the case, saying his career would suffer if he did not do so. Producing evidence of this threat in court helped Lambert win substantial damages from Levita. Unsurprisingly, the case was widely reported in the press and questions were asked in parliament. In the end, an official inquiry was conducted and BBC employment practices were supposedly reformed. Lambert eventually followed Murray into exile in Canada at the CBC. According to Lambert’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Ariel_and_All_His_Quality.html?id=nGpAAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">1940 book about the BBC</a>, Reith began to “withdraw into seclusion”, having less and less to do with the daily running of the BBC. He resigned as director general and left the Corporation in 1938. </p>
<p>Not for the last time, the BBC had been publicly humiliated over an issue of governance. Such cases have become all too familiar over the last two decades – most notably, concerning Jimmy Savile’s <a href="http://downloads.bbci.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/dame_janet_smith_review/savile/jimmy_savile_investigation.pdf">crimes</a> committed on BBC premises and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57189371">Martin Bashir’s interview</a> with Princess Diana. They reflect the fact that the BBC has, for good or evil, been left largely to regulate itself until <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/how-ofcom-regulates-the-bbc">recent reforms</a> introduced greater oversight. </p>
<h2>Norman Collins and the creation of ITV</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1930s/">1930s</a> were <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Sound_and_Fury.html?id=2vc1AQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">described by Maurice Gorham</a> (who started his BBC career at the Radio Times and ended it as head of the television service) as “the great Stuffed Shirt era, marked internally by paternalism run riot, bureaucracy of the most hierarchical type, an administration system that made productive work harder instead of easier, and a tendency to promote the most negative characters to be found amongst the staff”.</p>
<p>It took a long time for this legacy to fade, as was demonstrated by the BBC career of <a href="https://www.teletronic.co.uk/pages/bbc_history_norman_collins.html">Norman Collins</a>. A best-selling novelist with a distinguished career as a publisher behind him, Collins had joined the wartime BBC and worked his way up through the hierarchy. By the end of the war he was director of the BBC Overseas Service, and in 1947 he was put in charge of the television service, which was starting up again after its wartime hiatus. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white image of a man in suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454972/original/file-20220329-23-1qqc9qo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Norman Collins became frustrated at the BBC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Norman_Collins.png">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Collins was increasingly frustrated by the BBC’s refusal to make the development of television a priority, and management’s continued determination to focus resources on radio. BBC managers eventually agreed to his proposal that a director of television be appointed to the BBC’s top committee, the Management Board, to give the medium a more influential voice within the Corporation. However, instead of Collins, a less troublesome executive was appointed to that role, over Collins’ head. The internal politics of the BBC remained newsworthy: the Manchester Guardian reported Collins’ resignation on October 14, 1950. As he left the BBC, an enraged Collins announced to the press that he was unwilling to see the Corporation continue to subordinate television to “the colossus of sound broadcasting”. </p>
<p>All this seemed reminiscent of the way the BBC had treated people like Eckersley and Matheson in the past. The Daily Mail’s radio and television columnist, Collie Knox, dubbed the BBC the “British Borgias Corporation”, likening it to the “endearing medieval family [who] had the cutest way of getting rid of their nearest and dearest whenever the said nearest and dearest became ‘awkward’ and would not toe the Borgia line”. Instead of poisoning its victims, the BBC promoted them to key positions, and then when they showed any “signs of initiative, personality, ambition, or public-spiritedness”, sidelined them until they inevitably resigned. </p>
<p>Collins continued to be outspoken in his criticism of the BBC, as he launched a campaign to end its monopoly of British broadcasting. A report in the Daily Mail on September 25, 1953 quoted Collins as saying: “It is entirely impervious to criticism, it is imperturbable and impenetrable. It is broadcasting by the unteachable to the untouchable.” </p>
<p>The BBC’s neglect of television proved a serious mistake, opening the door for critics like Collins to advance the case for commercial broadcasting. Winston Churchill’s Conservative government was receptive, and in 1954 created the <a href="https://www.teletronic.co.uk/pages/history_of_itv.html">Independent Television Authority</a> to manage and regulate commercial television, along the lines suggested by Collins. As soon as the government announced its plans to end the BBC monopoly, Collins helped form a company to provide a commercial television service, which eventually became part of Associated Television and won an ITV franchise. Collins also went on to play a significant role in the running of Independent Television News (ITN). Weeding out this particular nonconformist cost the BBC dearly.</p>
<h2>Hugh Carleton Greene and the culture wars</h2>
<p>Once commercial broadcasting was established in Britain, things were never the same again for the BBC. During the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1950s/">1950s</a>, it struggled to compete with ITV for viewers. That changed after <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1960s/">1960</a>, when a new director general was appointed, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/directors-general/hugh-carleton-greene">Hugh Carleton Greene</a> (brother of the novelist Graham Greene). He was a bit of a nonconformist himself, with a reputation as a <em>bon viveur</em>, though he also had impeccable credentials as a cold war warrior due to his work in the BBC’s international broadcasting division. More importantly, Greene was reasonably tolerant of criticism and encouraged creativity. He empowered a wide range of people to make entertaining and thought-provoking programmes that quickly won back the majority of the British viewing public to the BBC.</p>
<p>Greene presided over the establishment of BBC2 and the introduction of colour television, the making of provocative television satire in the form of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/twtwtw/">That Was The Week That Was</a>, the screening of enduring classics including Doctor Who, and the production of a whole string of documentaries and dramas that explored all aspects of British life, society, and culture. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Smiling man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454937/original/file-20220329-3198-ywb1cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former director general of the BBC, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw119796">National Portrait Gallery.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this probably saved the BBC from dwindling into irrelevance. If it had failed to compete with ITV, licence fee funding could not have lasted. Under Greene, the BBC managed to balance the quest for popularity with the making of genuinely innovative and challenging programmes. Yet this came at a cost. By championing an adventurous new approach to programming and bringing previously taboo aspects of life onto British screens, the BBC became a lightning rod for debates about acceptable standards of taste and behaviour.</p>
<p>It was clear what side Greene was on in this developing culture war: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1516459.The_Third_Floor_Front">as he put it</a>, criticism of BBC programmes from people like the moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse revealed “the split between those who looked back to a largely imaginary golden age, to the imperial glories of Victorian England and hated the present, and those who accepted the present and found it in many ways more attractive than the past”.</p>
<p>The BBC’s willingness to engage in satire and in more critical coverage of national politics also angered the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who ended up appointing Lord Hill of Luton as the BBC’s Chairman. Luton was the former chair of the Independent Television Authority, ITV’s governing body. David Attenborough was said <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15281319-inside-the-bbc">to have commented</a> that this “was like appointing Rommel to command the Eighth Army”. Greene soon left the BBC. All this pointed to a new trend, which would resurface again and again over the decades that followed: if the BBC was not willing or able to deal with its rebels, then the government would do so. </p>
<h2>Nonconformity in the age of social media</h2>
<p>Corporate mismanagement has done serious damage to the BBC’s reputation over the last two decades, fuelling calls for a fundamental reform of British broadcasting and the abolition of the television licence fee. In the midst of all this, the BBC continues to struggle to contain its dissident voices. Its current <a href="https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/charter">royal charter</a> mandates it to act as a champion for freedom of expression. Yet it is now attempting to impose <a href="https://www.bbc.com/editorialguidelines/guidance/social-media/#:%7E:text=Nothing%20should%20appear%20on%20their,of%20current%20party%20political%20debate">new codes of conduct</a> on its employees, notably to limit what they are permitted to say on social media platforms. </p>
<p>It is hard to see how this can work in practice, and the history of the BBC suggests it is unlikely to make much difference. As Lionel Fielden put it in 1960, “Whatever rules you may make, in the last resort public opinion will be formed by the men who actually produce programmes … The men who make programmes (generally underpaid) sway the crowd: the administrators and authorities (usually overpaid) do not”.</p>
<p>Since Fielden’s day, the BBC has become less dominated by men, and some of the organisation’s most prominent recent rebels have been women. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/22/emily-maitlis-and-jon-sopel-leaving-bbc-to-front-new-podcast-lbc">Emily Maitlis</a> has, for example, been accused on several occasions of breaking BBC impartiality guidelines in her social media output. She is now set to become one of the latest in the long line of nonconformists to jump ship. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1496106726533353476"}"></div></p>
<p>Unlike in the days of Eckersley and Matheson, when the BBC monopolised British broadcasting, people like Maitlis can now find work in a wide range of different media outlets. Stifling internal criticism will surely do little to ward off the external threats the BBC now faces. Managers would do well to learn the lessons of the past, and encourage critical and creative thinkers to speak their minds, rather than oblige them to leave.</p>
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-discovery-of-insulin-a-story-of-monstrous-egos-and-toxic-rivalries-172820utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The discovery of insulin: a story of monstrous egos and toxic rivalries</a></em></p></li>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Potter's new book, This is the BBC Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain, 1922-2022, is published by Oxford University Press.</span></em></p>Meet the mavericks who helped create the BBC – and refused to toe the line.Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1708912021-10-29T14:20:27Z2021-10-29T14:20:27ZBBC: why enhancing the public broadcaster’s fact-checking would strengthen its impartiality<p>From the 1926 General Strike, through the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, to the more recent Brexit debate and the COVID-19 pandemic, how the BBC tries to ensure impartiality in its journalism has always generated fierce debates about its independence. Every director-general since its foundation nearly 100 years ago has had to contend with <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/general-strike-to-corbyn-90-years-of-bbc-establishment-bias/">criticism of perceived BBC bias</a> during high-profile political events and issues. </p>
<p>These days, the BBC also has to navigate new “culture wars” over questions of cultural sensitivity, free speech and censorship. No surprise, then, that the current director-general, Tim Davie, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2021/director-general-bbc-role-in-public-debate/">believes</a> impartiality is central to the BBC’s long-term survival. To that end he has announced new plans to strengthen the corporation’s political independence by, for example, enhancing its use of fact-checking and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/29/bbc-to-appoint-external-impartiality-investigators">appointing new external impartiality investigators</a> to monitor all BBC content.</p>
<p>In a post-truth world rife with political disinformation, how broadcasters challenge false or misleading information while maintaining high standards of impartiality has become increasingly challenging. This has been exacerbated in the social media age, with routine BBC news reporting and journalists subject to forensic surveillance about their editorial decisions.</p>
<p>Having been commissioned to carry out five <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/editorial_standards/impartiality/statistics">BBC impartiality reviews</a>, as well as leading a <a href="https://www.counteringdisinformation.com/">large-scale research study</a> about how journalistic legitimacy can be enhanced by public service broadcasters, I welcome Davie’s new plans. But, given the struggles the BBC has had with implementing previous commitments to beef up its <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/editorial_standards/impartiality/safeguarding_impartiality.html">impartiality credentials</a>, it remains to be seen how far new editorial practices such as more prominently fact-checking claims can inform its journalism. </p>
<h2>Political pressure</h2>
<p>Despite the public service broadcaster’s independence, it is important to acknowledge the political pressure BBC editors operate under. This is not to say BBC journalists dutifully follow the script of the government of the day. Far from it. </p>
<p>But, to some degree, the political environment must inevitably influence BBC editorial decision making. And, in the febrile political climate, the BBC’s impartiality is under intense political attack. This is just one reason why the appointment of a successor to outgoing political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, is attracting <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16503949/laura-kuenssberg-leaving-bbc-who-will-replace/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=sharebar_native&utm_campaign=sharebaramp">so much attention</a>.</p>
<p>Not long after being appointed secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS), Nadine Dorries claimed the BBC had a <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/nadine-dorries-bbc-10-years-impartiality/">“lack of impartiality”</a> and questioned whether it would survive another decade. Meanwhile, the chair of the DCMS parliamentary committee, Julian Knight, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/23/tory-mp-bbc-should-hire-a-brexiteer-as-its-next-political-editor">said he believed</a> the BBC’s new political editor should be pro-Brexit. This served to reinforce recurrent allegations by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/21/bbc-is-failing-in-its-duty-to-be-impartial-over-brexit">Conservative MPs</a> that the public service broadcaster had been biased in its coverage of the UK’s relationship with the European Union. </p>
<p>The BBC new impartiality plans have been informed by the <a href="https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/the-serota-review.pdf">recent review of editorial processes governance and culture</a> led by Arts Council chair and BBC board member, Nicholas Serota. It produced <a href="https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/impartiality-and-editorial-standards-action-plan.pdf">a ten-point</a> plan on impartiality, editorial standards and whistleblowing. </p>
<p>A central commitment to safeguarding impartiality in the BBC’s plan is a renewed commitment to fact-checking. But this is not the first renewed commitment towards fact-checking or, indeed, impartiality in recent years. </p>
<p>Writing in defence of its impartiality in the middle of a heated general election campaign in 2019, the BBC’s head of news, Fran Unsworth, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/04/bbc-impartiality-precious-protect-election-coverage">claimed that</a> the broadcaster had “ramped up” its Reality Check service to ensure campaign claims were being rigorously checked. Meanwhile, after a 2016 report into the BBC use of statistics there was a <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/stats_impartiality/report.pdf">recommendation</a> to make Reality Check a permanent fixture in BBC news.</p>
<h2>Why fact-checking should be enhanced</h2>
<p>And yet, the <a href="https://www.counteringdisinformation.com/">ongoing research</a> in which I’m involved has found that while the BBC’s Reality Check routinely fact-checks claims on its website, this does not regularly inform wider BBC news output, including the flagship BBC bulletin, the News at Ten. Put simply, fact-checking does exist at the BBC, but it could be ramped up much more and inform BBC journalism more widely.</p>
<p>In 2019, I contributed to an Ofcom study on the <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/174205/bbc-news-review-content-analysis-full-report.pdf">Range and Depth of BBC News</a> that examined BBC journalism and its audiences. The study <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/173734/bbc-news-review.pdf">concluded</a> that the BBC “should feel able to challenge controversial viewpoints that have little support or are not backed up by facts, making this clear to viewers, listeners and readers”. It went on to say that, since audiences largely respect BBC journalism, “This should give the BBC confidence to be bolder in its approach.”</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2021.1965490">journalistic legitimacy project</a> that examined television news coverage of the COVID pandemic, we found that – with the exception of Channel 4 News – most broadcasters did not routinely challenge claims made by journalists during a critical moment in the health crisis. And yet <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/174205/bbc-news-review-content-analysis-full-report.pdf">our study of news audiences</a> during the pandemic found most respondents favoured robust forms of journalistic scrutiny and welcomed more prominent fact-checking and the questioning of dubious or misleading political statements. Contrary to the view of a <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/can-fact-checking-help-save-politics-bbc-channel-four-journalism">former senior BBC editor</a>, research suggests enhancing fact-checking in broadcast programming would not undermine trust in journalism. </p>
<p>After all, despite the BBC’s impartiality being under constant attack, it remains one of the most used widely used and trusted information sources <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2021/united-kingdom">in the UK</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2021/bbc-world-service-five-year-review">around the world</a>. While the BBC understandably wants to maintain a trustworthy relationship with its audiences, our research suggests a bolder approach to impartiality would not compromise it. </p>
<p>If the BBC’s new impartiality plans are to work in practice, in my view countering misinformation and using fact-checking must become a more prominent part of its news output.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, AHRC, BA and ESRC.</span></em></p>BBC director-general, Tim Davie, has released a new plan to beef up fact checking in the public broadcaster’s news programmes.Stephen Cushion, Chair Professor, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1454732020-09-02T15:21:30Z2020-09-02T15:21:30ZBBC comedy’s not left-wing: its audience has moved to the right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356079/original/file-20200902-16-qvfm31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=236%2C200%2C1547%2C961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whose side are you on anyway? BBC comedy show Have I Got News for You.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The BBC’s incoming director-general, Tim Davie, is <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/31/exclusive-bbcs-new-boss-threatens-axe-left-wing-comedy-shows/">reported</a> to be considering how to balance the broadcaster’s comedy output to showcase both sides of the political spectrum. This has found favour in some quarters – Conservative MP Ben Bradley <a href="https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2020/09/01/46813/new_bbc_boss_targets_left-wing_comedy_shows">told the Daily Telegraph</a> that: “In recent years lots of BBC comedy shows are just constant Left-wing rants about the Tories and Brexit.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1300545013332488193"}"></div></p>
<p>I am not going to argue today that comedy is or should be apolitical – society is political, and comedy reflects society. What I am going to argue is this idea of balance is erroneous because of the fundamental nature of comedy. Comedy is always counter-cultural and counter-hegemonic – by its very nature, it fights against the dominant culture and works to actively undermine it, regardless of the leanings of its proponents.</p>
<p>There is a concept in political science called <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/102517/the-overton-window-explained">the Overton window</a> – a term used to describe the range of ideas that voters find acceptable on any given topic at any given point in time. This theoretical window represents the public perception of political ideas. Policies towards the middle are perceived as sensible and prudent and become more niche and radical the further one goes in either direction. </p>
<p>One of the most interesting concepts of the Overton window is that it can move in response to political and societal changes. This holds whether they are as sudden as the result of a referendum or as slow and gradual as a decade of one political party being in power.</p>
<h2>Moving targets</h2>
<p>Comedy in the media exists to examine ideas considered acceptable by the political majority from points of view that would be considered unthinkable by those in power. In this way, it functions as a critique of the dominant culture, making it an inherently out-group activity. </p>
<p>The more the Overton window moves to the right, the more left-leaning points of view become dissenting ones to be leveraged by comedians. It’s not that right-wing comedians don’t exist, it’s that the predominance of right-wing political leaders means the culture is currently less welcoming of non-dissenting views because they would be seen as a defence and not a criticism.</p>
<p>Conversely, when the Overton window shifts more to the left – as one could argue it did during the decade New Labour (1997-2010) were in power – the targets of comedy shift accordingly to maintain its fringe status. I would argue it is no coincidence that two of the comedy shows broadcast at the height of this era, Bo’ Selecta! and Little Britain, have both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/14/david-walliams-and-matt-lucas-apologise-for-little-britain-blackface">come under fire</a> for their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/05/leigh-francis-says-sorry-for-caricaturing-black-stars-on-bo-selecta">portrayal of black people</a>.</p>
<p>Britain under New Labour was bemoaned in the media as being “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249713000_From_Politically_Correct_Councillors%27_to_Blairite_Nonsense%27_Discourses_of_Political_Correctness%27_in_Three_British_Newspapers">politically correct</a>”, so the natural route for comedy was to see how far in the other direction this could be taken. One only has to look at the targets of ridicule evidenced in Little Britain – working class, disabled, unemployed, the uneducated and immigrants – and it becomes clear that each was chosen as a reaction the politics of the time: groups who, under that government, were considered worthy exponents of political capital.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Actors David Walliams, pointing, and Matt Lucas, in a wheelchair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356080/original/file-20200902-16-zode3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Little Britain has been criticised for ridiculing working-class people and people with disabilities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span>
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<p>This is not to say that David Walliams and Matt Lucas are automatically right-wing comedians, nor that any of the other shows broadcast at that time fall into that category by fiat. What I am highlighting is that, whatever the dominant political culture is, comedy will always work against it. Comedy in its own way is the dark mirror of politics – reactive, reflective and populist, always pushing for the fringe of acceptability, rather than for the centre, because its job is to critique policy and not to dictate it.</p>
<h2>Brexit barbs</h2>
<p>The fundamental reason that so much of mediated comedy shows consist of criticism of governmental policy and Brexit is that this is where the centre of the Overton window lies. The referendum in 2016 and the four subsequent years of media coverage that have followed have shifted perception so that “Euroscepticism”, and all its associated baggage, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/07/british-euroscepticism-a-brief-history">have moved from a fringe to a dominant view</a>. Meanwhile, the idea of remaining in the EU has <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1169421/brexit-news-boris-johnson-eu-second-referendum-tony-blair-spt">been pushed to the fringes</a> as the preserve of sore losers and those against democracy. </p>
<p>What those bemoaning the lack of conservative viewpoints within comedy as a medium fail to understand is that this is comedy behaving as it always does. The fact that criticism of the right-wing has reached a saturation point in comedy is not because right-wing voices are stifled or underrepresented, but because they are so overrepresented within the political landscape that they can no longer perform the basic function of comedy: dissent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastian Bloomfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What people find funny about politics depends largely on who is in power.Sebastian Bloomfield, PhD Candidate, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401982020-06-06T18:15:56Z2020-06-06T18:15:56ZTim Davie appointed to run the BBC: he faces some tough challenges<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/05/bbc-appoints-insider-tim-davie-as-director-general">appointment of Tim Davie to succeed Tony Hall</a> as the new director general of the BBC comes as no surprise. As one of the BBC’s most senior figures, Davie – most recently the chief executive of BBC Studios – is tried and tested, bringing commercial savvy at a time of increasing global competition.</p>
<p>There will be disappointment that the BBC board did not use the opportunity to appoint the first woman to the role, and the new DG will need to continue to address concerns about gender equality when it comes to pay, leadership and talent. This is one of many challenges in his in-box.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1268898622462099459"}"></div></p>
<p>Perhaps the most difficult of these is political. As an institution, the BBC has traditionally enjoyed support from across the political spectrum. But there is a faction on the right of the Conservative Party for whom the very idea of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/26/the-bbc-is-a-pillar-of-civilisation-no-wonder-populists-want-to-destroy-it">public service broadcasting is anathema</a>. Many of them are now in government. The circle around Prime Minister Boris Johnson wasted no time in <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/02/downing-street-preparing-all-out-war-bbc">sharpening their knives</a> after winning the last election, putting the BBC on notice that tough times lay ahead.</p>
<p>They are backed by a vociferous group of newspaper titles, who share many of the current government’s antipathy to the BBC. Their talons are sharpened by straightforward financial self-interest – the weaker the BBC, the greater their potential market.</p>
<p>These powerful voices have been quietened during the coronavirus outbreak. Like other media organisations, lockdown restrictions have hit the BBC hard. But, from the early days of the crisis, we’ve seen the importance of having a <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-to-counter-misinformation-journalists-need-to-embrace-a-public-service-mission-133829">trusted, public service broadcaster at the heart of British life</a>. The BBC has responded to the crisis in ways that global providers such as Netflix or Amazon never could, producing lockdown versions of everything from Have I Got News For You to the Archers.</p>
<h2>Still a trusted brand</h2>
<p>While not quite in the same league as the NHS, it is undoubtedly one of the British institutions to <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/25/the-bbc-is-having-a-good-pandemic">enhance its reputation during the crisis</a>. This has dampened attacks for a while. But make no mistake, its enemies are both highly motivated and ruthless. Whether death by a thousand cuts (like <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06860/">decriminalising non-payment of the licence</a> fee and the vexed question of <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04955/">free TV licences for the over-75s</a>) or one savage blow, they are on a mission to get the BBC.</p>
<p>The new DG will have two choices: to capitulate to those who would like to replace it with a UK version of Fox News, or to fight back. Many of us are often dismayed with how weakly the BBC has often responded to its critics on the right, airing their grievances – no matter how flimsy the evidence – and treating highly partisan voices with more respect than their scant interest in fairness and truth deserves. </p>
<p>But the BBC <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/27/nick-hornby-bbc-untouchable-coronavirus-high-fidelity-broadcaster">feels much stronger</a> than it did just six months ago. Polls consistently show that the BBC is more trusted than its <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/media/articles-reports/2020/04/29/no-trust-media-has-not-collapsed-because-coronavir">rival news organisations</a> and this should embolden the new DG – the fact is that the public broadcaster has more credibility than those who would seek to destroy it. </p>
<p>All of which raises a related challenge: how to maintain a commitment to high-quality, impartial journalism that holds the powerful to account in such a hostile political environment? Davie’s guide here should be to stick with the evidence. As someone who has conducted many <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-controversial-business-of-researching-bbc-impartiality-26401">impartiality reviews of BBC coverage</a>, I know how flimsy the accusations of leftist bias of the BBC really are. Those on the left have, in recent years, had <a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-caught-in-the-crossfire-why-the-uks-public-broadcaster-is-becoming-a-big-election-story-128639">far more genuine case for complaint</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-caught-in-the-crossfire-why-the-uks-public-broadcaster-is-becoming-a-big-election-story-128639">BBC caught in the crossfire: why the UK's public broadcaster is becoming a big election story</a>
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<p>Either way, the BBC should treat <a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-brexit-bias-claims-need-to-be-based-on-hard-evidence-75003">accusations of bias</a> purely on their merits, regardless of who or where they come from. But to do so with credibility it will need to commission independent research on its news output (internal investigations won’t cut it) and take any findings seriously.</p>
<h2>One broadcaster, four nations</h2>
<p>Which leads me to a third challenge. We live in a devolved United Kingdom, a reality brought home by the way in which the four devolved governments have responded differently to the coronavirus. Different health systems, different rules, different messages. A survey conducted by a team from Cardiff University led <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/05/07/government-and-media-misinformation-about-covid-19-is-confusing-the-public/">by my colleague Stephen Cushion</a> found that half the respondents were unaware of this – assuming incorrectly that the Westminster government’s announcements applied across Britain. </p>
<p>This is not good enough. It stems from an England-centric news media focusing too often on Westminster and too rarely reminding people there are different governments, rules and systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. After a series of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464884917746560">BBC Trust reviews</a>
on this topic, the BBC’s record on this is better than most. </p>
<p>But there are frequent lapses when it forgets that it is broadcasting to four nations and defaults to Westminster. The BBC in the other three nations have had to work hard to counter this. The UK’s public broadcaster needs to show, with far greater clarity, that it spans four nations.</p>
<p>With commitment, this could be done fairly easily. A more difficult challenge is for the BBC to continue to engage audiences in the social media age. The BBC may be by far the most influential news provider in the UK, but most <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/24/bbc-at-risk-of-losing-young-audiences-according-to-ofcom">young adult audiences have abandoned</a> it. To survive, traditional forms of news need a radical rethink. This is not about giving up on a commitment to informing the public, but embracing what that commitment really means. An exciting news storytelling project by <a href="https://clwstwr.org.uk/projects/news-storytelling-through-modular-journalism">journalist Shirish Kulkarni</a> suggests shows how this can be done in ways that make news both more engaging and more informative.</p>
<p>These are just a few of the challenges that await Davie. It won’t be an easy ride, but the stakes are high, and BBC needs a leader who can truly demonstrate the value of public service broadcasting in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Lewis receives funding from
AHRC, Welsh Government.</span></em></p>Facing a hostile government and a financial squeeze, the new boss of the UK’s public broadcaster has his work cut out for him.Justin Lewis, Professor of Communication, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/848612017-09-29T09:04:20Z2017-09-29T09:04:20ZThe BBC versus The Canary: two experts have their say<p>According to the BBC’s Nick Robinson alternative news sites are waging a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/28/alternative-news-sites-waging-guerrilla-war-on-bbc-says-nick-robinson">guerrilla war</a>” against the BBC in an attempt to promote their own editorial agenda. He was speaking after The Canary appeared to indulge in a “<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/09/canary-running-sexist-hate-campaign-against-laura-kuenssberg-clicks">fake news</a>” story about <a href="https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/09/27/need-talk-laura-kuenssberg-shes-listed-speaker-tory-party-conference/">Laura Kuenssberg speaking</a> at the Tory party conference. We asked two media experts for their views.</p>
<h2>John Collins, Senior Lecturer in Broadcast Journalism</h2>
<p>Whenever there was a fire drill at any BBC building I worked at, colleagues would joke about the discarded copies of the Guardian, half-eaten pots of hummus and hastily snatched FitBits. That was the joke because that was the narrative. We were the left-leaning, liberal staff of the BBC. We were the liberal metropolitan elite – but we were a weird form of elite where many set their alarm at 4am and earned substantially less than the average wage of a firefighter, teacher or tube driver.</p>
<p>The truth was, and remains, very different. BBC staff have a myriad of personal views while your local BBC radio station likely orders more copies of the Daily Mail than any other newspaper.</p>
<p>A section of the right has always believed it leans to the left. Parts of the left have always thought the reverse. The echo chambers of message boards and social media feeds now allow those with either opinion to join forces and allow uncorroborated repetition the same gravitas as evidence.</p>
<p>The BBC is not anti-Jeremy Corbyn. Nor is it anti-Theresa May. Any journalist should look to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. If you wish to run for the highest office in the land, prepare for your policies, your previous and your personality to be held up to scrutiny. Laura Kuenssberg is disliked by those on the left and those on the right. Why? She’s extremely good at her job: sceptical, tenacious and occasionally abrasive.</p>
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<p>The reputation of the Canary has surely been damaged by this situation being further inflamed by the publishing of a clear untruth. There is a certain irony in its attack on the credibility of a journalist being based on something that is so easily verified as being untrue. The attack may be considered “guerrilla tactics” but only if those guerrillas were aiming to shoot themselves in the foot.</p>
<p>The BBC can do more to challenge accusations of bias. It needs to better represent the communities it serves: through programming, staffing and the voices we hear. It needs to change top-down, naturally conservative (note the small “c”) programmes such as Today, Question Time and The Andrew Marr Show to better reflect the diverse, fluid views of its audiences.</p>
<p>A discussion is needed around the subtle but vital distinction between impartiality and balance. It’s difficult not to conclude that the BBC’s pursuit of impartiality leads to imbalance. If 96% of scientists hold one view and your debate contains one member of the 96% and one member of the 4%, your debate will be impartial – but is it a balanced reflection of current thinking? </p>
<p>Blame policies, question tradition – but the day a journalist needs a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/laura-kuenssberg-labour-party-conference-bodyguards-bbc-politics-editor-online-abuse-social-media-a7965301.html">bodyguard at a party conference</a> is the day you’ve lost your argument. This was the debate where The Spectator agreed with The New Statesman, with the BBC right in the middle of the two. Isn’t that exactly how a balanced media should look?</p>
<h2>Tom Mills, Lecturer in Sociology</h2>
<p>The reaction to The Canary article seems to me to have been hysterical and a newspaper such as The Sun accusing another news organisation of spreading “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4561953/leftie-website-the-canary-spreads-fake-news-claiming-bbc-political-editor-laura-kuenssberg-will-speak-at-tory-conference/">fake news</a>” might be funny were it not tiresome. </p>
<p>If organisations like The Canary pose the problems for UK journalism that are being claimed, they are only much paler versions of problems long exhibited by an overwhelmingly right-wing and unscrupulous press. The power of these institutions is waning but they still wield considerable influence over our politics – including indirectly via the BBC – where the press oligarchies have been able to set the agenda if not the tone of reporting. </p>
<p>This is a much more significant political issue than insinuations made in a few articles on left-wing websites. The offending Canary article at least made mention of the overall pattern of reporting on the BBC, citing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-bbc-17028">scholarly study</a>. </p>
<p>Those interested in politics, the media – and the politics of the media – would do well to follow The Canary’s lead and at least take note of the social scientific evidence. If the grave problems with our public institutions, the BBC included, continue to be conflated with the grave problems of abuse of women and minorities, then we will resolve neither.</p>
<p>There is a responsibility on all of us to challenge abuse in public life. This means doing our best to avoid political criticisms slipping into personal abuse – most particularly when it is directed towards those who in any case face structural disadvantages in politics and the media. Conversely though, it is for precisely this reason that political criticism, opposition and even anger are not carelessly conflated with abuse – or that the latter problem is not used as an alibi to dismiss the former.</p>
<p>In the case of Laura Kuenssberg, it is clear she has been the target of misogynistic abuse: a fact that will not surprise any woman with a platform in journalism or politics. This needs to be taken seriously and addressed and recognised as being symptomatic of a wider social problem. </p>
<p>As for the separate issue of political criticism: my own view, for what it’s worth, is that it is not helpful to focus excessively on individual reporters in discussions of political bias in media organisations (although Kuenssberg holds what is probably the most significant post in British political journalism and so is hardly personally insignificant). </p>
<p>The implication that Kuenssberg is personally hostile to Corbyn’s Labour may be correct, who knows? But the real issue is that the institution she represents is deeply embedded in the British Establishment. As I outline in considerable detail in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01J9QTBG4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">my book</a>, the BBC has always been a “small-c” conservative organisation, closely tied to the British state.</p>
<p>But since Thatcher it has also been integrated into the capitalist market and remodelled in accordance with the neoliberal consensus. This has been reflected in the BBC’s reporting, which has been implicitly and sometimes explicitly <a href="https://theconversation.com/media-bias-against-jeremy-corbyn-shows-how-politicised-reporting-has-become-71593">biased</a> against Corbyn and his supporters, precisely because they stand opposed to this consensus. </p>
<p>Indeed, Kuenssberg herself was found by the now defunct BBC Trust to have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/18/bbc-trust-says-laura-kuenssberg-report-on-jeremy-corbyn-was-inaccurate-labour">violated the BBC’s guidelines</a> on impartiality and accuracy in an early report on Corbyn. Any serious discussion of the political criticisms Kuenssberg has faced must take this context into account.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84861/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Collins holds a freelance BBC contract.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Mills is a member of the Labour Party and Momentum. </span></em></p>The Canary has been accused of spreading “fake news” about the BBC’s political editor. We asked two media experts to examine the issue.John Collins, Senior Lecturer in Broadcast Journalism, Nottingham Trent UniversityTom Mills, Lecturer in Sociology, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814092017-07-24T15:52:37Z2017-07-24T15:52:37ZBBC is not biased but its idea of the ‘centre’ is now tilting to the right when the UK is tilting to the left<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179481/original/file-20170724-6656-so1u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The international trade secretary Liam Fox is once again baying for BBC blood, claiming the public broadcaster has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/23/liam-fox-demands-meeting-with-bbc-over-negative-brexit-stories">nothing positive to say about Brexit</a>. It’s not the first time Fox has got his blood up about <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/tory-chief-complains-to-bbc-of-bias-7256505.html">perceived bias at the Beeb</a>. But it must have come as something of a surprise to Robbie Gibb who, until a few weeks ago, was the BBC’s head of political programmes.</p>
<p>A surprise because Gibb is now ensconced as Theresa May’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/06/bbcs-robbie-gibb-named-as-theresa-mays-communications-chief">director of communications</a> – and the notion that the BBC is a nest of lefties flies in the face of reality, with a succession of right-wingers currently, or previously, holding prominent roles in its news and current affairs output.</p>
<p>For example, Gibb’s main competitor for the job at Number 10 was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ames-landale-theresa-may-job-turn-down-bbc-head-communications-prime-minister-number-10-downing-a7824291.html">James Lansdale</a>, the BBC’s diplomatic editor. David Cameron’s communications chief when he was prime minister was <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/09/craig-oliver-camerons-attack-dog-finally-bites">Craig Oliver</a>, a former editor of BBC News. Meanwhile Boris Johnson, on his appointment as mayor of London, called on the services of BBC political correspondent, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/may/10/boris.localgovernment">Guto Harri</a>, to head his spin team. </p>
<p>No one gets more political airtime on BBC screens currently than Andrew Neil, who has never made any secret of his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jul/28/sundaytimes.comment">Tory leanings</a>. He previously worked for the Conservative’s research department and now chairs the holding company that owns the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator. Superb interviewer that he is, is it right that any broadcaster – whatever his or her political leanings – should so dominate the BBC’s political coverage as does Neil, fronting the weekday Daily Politics show and presenting his own programmes on Sunday mornings and Thursday evening?</p>
<p>It is not being argued here that the BBC is biased towards the right nor, for that matter, to the left, but it does have a bias - and that is towards the consensus, as it sees it. A <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v34v2">succession of senior BBC journalists have accepted</a> that the corporation’s political coverage often struggles to escape the Westminster bubble – one reason, perhaps, why the BBC’s coverage of the last two general elections and the EU referendum failed to adequately reflect the national mood. But the BBC’s calibration as to where that centre lies has gone somewhat awry – or just hasn’t yet adjusted to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.</p>
<h2>Political balance</h2>
<p>Take, for example, the BBC’s two flagship Sunday political programmes presented respectively by Andrew Marr and Neil. Both programmes, apart from having big-name political interviews, also include three-person panels of journalists and politicians whose job is to review the Sunday papers and set the tone for the programme. On July 23, for example, the Andrew Marr Show opened with a panel that consisted of <a href="http://giselastuartmp.co.uk/">Gisela Stewart</a> the centrist Labour MP, <a href="https://www.annasoubry.org.uk/">Anna Soubry</a>, the centrist Tory MP, and the unashamedly right-wing journalist and campaigner <a href="https://twitter.com/toadmeister?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Toby Young</a>. This, in itself, would not be problematic since the BBC’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/">editorial guidelines</a> – rightly in my view – talk of “due impartiality” across the output, rather than a mechanistic left/right balance in every programme.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179488/original/file-20170724-16930-14oh3an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Marr.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC PIctures</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>However, in the seven weeks that I have been monitoring the two Sunday political programmes there has been no balance in the make-up of their respective press panels. Indeed, what has been impressive is the almost mathematical precision its producers have achieved in ensuring that every programme has a “balance” of two right-wingers to one left-winger.</p>
<p>The Sunday before last, for instance, the Marr programme featured a panel of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/ayesha-hazarika-labour-party-special-adviser-a7678471.html">Ayesha Hazarika</a>, Ed Miliband’s former adviser, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/jane-moore-the-rise-of-the-sun-queen-812423.html">Jane Moore from The Sun</a> and former Tory leader <a href="http://www.iainduncansmith.org.uk/">Ian Duncan-Smith</a>. An hour or so later, the Andrew Neil Show began with another “balanced” panel consisting of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/steve-richards">Steve Richards</a>, who writes for the Guardian and the Independent, political editor of The Sun, <a href="http://journalisted.com/tom-newton-dunn">Tom Newton-Dunn</a>, and right-wing journalist <a href="http://journalisted.com/search?q=Isobel+Oakeshott&type=">Isobel Oakeshott</a> formerly of the Daily Mail and Sunday Times.</p>
<p>I monitored the panels of the two programmes from June 11 to July 23 2017 and found that of the 39 panellists (there was no Neil show on July 23), 27 have been from the right or centre-right, ten from the centre-left, one from the left (the editor of the Canary website <a href="http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/canarys-bristolian-editor-kerry-anne-147229">Kerry Anne-Mendoza</a> and one of no declared political position: the BBC presenter, Victoria Derbyshire. In other words, a more than two-to-one bias to the right or centre-right on these panels, which – given the consistency over the period monitored – cannot simply be attributed to happenstance.</p>
<h2>Moving the fulcrum</h2>
<p>But is this imbalance of any real significance? The answer, in my view is yes – on two levels. First, because these press panels play a crucial role in setting the dominant narrative for the show. But – perhaps more importantly – they are indicative of where the BBC’s political staff believe the current centre of political balance to lie. Most observers accept that the political centre moves. Under Thatcher and Blair, it was to the right of the <a href="http://www.britpolitics.co.uk/british-politics-post-war-consensus">post-war consensus</a> (the consensus essentially accepted the mixed economy and the welfare state) but since the 2017 general election – if not before – I believe it has clearly moved to the left. That is yet to be reflected across the BBC’s coverage.</p>
<p>This is not to suggest that the BBC does not have a good team of political journalists providing reliable and informative coverage – they do. But it does suggest a mindset within the BBC, almost certainly unconscious, that has yet to recognise the new political realities. The BBC is a public service broadcaster – and a good one too – but it is vital that in carrying out its function of reflecting Britain back to itself, the picture it has of the country is a reasonably accurate one. </p>
<p>Young people are now increasingly turning to social media as their first source of information about current events. If the BBC is to win back this section of the audience – or at least stem the ebbing tide – it needs to examine, and respond quickly, to the current mote in its political eye.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The public broadcaster regularly favours right-wingers over representatives from the left.Ivor Gaber, Professor of Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/623932016-07-14T09:00:53Z2016-07-14T09:00:53ZHow the BBC’s obsession with balance took Labour off air ahead of Brexit<p>As Britain reflects on the fallout from the EU Referendum, <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage-2016-eu-referendum-report-5-6-may-22-june-2016/">analysis</a> from Loughborough University demonstrates that the BBC, in common with all other media, ignored concerns of Labour voters in favour of an entirely artificial notion of “balance” that was pitched as a ball-by-ball commentary of a Conservative power struggle. </p>
<p>Labour members canvassing in the streets and housing estates, waited in vain for the BBC – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jun/22/bbc-tops-poll-as-most-important-news-source-for-eu-referendum?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">the country’s most trusted news source</a> – to provide any serious analysis that could back up the Labour message on the doorstep. They had been expecting the BBC to deliver, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/appendix8#heading-13-principles-of-the-guidelines">as promised</a>, “impartial and independent reporting of the campaign, providing them with fair coverage and rigorous scrutiny of the policies and campaigns of all relevant parties and campaign groups”.</p>
<p>Television is bound by rules of impartiality and the BBC is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality">committed</a> to ensuring that “a range of views is appropriately reflected” in its coverage. In spite of this, David Deacon, professor of communication and media analysis at Loughborough, found that all television channels covered the campaign in very much the same way as each other – and the press.</p>
<p>In the first month, up to June 8, the Labour Party had attracted a mere 6% of the campaign coverage on TV (less even than the 9% in the press). The Conservatives, meanwhile, grabbed 32% of the coverage. </p>
<p>For a brief period in mid-June, as former prime minister Gordon Brown <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36513921">entered the fray</a>, Labour’s share of the political spotlight increased. But the interest in the Labour message was not sustained. In the final count of the frequency of appearances by media sector, Labour members figured in 10% of the TV coverage. The Conservatives provided almost 30%.</p>
<h2>Blame Corbyn?</h2>
<p>For many in the “Labour In” campaign, the problem was the lukewarm approach taken by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/76762/labour-grandee-alan-johnson-lays-jeremy-corbyns">He was criticised</a> by campaign leader and veteran MP Alan Johnson, for “actively undermining the party’s efforts”.</p>
<p>However, by the end of the campaign, Corbyn had made 6.1% of all media appearances while Johnson figured in less than 1%. Given that accounts of the campaign suggest Johnson was far more actively engaged than Corbyn, this points to an editorial decision to ignore Labour Party campaigners in favour of highlighting what felt like the more high-profile battle between the Conservative “big beasts”. </p>
<p>By the later stages of the campaign, when it had begun to be clear that the final decision now rested on the votes of Labour voters in the old industrial heartlands, simple journalistic nous might have encouraged the BBC’s political team to find out what issues were likely to influence this key constituency and to seek out those politicians who represented them. Anecdotal evidence, that was not reflected in news bulletins, suggested that activists were finding a frustrating lack of knowledge about the campaign <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/30/labour-voters-in-the-dark-about-partys-stance-on-brexit-research-says">and Labour’s position</a> on the doorsteps.</p>
<h2>Crucial concerns ignored</h2>
<p>By focusing entirely on the Conservatives, the BBC failed to address the concerns of a very large section of its audience. The editorial team appeared not to understand that concerns about the impact on the economy and the City would not register with people for whom the City is considered to be directly responsible for the recession, austerity, job losses and the benefit curbs that came with it. </p>
<p>Links could have been made with the issues that the Labour Party wanted to focus on: jobs, employment rights, the health service and prices, but these topics barely made the news agenda. By June 22, employment had received 3.4% of the television coverage and health garnered 1.7%. The possibility of rising prices didn’t figure at all. By far the biggest category, with 28.9% of coverage, was the conduct of the campaign itself. </p>
<p>The BBC’s assistant political editor, Norman Smith, justified this approach on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cyvk5">its Radio 4 Feedback programme</a> by explaining: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are there to report what the main combatants in this referendum say, do, argue. I don’t think it’s up to us to, as it were, go AWOL and say well, fine, but we’re actually going to talk about this because we think that’s what voters are interested in.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Really not cricket</h2>
<p>The decision to cover the referendum as though it were a cricket match, rather than a complex event in which every viewer and listener was actually a participant, rather than an observer, meant that in the days before the <a href="http://www.referendumanalysis.eu/eu-referendum-analysis-2016/section-3-news/scrutinising-statistical-claims-and-constructing-balance-television-news-coverage-of-the-2016-eu-referendum/">vote, fewer than a third</a> of voters felt well, or very well, informed about their vote.</p>
<p>There has already been a <a href="http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2016/06/15/eu-referendum-the-principles-of-broadcasting-impartiality-have-hit-a-snag">lot of concern</a> expressed at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/12/bbc-fairness-not-balance-one-side-lying-brexit">failure of the BBC</a> to address the obvious lies being peddled in the campaign and the decision to give each side the opportunity to rebut any attempt by experts to correct such misinformation. </p>
<p>There needs also to be a thorough review of the decision by the BBC to interpret balance in a way which simply ignored the interests of working class viewers and listeners, casting them as observers rather than participants in the campaign. </p>
<p>While it is true that social media was important in consolidating the Leave campaign, it is also true that most of what is circulated on social media (whatever the platform) originates in the mainstream. The BBC <a href="http://digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2016/overview-key-findings-2016/">is not only</a> the most watched, it is also the most shared, news source. Audiences cannot watch or share information that isn’t there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela Phillips is affiliated with the Media Reform Coalition and is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>BBC editorial decisions cast Labour voters as onlookers in the referendum campaign.Angela Phillips, Professor, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/560312016-03-17T08:04:28Z2016-03-17T08:04:28ZWho do they think ‘we’ are? Why the BBC should keep its distance<p>During the Falklands War of 1982, Margaret Thatcher was, apparently, furious at the BBC’s even-handed reporting of the conflict. She lamented what she referred to as the “<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinkoes-Traitors-The-nation-1974-1987-ebook/dp/B00MVAY7TW">chilling use of the third person</a>” on hearing the BBC refer to military personnel as “they” rather than “we”.</p>
<p>The BBC, however, was clear about the value of its impartiality, as was spelled out in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/01/pinkoes-and-traitors-bbc-and-nation-1974-1987-jean-seaton-review">guidelines given to journalists</a> during the war:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We should try to avoid using “our” when we mean British. We are not Britain, we are the BBC.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Times have changed. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1123111">Our research</a> uncovered striking examples, such as this from Radio 4’s Today programme on January 21 2014:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What have we achieved in Afghanistan? We’ve lost 447 British lives there since our troops first went in, way, way back in 2002. We’ve spent at least £20 billion there, possibly more, the precise figure is difficult to estimate. This year we will withdraw. Did we win?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our survey of content on the BBC’s flagship Today programme found that these days presenters regularly use the word “we” (or “our”) when referring to Britain, NATO, “the West” and other entities or identities. It seems that the importance of the clear blue water marked out in those guidelines from 35 years ago has been forgotten.</p>
<h2>A ‘we’ problem</h2>
<p>Our research identified at least ten different stances adopted by five presenters on the Today programme, during the period we studied – instances in which they used the words “we” or “us”, effectively to identify themselves with others. But the BBC’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality">Editorial Guidelines</a> are clear as to where the public broadcaster stands on this when its journalists are reporting on the BBC itself:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When dealing with controversial subjects concerning the BBC, our reporting must remain duly impartial, as well as accurate and fair. We need to ensure the BBC’s impartiality is not brought into question and presenters or reporters are not exposed to potential conflicts of interest. It will be inappropriate to refer to either the BBC as “we” or the content as “our”. There should also be clear editorial separation between those reporting the story and those responsible for presenting the BBC’s case.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If it is important for BBC journalists to remain scrupulously impartial when reporting on the corporation, it is surely equally so when reporting on – and questioning – other institutions, to which the journalist or presenter has no connection, actual or perceived.</p>
<h2>All friends here</h2>
<p>But this appears to have gone out of the window, if an interview with the then foreign secretary, William Hague, after the military coup in Egypt in 2013 is any indication:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Presenter: So, do we now, having recognised the former president, do we now say, he’s gone, we now recognise a new military government in Egypt?</p>
<p>Hague: Well, we don’t support military intervention … whatever our feelings about operating in this way.</p>
<p>Presenter: So the answer to my question is, yes, we do recognise this new military regime.</p>
</blockquote>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span><span class="download"><span>18.3 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/379/r4today20130704-08-10-00.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>It might be argued that this usage represents a move towards informality by journalists in an attempt to close the distance between themselves and their audience. But Kevin Marsh, former head of the BBC’s College of Journalism has emphasised the <a href="http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Article,id=12851/">importance of clear impartiality</a> in a changing media landscape:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Values such as impartiality – however described or characterised – could be and are emerging as important markers that distinguish deliberate acts of serious journalism from the noise out on the web. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The BBC guidelines alert journalists to the dangers of identifying themselves with a presumed consensus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our reporting should resist the temptation to use language and tone which appear to accept consensus or received wisdom as fact or self-evident … audiences should not be able to tell from the BBC output the personal prejudices of our journalists or news and current affairs presenters on matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy, or on “controversial subjects” in other areas.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later in the interview with Hague, the presenter appeared to align himself completely with a concept of “we” as Britain or the British state – and with a “consensus”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Isn’t it about time we started saying, actually there’s an argument for the old regime continuing because at least it provides stability, under the new system there might be real dangers for us?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The extent of the potential for confusion, lack of clarity, lack of accuracy, is illustrated in this example, in which the presenter interviewed the defence secretary about Britain’s response to the situation in Ukraine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What Lord Dannett, the former head of the Army told us the other day was that we should immediately – the British government – should immediately look again at plans to withdraw our remaining troops from Germany in 2020. And actually we should keep, he suggested, 3000 or so troops in Germany. Are you tempted to do that?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“You”, “we” – who is who in this conversation? Where does the presenter stand? How much clearer, more accurate and impartial simply to ask what “you” or the British Government propose to do – and why?</p>
<p>Our research does not focus only on questions of politics and international affairs. There are implied assumptions about schooling, about England versus Britain, about what might be considered “common knowledge”. Wherever we have identified the problem, there is room for confusion and for doubt about the views of the presenter. And yet, we also found examples where Today presenters were scrupulous in their impartial use of language. </p>
<p>The time has come for the BBC to review its guidelines in order to restore the same clarity to all its coverage as is demanded by the specific guideline on covering the BBC as a story. From our observations, we would say that the problem is by no means confined to the Today programme, nor to the BBC. We would welcome a wider discussion about how things have changed so much since the Falklands War and whether audiences are best served by what is becoming common practice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The public broadcaster’s guidelines set out the need for impartiality, but some of its presenters appear not to have seen them.James Stewart, Lecturer, Cardiff UniversityPhilip Mitchell, Head of Academic Programmes (Operations) , University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/456612015-08-26T05:34:02Z2015-08-26T05:34:02ZThe Beeb, the bias and the bashing<p>My entry for the prize for the most unsurprising allegation of 2015 was the uncannily similar complaints that emanated from a number of Conservative MPs who claimed that the BBC’s reporting of the general election had <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/13/tory-officials-threatened-bbc-miliband-tom-baldwin-licence-fee">been overtly pro-Labour</a> (fat lot of good it did them, one might opine).</p>
<p>Let me state at the outset that I believe that political journalists need not, indeed should not, be political eunuchs. If you are interested in politics – and one would have thought that that was a basic requirement of working in the area – one is going to have political views. Hence, the fact that some BBC journalists have, or had, left or right-wing leanings should not be a cause of surprise, nor of concern. </p>
<p>In fact, I would argue that if your own political opinions are on the record then it is that much easier for colleagues and, more importantly, the audience to judge whether you are allowing those opinions to influence your output.</p>
<p>Indeed, I worry about those political journalists I know who proudly state they have no political views. I worry because everyone has political views and, if you are not conscious of your own, then how are you going to take them into account when you are reflecting on the fairness, or otherwise, of your own reporting?</p>
<p>The most shining example of someone who has a “political past” but has developed into one of the most highly regarded political journalists of our time is the BBC’s (now former) political editor Nick Robinson – who will be the next Today programme presenter. Many aeons ago <a href="http://www.cheshirelife.co.uk/people/celebrity-interviews/nick_robinson_on_bbc_bias_his_health_and_love_for_macclesfield_1_3992571">Nick Robinson was chairman of the Young Conservatives</a>, a fact that much exercised Alastair Campbell when he was Labour’s director of communications.</p>
<p>But, as a former colleague and now as an academic researcher and a viewer, I would argue that his political analysis and commentary has been, indeed are, usually fair and perceptive.</p>
<p>So is Robinson an exception, that is a former (or could be current for all I know) Conservative working for the BBC in a leading political role, but doing a decent job of work; or is he more of a norm than people might think?</p>
<h2>Fellow travellers</h2>
<p>To begin with there’s the BBC political journalist who gets the more political air-time than any other - Andrew Neil: he presents or co-presents five hours of television programmes a week including This Week, the Daily Politics and Sunday Politics. Neil is a penetrating interviewer, who exposes weaknesses in the arguments advanced by politicians of the left, right and centre. He’s also a former Murdoch editor, was a researcher for the Conservative Party and is chairman of the Conservative-supporting Spectator magazine. He <a href="http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/ecagrs/HL%202005">stoutly argued his free market views at the Hayek lecture</a> at the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs in November 2005.</p>
<p>But the real power, the critics might argue, is behind the scenes, where the left dominates. Or does it? Nick Robinson’s former senior producer, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d1d65690-c2ae-11e4-a59c-00144feab7de.html#axzz3TWU2nR2A">Thea Rogers</a>, left the BBC in 2012 to become special advisor to the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne. Then there’s Robbie Gibb, the editor of BBC TV’s live political programmes; he was a <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/08/mehdi-hasan-bbc-wing-bias-corporation">deputy chair of the extreme right-wing Federation of Conservative Students</a> and went on to become <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/bbc-leftwing-bias-non-existent-myth">chief of staff</a> to the senior Conservative MP Francis Maude before joining the BBC. </p>
<p>Nor should we overlook the fact that David Cameron replaced his previous press secretary, Andy Coulson, with the then-editor of BBC News, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12348159">Craig Oliver</a> and around the same time London’s Tory Mayor, Boris Johnson, recruited BBC political correspondent Guto Harri, to head his media team (and when Harri moved on to the Murdoch Empire he was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/may/25/boris-johnson-hires-bbc-will-walden">replaced by Will Walden</a>, a BBC news editor at Westminster).</p>
<p>But in the context of Tory-aligned personnel in influential positions within the BBC, perhaps most importantly of all, one thinks of the recently retired the chair of the BBC Trust was Lord Patten, a former Conservative cabinet minister. Hands up those who can remember the last time a former Labour minister chaired the BBC? The correct answer is never. Patten was, by my reckoning, the tenth BBC chair to sit in either the Commons or Lords on the Tory benches; the equivalent Labour total is two – <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_GS4_uG484cC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=Phillip+Inman+bbc+chairman&source=bl&ots=0v5UnGEXnr&sig=Z4e235LvgKAjzZuVGMdXSR3-9DI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwADgKahUKEwjZlLnP3KjHAhUIaRQKHQdNCIM#v=onepage&q=Phillip%20Inman%20bbc%20chairman&f=false">Phillip Inman</a> (created Baron Inman) – who was chairman of the governors in 1947, for less than a year, and he was succeeded by <a href="http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/research/simonhallsworth/about/lordsimon/">Ernest Simon, 1st Baron Simon of Wythenshawe</a>.</p>
<p>As for the BBC’s other Labour links – the last chairman with any Labour connections was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3434661.stm">Gavyn Davies</a> who was, as will be recalled, forced to resign by a Labour government. A former Labour minister, <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/when-i-left-it-felt-like-a-huge-relief-my-life-went-from-black-and-white-to-technicolor-james-10095479.html">James Purnell</a> is currently working as a senior BBC executive, specifically on charter renewal and presenter Andrew Marr had a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/sep/26/george-osborne-interviews-andrew-marr">well-publicised flirtation</a> with Trotskyist grouplets in his youth. </p>
<p>The only other current or recent Labour connections I am aware of are political correspondent, Lance Price, who <a href="http://www.prweek.com/article/105909/profile-lance-price-labour-party---political-rottweiler-labour-love---lifelong-labour-supporter-lance-price-eschews-spin-latest-press-role">left the corporation to become Labour’s director of communications</a>. Broadcaster Melvyn Bragg who, when he became a Labour peer <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/film_and_tv/radio/article567711.ece">was immediately banned</a> from appearing on any programmes that might have any political content.</p>
<h2>Eye of the beholder</h2>
<p>So why, despite the demonstrable connections between the BBC and Conservatives and the paucity of connections on the other side, as well as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-bbc-17028">plethora of academic research</a> that demonstrates that if there is a bias in the BBC’s reporting of politics it is to the right rather than the left, do Conservative newspapers, politicians, and presumably voters, think the opposite?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"630701123003936768"}"></div></p>
<p>First, on a very basic level of political instincts, those on the right are not sympathetic to public bodies per se. There is an innate belief that in virtually all areas of life the private sector does things better. Hence, the BBC is seen as almost one of the last vestiges of the nationalised industries created by the post-war Labour government, even though the corporation came into being two decades earlier under a Conservative government.</p>
<p>Then, there is the nature of journalism itself. It attracts curious, slightly obstreperous, people who like to ask awkward questions, usually of the establishment. This can be seen as an essentially left-wing activity and way of thinking – but the very same description applies to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jeremy-paxman-im-a-onenation-tory-and-newsnight-is-made-by-13yearolds-9566874.html">journalists of the right</a>.</p>
<p>The final reason is, in my view, that the right tends to make more noise about these matters. This is because those on the left of the political spectrum feel highly conflicted about the BBC, so their case goes by default. This is partly because they tend to have a broadly positive view of the BBC – they regard the concept of public service broadcasting as a societal good – and as a result are extremely reluctant to join the right in their campaign of Beeb-bashing.</p>
<h2>Follow the money</h2>
<p>All the above suggests we are dealing with genuinely-held beliefs about media bias, one way or another. However, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that what drives the Conservative-supporting newspapers to attack and seek to undermine the BBC has as much to do with profits as it does with politics.</p>
<p>All newspapers see the BBC as a formidable competitor, not just for audiences but for income as well. Conservative-supporting newspapers are outraged by what they see as “public money” – in fact, income from the licence fee – being used to fund a direct competitor. Indeed, the BBC News Online site, according to the <a href="http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/publication/digital-news-report-2015">most recent research from the Reuters Foundation</a> dwarfs the sites of the Mail Online (and the Guardian for that matter) in terms of both readership and trust. </p>
<p>An additional motivation for the Murdoch-controlled papers seeking to undermine the BBC is that its BskyB network competes with the BBC head-for-head, for audiences and hence it would almost be foolish of them not to attack the BBC.</p>
<p>These ongoing political attacks on the BBC as a bastion of left-wing thinking would be an irritation, a severe irritation, at any time. But with a Conservative majority government in office, an upcoming renewal of the BBC’s charter and licence fee settlement pending and a secretary of state not seen as one of the BBC’s most passionate supporters, these attacks could have very serious consequences, not just for the BBC but for the country as a whole, just how serious the consequences might be will become clear in the next few months. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an extract from a forthcoming collection “The BBC Today: Future Uncertain” to be published by Abramis in September</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber is a member of the Labour Party - but holds no formal position.</span></em></p>From both left and right come accusations that the BBC is biased. The truth is that the Beeb has links to all sides of politics – as you would expect.Ivor Gaber, Professor of Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/418072015-05-15T05:10:05Z2015-05-15T05:10:05ZNewspapers, not BBC, led the way in biased election coverage<p>The appointment of John Whittingdale as secretary of state for culture, media and sport has <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-bbc-safe-in-the-hands-of-britains-new-culture-secretary-41645">created speculation</a> about the way the new government will handle the upcoming BBC charter renewal. There is concern in many quarters that this is a signal that the government may reduce – or even end – the BBC licence fee.</p>
<p>News reports have alluded to figures in the Conservative party expressing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/11598450/Tories-go-to-war-with-the-BBC.html">unhappiness with the BBC’s election coverage</a> – part of a longstanding claim amongst some Conservatives that the BBC has a left-wing tilt. Since broadcasters have a legal obligation to be impartial, this is a serious accusation.</p>
<p>Equally serious is the suggestion – made by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/bbc-labour-election">Labour advisor Tom Baldwin</a> – that the Conservatives leant on senior BBC executives during the election campaign, threatening consequences if they did give the government an easier ride.</p>
<p>In the past, of course, Blair’s Labour government put pressure on the BBC and succeeded in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3441181.stm">forcing the resignation</a> of its director-general, Greg Dyke, over its coverage of the debate that led to the Iraq War. But this is not the first time allegations have been made about such an overt threat to the BBC’s independence.</p>
<p>Both claims deserve serious investigation. We need a systematic and independent review of political impartiality on the BBC, as well as other broadcasters, who are bound by the same rules. In the meantime, what does the available evidence tell us about the BBC’s coverage of the election campaign?</p>
<h2>Who set the agenda?</h2>
<p>Cardiff and Loughborough – both universities with a well-established track record for independent news monitoring – conducted a week-by-week analysis of broadcast election coverage. Both studies found that the two main parties received broadly comparable volumes of coverage, with the Conservatives ahead by a small margin. By this fairly crude yardstick, then, none of the broadcasters could be accused of anti-Tory bias.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81725/original/image-20150514-28648-tu4jxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What the papers said.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paperboy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The volume of coverage allotted to parties is, of course, a very blunt measure. In election campaigns, the parties battle it out to try and set the agenda, in order to highlight those issues where their records inspire the most public support.</p>
<p>During most of 2015, most surveys put the NHS at the top of the list of people’s concerns, followed by the economy, immigration, education and housing. Surveys also showed that the Conservatives had a clear lead on the economy, while most people trusted Labour on the NHS and housing. For the two main parties, the consequences of this were fairly clear: the Conservatives put the economy at the top of their agenda, while Labour stressed the NHS.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81706/original/image-20150514-28583-1j0718.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Top election issues by broadcaster (% of airtime)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cardiff University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the polls showed both issues were top on the list of peoples’ concerns, impartiality required the broadcasters to give roughly equal time to both. Yet the Cardiff study showed that the economy received 4 times as much coverage overall as the NHS. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81704/original/image-20150514-28583-1q1mwyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Airtime spent on top ten election topics (week 5 and totals for week 1-5)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cardiff University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the crucial final week of the campaign, this gap widened. The NHS almost disappeared from the agenda, with two issues dominating: the economy and speculation about possible coalitions – notably potential deals between the Labour and the SNP – an issue pushed by the Conservative campaign in the last two weeks (bolstered by a poll for the Sun that suggested a small but potentially significant group of potential Labour voters were concerned about such a deal).</p>
<p>It therefore appears that the broadcasters – especially in the final week – went with a Conservative rather than a Labour agenda. Since this was true of all the UK broadcasters, this cannot be seen to be the result of political pressure on the BBC (regardless of whether such pressure was applied), or public opinion, which remained concerned about the NHS.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81707/original/image-20150514-28606-17hzutz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Loughborough University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So why did the broadcasters allow one side to so clearly set the agenda? The answer is both simple and, in terms of broadcasting impartiality, troubling.</p>
<h2>Press ganged</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/general-election/media-coverage-of-the-2015-campaign-report-5/">Loughborough research</a>, which also tracked press coverage, suggested that most newspapers were overwhelmingly partisan in favour of the Conservatives and against both Labour and the SNP – a bias that increases when weighted by circulation. </p>
<p>Indeed, a number of newspapers were not so much reporting the campaign as becoming part of it. The major Conservative titles followed Central Office’s lead in unison, favourably comparing the Conservative’s economic record with Labour and warning against the constitutional threat of a Labour/SNP coalition.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81708/original/image-20150514-28641-jfx0s4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Loughborough University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The effect of a vociferously pro-Conservative press on the electorate has been much debated – and deserves more serious investigation than the generally ill-informed commentary it has received thus far. What the research does appear to show is that regardless of its effect on its readers, newspaper partisanship directly influenced the broadcast news agenda.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81722/original/image-20150514-28633-yxqesf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Loughborough University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Press circulation has declined in recent years, but TV news remains by far the most used – and most trusted – source of information. The fact that broadcasters seem to have taken their lead from the press suggest that the built-in Tory bias in our newspapers has found its way (albeit in a more even-handed and less overtly partisan form) into broadcast news.</p>
<p>We saw indications of this earlier in the campaign. A poll indicating that <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/two-thirds-of-economists-say-coalition-austerity-harmed-the-economy-10149410.html">two-thirds of leading economists disagreed</a> with the government’s austerity measures was ignored by most newspapers and consequently received very little attention. By contrast, a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11507586/General-Election-2015-Labour-threatens-Britains-recovery-say-100-business-chiefs.html">letter to the Telegraph from 103 business leaders </a>supporting the Tories became a headline story on broadcast news bulletins. While Labour’s response was also reported, the issue put them on the defensive.</p>
<p>It would be hard to argue that the Telegraph letter was more newsworthy than the poll of economists – especially since the first was fairly unsurprising while the latter called one of the Conservative’s main claims about economic competence into question. The difference was that the press made more of it, and this appears to have shaped the judgement of broadcasters.</p>
<p>Over the coming months, we are likely to see much debate about the impartiality of the BBC. This should be based on evidence rather than who has the loudest voice. We need more independent research and less speculation. But the question raised by the election campaign is fairly clear: do our partisan press have too much influence on our broadcast news? The answer, at the moment, would appear to be “yes”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Lewis has, in th past, received funding from UK Research Councils (AHRC, ESRC), the EU, the BBC Trust, the BBC, Channel 4 and the UK government to conduct independent research. </span></em></p>We keep hearing from the newspapers that the BBC has a pro-Labour bias. But take a look at their record.Justin Lewis, Professor of Communication, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/317592014-09-16T15:06:47Z2014-09-16T15:06:47ZMedia bias and the Scottish referendum: BBC gets the blame as usual<p>As voting day looms for the Scottish referendum to determine independence, accusations of media bias by the BBC in favour of the union are coming thick and fast.</p>
<p>Within the space of a few days, Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland, accused Newsnight’s political editor <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11097713/Alex-Salmond-in-second-BBC-bias-row.html">Allegra Stratton</a> of being on the side of the Better Together campaign, and Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, of “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/15/alex-salmond-bbc-protest-nick-robinson">heckling</a>” him by demanding an answer to his questions at a press conference.</p>
<p>Salmond’s latest accusations started when it emerged that the government had apparently <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11089702/Alex-Salmond-goes-to-war-with-BBC-over-RBS-leak.html">briefed Robinson early</a> about the Royal Bank of Scotland’s plan to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29185319">move its headquarters to England</a> in the event of a Yes vote.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/is-the-bbcs-coverage-biased-yes-absolutely-dont-get-me-wrong-i-like-these-f.25322002">interview in the Sunday Herald</a>, Salmond said of the BBC: “I like these folk, but they don’t realise they’re biased. It is the unconscious bias which is the most extraordinary thing of all.” He added: “I’m not really laying this charge at BBC Scotland. I just think the metropolitan BBC has found this whole thing extraordinarily difficult, to separate from their own view of the world from their view of reporting Scotland.”</p>
<p>The upshot was that on September 14, campaigners for independence launched a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-29196912">demonstration outside BBC headquarters in Glasgow</a> to protest the alleged bias in its coverage. </p>
<p>This is hardly the first time independence campaign supporters have accused the BBC of bias – after UKIP’s David Coburn won his party’s first ever Scottish seat in the European Parliament, Salmond complained that the BBC had “<a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/david-torrance-ukip-catch-snp-by-surprise-1-3422484">beamed UKIP into Scottish homes</a>” with its coverage.</p>
<h2>Just the messenger?</h2>
<p>These incidents are not necessarily indicative of a deep, systemic institutional bias; after all, if handed Robinson’s RBS scoop, no sensible journalist would choose to suppress it. But the story easily chimes with the notion that the BBC is part of a politicised and manipulative establishment, machinating with the banks and the treasury to influence the vote in the union’s favour. </p>
<p>Doubtless some machination was afoot – the Treasury is a major shareholder in RBS and is not neutral in the independence debate – but the BBC’s Robinson was merely the messenger.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a recent systematic content analysis of the BBC’s flagship radio news and current affairs programme Good Morning Scotland, <a href="http://issuu.com/creative_futur/docs/robertson2014goodmorningscotland/1">conducted by Professor John Robertson</a> of the University of West Scotland, claimed to detect a pro-union bias in the programme’s coverage. </p>
<p>Robertson, who favours independence, conducted his study of the programme’s coverage throughout April 2014, and concluded that while it was “balanced in crude numerical terms,” in every other respect, it was unfair to the Yes campaign and favoured the No side.</p>
<h2>From all sides</h2>
<p>Accusations of political bias at the BBC have a long history. The BBC’s own written archives reveal that from its very earliest days, politicians have been complaining of political bias. </p>
<p>Throughout its history, Conservatives and the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2641184/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-BBC-bias-rise-protest-votes.html">conservative press</a> have regularly complained of left-wing bias; although complaints from the left of unbalanced coverage have been less prominent, surveys conducted by the Independent Television Commission (now subsumed by OFCOM) from 1975-1995 consistently found that the BBC was <a href="http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/p.ayton/Intermedia2001.PDF">seen as biased to the right</a> by significantly more than saw it as biased to the left.</p>
<p><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Attitudes_to_television_in_1989.html?id=EWkoAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Surveys over the years</a> have also shown that voters’ own political affiliations predict their tendency to see the BBC as biased, and specifically, as biased against their view.</p>
<p>Pressure on the BBC has always been particularly high at times of national political crisis. Attacks on its impartiality from conservatives were made during the Suez crisis in 1956, in 1982 during the <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YFu1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&lpg=PT113&dq=%22Stateless+Persons+Broadcasting+Corporation%22&source=bl&ots=pwkiflEYYs&sig=XgQih4AF4Z0vAOYFz7sYRQJr4xM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZzcYVImdJ-mw7AbilICgDA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Stateless%20Persons%20Broadcasting%20Corporation%22&f=false">Falklands war</a>, and in 1986, when the US was granted use of British air bases to mount <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/resources/bbcandgov/pdf/libya.pdf">bombing raids on Libya</a>. Other challenges were made to the corporation (and to other broadcasters) over news and current affairs programmes about <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8328247.stm">Northern Ireland</a>, the <a href="http://jou.sagepub.com/content/9/2/123.full.pdf">Iraq War</a> and the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/aug/04/bbc.balkans">Balkans War</a>.</p>
<p>More recently, <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/breadth_opinion/content_analysis.pdf">research conducted by Cardiff University</a> and funded by the BBC Trust examined the impartiality of BBC reporting in areas such as regional news, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Arab Spring, business and science. </p>
<p>This research examined the range of topics and sources featured in BBC broadcast news from both 2007 and 2012 compared to other broadcasters, and also looked at the BBC’s online and broadcast reporting of immigration, the EU and religion. Contrary to expectations of bias made by BBC accusers, <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-bbc-17028">the study found</a> that the BBC tends to reproduce “a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda”.</p>
<h2>No view from nowhere</h2>
<p>Disparities in perceptions of BBC bias fit with psychological research showing that viewers usually register news stories in an incomplete and highly selective fashion, <a href="http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/12/2/231.short">strongly influenced by their prevailing attitudes</a>: different people may view the same broadcasts in very different ways.</p>
<p>Such findings suggest viewer and listener perceptions of bias can be rather self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Plainly, subjective perceptions of bias do not prove that the programmes are biased, but nonetheless, even perceived bias is a serious problem for any news organisation (particularly the BBC) that claims to be authoritative and impartial. </p>
<p>And yet, a little-reported finding from Professor Robertson’s study of the BBC’s supposed pro-Union bias was that the number of statements favourable to the Yes campaign (736) significantly outnumbered those favourable to the No campaign (622). There may, of course, be a bias in the reporting of bias.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As voting day looms for the Scottish referendum to determine independence, accusations of media bias by the BBC in favour of the union are coming thick and fast. Within the space of a few days, Alex Salmond…Howard Tumber, Professor of Journalism and Communication, City, University of LondonPeter Ayton, Associate Dean of Research & Deputy Dean, Social Sciences, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/264012014-05-09T12:04:46Z2014-05-09T12:04:46ZThe controversial business of researching BBC impartiality<p>Whoever takes over from Lord Patten as the new head of the BBC Trust has a tough job ahead – there’s the Scottish referendum and the general election, both potential minefields for a public broadcaster – with, all the while, thoughts of renegotiating the BBC’s royal charter and licence fee, which is likely to be political dynamite.</p>
<p>Quite how much of a minefield the politics surrounding the BBC are was clearly demonstrated when an <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-bbc-17028">impartiality review</a> conducted by a team of Cardiff University researchers was criticised in a recent media report. One part of the review examined the corporation’s <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/breadth_opinion/content_analysis.pdf">online and broadcast news coverage</a>, focusing particularly on reporting of three highly charged issues: immigration, religion and the EU. A second part of the review compared the BBC’s breadth of opinion with that of other broadcasters.</p>
<p>Our research focusing on the BBC’s coverage of the three issues examined some of the most influential mass audience bulletins including News at Ten, Breakfast News, Newsnight, the Today programme, Newsbeat, 5 Live Breakfast and Your Call. This was an extensive study which examined a month’s coverage in both 2007 and 2012 producing a dataset of in excess of 250 hours of news. The results of the study indicated that Westminster sources tended to dominate coverage and their prevalence actually rose from 49.4% of all source appearances in 2007, to 54.8% in 2012. In reporting of the EU, the dominance was even more pronounced with party-political sources accounting for 65% of source appearances in 2007 and 79.2% in 2012. </p>
<p>One consequence of this was that reporting of the key EU stories tended to be refracted through the prism of political infighting between Labour and the Conservatives, or within the Conservative Party itself. It also meant that the EU tended to be narrowly framed as a threat to British interests. We found that Eurosceptic views were regularly featured, while those arguing for the benefits of EU membership were less prominent. We also noted that there was an imbalance in the representation of Conservative and Labour voices, with Tory MPs getting significantly more airtime.</p>
<h2>The Newswatch report</h2>
<p>Initially the report and subsequent commentaries generated a minor media ripple, mostly positive. However a recent <a href="http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/impartialityatthebbc.pdf">report</a> compiled by Newswatch for the right of centre thinktank Civitas launched <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/medianews/article4072226.ece">an attack</a> on both our professional integrity and the robustness of our research methods. The Civitas report is so full of inaccuracies, as well as basic misunderstandings of the research process, that we feel compelled to respond. </p>
<p>A central problem with the Civitas report is a basic misunderstanding of what academic research involves. On the second page of their report the authors write:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The clean bill of health on the EU component of the report was delivered despite repeated warnings from many quarters, including the BBC’s own former director-general, Mark Thompson, as well as political editor Nick Robinson, that the corporation’s EU coverage was biased against so-called right-wing opinion. These followed earlier revelations from former senior BBC presenters and editors such as Peter Sissons, Rod Liddle and Robin Aitken, who said the same thing in different ways.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not the job of academics to give broadcasters “a clean bill of health”. We are not an accreditation body for the BBC and such statements do not appear in our report. And the research is critical of BBC coverage in a number of areas, which makes this characterisation particularly puzzling. The suggestion that as independent researchers we should consider the opinions of an arbitrarily selected group of BBC staff when conducting our research is highly irregular. Our findings are driven by the data rather than by anecdotal opinion.</p>
<p>The report also made a direct and very serious attack on our independence and integrity:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Newswatch has investigated the links between the Cardiff department and the BBC. There are two very strong connections which are particularly noteworthy. Richard Tait, a former BBC editor, who was subsequently appointed a BBC governor and trustee (2004-10) is now a Cardiff professor of journalism. Richard Sambrook, who was BBC Head of News until 2008 (and hence during one of the periods covered by the research) is the director of the Cardiff Centre of Journalism Media and Cultural Studies, and is a professor of journalism. The research project was commissioned by the trustees directly from Professor Sambrook. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The report was not “commissioned by the trustees directly from Professor Sambrook”, it was secured via a competitive tendering process in which a number of university departments and independent research consultancies bid for the research. This is standard practice for these kinds of projects. Professor Sambrook was head of BBC UK News until 2004 and then head of BBC Global (World Service) News until 2010. This means that he was not involved in the domestic news service during the periods of the research. And Professor Tait had nothing to do with the trust’s decision to review impartiality or to commission the research. He left the BBC Trust in 2010 and the trust’s decision was taken in 2012. </p>
<p>Newswatch argues that the above links “seriously bring into question” the independence of our research and “raise(s) questions about whether those from the Cardiff School of Journalism understand the need for rigour in the broadcast research process”. There are two obvious points to be made about these arguments. Firstly, if research can be dismissed on the basis that the authors have some links to a particular organisation or viewpoint then we would have to dismiss everything that the report’s authors write since, judging by their <a href="http://news-watch.co.uk/">website</a>, they write little else but polemical articles about BBC coverage of the EU. </p>
<p>Secondly, our school is recognised as a world-renowned centre for journalism research and training. Without recruiting former journalists, editors and executives from our leading broadcaster to staff our broadcast journalism and cutting-edge computational journalism programmes we could not possibly compete with other institutions offering degrees in journalism.</p>
<h2>Methodological shortcomings?</h2>
<p>The report also makes inaccurate statements about our methodology. It alleges that rather than generate a new sample, we recycled old research from 2007. The origin of this completely inaccurate claim is hard to fathom. As the report makes very clear, the sample used was completely original and unrelated to the selection of programmes analysed for the 2007 report. The report’s authors’ failure to understand what is a conventional content analysis approach led them to further spurious challenges. For instance the fact that we only included the 7am to 8:30am portion of weekday Today broadcasts was said to have introduced “constant errors” into our methodology:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Two-way discussions between presenters and correspondents, an essential component of Today, would have been seriously under-emphasised as at least six of these segments are broadcast during the first hour of Today on weekday mornings, whereas the rest of the programme is more likely to carry interviews with invited guests … And the religious affairs slot ‘Thought for the Day’ would have achieved more than twice its actual statistical prominence, because it is regularly positioned at the same time each morning, and would have been captured in all monitored programmes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This part of the Today programme was purposefully sampled both because it reaches the widest audience and because we wanted to capture these elements. Our remit was to assess the range of voices in broadcasting, so selecting the part of the show where there would be a preponderance of interviews rather than two-ways was more germane to the research brief. One of our three areas of study was religion, so it was logical for us to capture the part of the programme with Thought for the Day. We narrowed the sample to weekdays because the audience is much larger on weekdays and the show exerts a greater agenda-setting influence on the rest of the print and broadcast media.</p>
<p>The report also criticised our sample size which according to the authors was much smaller than their 6,000 hour Newswatch sample. We were also alleged to have discarded 30% of our EU data, a claim that is simply inaccurate. As a small part of our research, we carried out a secondary analysis on a subset of our data. The report then makes another erroneous attack on our sampling methodology, saying that we excluded: “any items that it did not consider to be specifically about the UK’s relationship with the European Union, including reports on EU leaders, the euro crisis or other countries’ relations with the EU”. </p>
<p>However the decision to focus on the UK’s relationship with the EU was the brief that was agreed with the BBC. </p>
<p>The very serious allegation that we misrepresented our dataset is also made. It is claimed that we “cherry-picked” data from the report to erroneously argue that Conservative MPs received more airtime in BBC coverage:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But Professor Lewis was selective: he cherry-picked the most dramatic figures – the 3:1 and 4:1 statistics he quotes relate only to the most senior party figures in the survey sample and he excluded 95 MPs from his interpretation of the Cardiff 2012.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The implication here is that if the 95 MPs had been included a different picture would emerge of the balance between Conservative and Labour representatives. However the table on page 16 of our report, which includes the 95 MPs, clearly shows this is not the case:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47960/original/h3xgqjrh-1399448871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">BBC report: Political affiliation of sources, by year</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/breadth_opinion/content_analysis.pdf">Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies </a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately the research community and wider public can make up their own mind about whose word to take on this matter, although we would urge people to read our <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/breadth_opinion/content_analysis.pdf">full report</a> which, given the sheer number of inaccuracies contained in their attack upon it, it is not at all clear that Newswatch has done.</p>
<p>A more comprehensive response to the Newswatch report is available <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/jomecs-reply-to-the-newswatch-report-2/">here</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26401/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Berry has received funding from the BBC Trust to carry out research for its breadth of opinion impartiality review.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karin Wahl-Jorgensen has received funding from the BBC Trust to carry out research for its breadth of opinion impartiality review.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sambrook is a former Director of Global News at the BBC. He received funding from the BBC Trust to carry out research for its breadth of opinion impartiality review.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Lewis, Kerry Moore, and Richard Tait do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whoever takes over from Lord Patten as the new head of the BBC Trust has a tough job ahead – there’s the Scottish referendum and the general election, both potential minefields for a public broadcaster…Mike Berry, Lecturer, Cardiff UniversityJustin Lewis, Professor of Communication, Cardiff UniversityKarin Wahl-Jorgensen, Professor; Director of Research Development and Environment, School of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityKerry Moore, Lecturer of journalism, media and cultural studies, Cardiff UniversityRichard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityRichard Tait, Professor of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.