newspapers and 7 secondsnewspapers

Also on the subject of BBC One's News at Six, the less 'doom-mongering' economic news today got all of 7 seconds:

The markets have been largely stable today - the pounds and the FTSE 100 regaining some ground after two days of big losses. 

And that was that.

On the BBC's use of the word "stable", please see the exchange here.

newspapers and "I think maybe now it was the wrong decision"newspapers

BBC One's News at Six may not have mentioned President Obama's upbeat remarks about post-Brexit Britain but it did include a piece about the Queen visiting Northern Ireland - HM's first official engagement since the Leave vote from well over 17 million of her loyal subjects. 

As soon as I heard it announced I braced myself. 'What doom-mongering angle will the BBC go for now?', I thought, expecting the worst (given much of the rest of the BBC's post-referendum reporting).

'BBC Ireland correspondent' Chris Buckler, adopting a glum tone of voice throughout, was quick to talk about how un-United the Queen's Kingdom is now in the wake of the referendum. The vote, he said, has "led to uncertainty for the whole UK",

But, he continued, even some Unionists who supported "waving goodbye to Europe" are now feeling full of "worry".

[Of course, those Unionist probably supported 'waving goodbye to the EU' rather than 'Europe', but that's BBC reporting for you at the moment!] 

We heard from one such worried Unionist (worrying about the break-up of the UK), and then from a Unionist Leave voter, challenged by Chris Buckler in the following fashion:

Chris Buckler: But you voted Leave, so you're responsible for that!

Leave voter: Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I voted Leave. I know I voted Leave, Yes. I know, I know, I know. I think maybe now it was the wrong decision.

The "good-natured meeting" between the Queen and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein was said to show "how much things have changed" over the course of the Queen's reign, Chris continued, before saying, "But, politically, these are turbulent times", Northern Ireland "as a whole" voted Remain. 

And then it was onto what Sinn Fein and nationalists want - to stay in the EU and to unite Ireland. Here both 'vox pops' were of the same (pro-EU, pro-united Ireland) frame of mind. 

I've seen quite a lot of Chris Buckler in recent days. (He even featured in an image I used to 'show' how gloomy BBC reporters were looking on Friday morning). I believed I've summarised his report fairly. Was this 'impartial' reporting from him?

It certainly didn't seem like it to me.

And this piece of anti-Brexit gloom-mongering was projected to a wide audience on BBC One's widely-watched main evening news bulletin.

What is getting into the BBC at the moment?

newspapers and From hero to zero?newspapers

Given how extensively the BBC covered President Obama's anti-Brexit 'back of the queue' intervention during the EU referendum and how often their reporters stressed at the time that what the President said is important ('whether you agree with it or not'), you might have thought that the BBC would have been just as motivated (being 'impartial') to prominently report the President's latest comments re Britain's Brexit vote - especially as they are so striking, and so in contradiction to what he said a few months back.

Barack Obama told NPR that there's no need for "hysteria" about Brexit, that those in charge of the EU went too far too fast, and that if Britain ends up something like Norway - a successful, Atlanticist, non-EU country - then that's absolutely fine by him and the U.S. 

Whatever you think of Mr. Obama (or about Brexit), that's a calm, measured, positive take on Brexit. 

As Alan at Biased BBC notes, the BBC News website isn't making much of it - to put it mildly. Where once the words of President Obama were all-important, "now he is sidelined to a mere minute or so video story on the sidebar."

I watched the BBC One News at Six. There was no mention whatsoever of Mr. Obama's comments. 

Why haven't the BBC made much of this? Is the BBC so wound up in grief about the outcome of the referendum that it either can't bring itself to even 'notice' less alone report President Obama's dramatic yet reassuring words? 

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Of course, it's entirely possible - given how vast the BBC's output is - that some parts of the BBC might have gone mad out it. That's where you come in (if you don't mind). Have you heard counter-examples? 

Have, say, PM or The World at One or the BBC World Service or Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 or Radio 5 Live given President Obama's comments a lot of attention? 

Will tonight's Newsnight make a lot of them?

If you anything about the BBC giving this a decent amount of attention (or any attention), please let me know - because the way the BBC is behaving at the moment I really wouldn't be surprised if much of the rest of the BBC was ignoring it/massively downplaying it too.

newspapers and Statsnewspapers

Here are various statistical takes on the BBC's coverage of the EU referendum, starting with some updates on Newsnight and BBC One's News at Six...

BBC TWO Newsnight Interviewees

The difficult question this week was whether to include Thursday and Friday's interviews in the wake of the murder of Jo Cox. As both discussions spent time discussing how the murder relates (or doesn't relate) to the EU referendum debate (with some of the guests making points against one side or the other), it was obviously necessary to include them.

Here's the latest list:

13/6

Joint interview: Robert Macinnes, building business owner (LEAVE); Mary Ann MacIver, tourism business owner (REMAIN)

Interview: John Curtice, polling expert (NEUTRAL)

Joint interview: John Boyle, businessman (LEAVE); Alasdair Allan, SNP (REMAIN); Denise Mina, author and playwright (REMAIN)

14/6 

Interview: Hillary Benn, Labour (REMAIN)

Interview: Anna Turley. Labour (REMAIN)

Joint interview: Anna Turley, Labour (REMAIN); Frank Harrison, former steel worker (LEAVE)

15/6

Interview: Steve Hilton, former Conservative strategist (LEAVE)

16/6

Joint interview: Jonathan Freedland, Guardian (REMAIN); Anne McElvoy, Economist (REMAIN); Polly Billington, Labour (REMAIN)

17/6

Joint interview: Douglas Murray, Henry Jackson Society (LEAVE); Daniel Finkelstein, Times (REMAIN); Jo Berry, Building Bridges for Peace (UNKNOWN)

By my reckoning that changes our running total, which was: 

72 Pro-Remain

50 Pro-Leave

14 Questionable/Undecided  

to...

81 Pro-Remain

55 Pro-Leave

16 Questionable/Undecided 

As for the sub-trend looking at who gets most of all of the solo appearances (i.e. not in joint interviews), well, we left that at: 

Remain - 29

Leave - 15

I now make that:

Remain - 31
Leave - 16

...with Remain still approaching double the number of one-person interviews that Leave has been invited to attend since the beginning of the year.

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BBC One News at Six lead angles

As for BBC One's News at Six (and its weekend equivalents), we last left our monitoring of its choice of EU referendum-related angle - as ever defined as "which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin" - with the following running total:

21 for Remain

7 for Leave

Here's the latest batch:

.

12/6  David Cameron's latest warning on the risks of leaving the EU: the value of our pensions could be at risk.

13/6  Labour heavyweights pitch into the referendum debate. Gordon Brown makes the case for staying in a bid to get the Labour vote out.

14/6  Labour warns the NHS is a risk if the UK leaves the European Union but admits more needs to be done to control immigration.

15/6  65 Tory MPs turn on George Osborne after he says leaving the EU would mean an emergency Budget and higher taxes. Making waves. Leave MPs say they would vote him down. The Chancellor argues he'd have no choice.

16/6  The Bank of England has issued a new warning about the economic risks in the UK and globally if Britain votes to leave the European Union. The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee said the referendum was the largest immediate risk facing global financial markets. It warned that businesses and consumers were putting off major economic decisions and said the uncertainty was effecting the stability of the pound.

17/6 (no coverage)

18/6  Official campaigning over next week's referendum remains suspended following the murder of the MP Jo Cox. Today the International Monetary Fund, delivering its annual report on the UK economy, warned it could shrink by 5% in the event of the UK leaving the EU. The warnings have been dismissed by those who support leaving.

19/6 Campaigning resumes in the EU referendum with both sides strongly disagreeing about what the vote means for the economy and immigration. In campaigners maintain a Brexit would hit people's pockets, but Vote Leave say the UK can deal with whatever the world throw at us.

The one on the 15/6 strikes me as slightly open to question, but George Osborne's pro-Remain angle was the main angle. The rest seem pretty straightforward. All of them put Remain angles first. That, therefore, raises our running total to: 

28 for Remain
7 for Leave

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BBC ONE Question Time Panels

And now for a new one, echoing the conscientious work of Wronged at Biased-BBC but beginning instead with the edition after David Cameron named the date for the EU referendum back in February. 

The results are striking - and better for the BBC than the above: 

** CAMERON DECLARES DATE FOR REFERENDUM (20/2) **

25/2 - 2 Remain, 3 Leave

3/3 - 2 Remain, 2 Leave, 1 undecided 

10/3 - 5 Remain, 1 Leave 

17/3 - 3 Remain, 2 Leave

7/4 - 2 Remain, 3 Leave

14/4 - 2 Remain, 3 Leave

Sub total: 16 Remain, 14 Leave, 1 undecided

** BBC REFERENDUM IMPARTIALITY GUIDELINES COME INTO FORCE (15/4) **

21/4 -2 Remain, 3 Leave

28/4 - 3 Remain, 2 Leave

5/5 - 2 Remain, 2 Leave, 1 undecided 

12/5 - 3 Remain, 2 Leave

19/5 - 3 Remain, 1 Leave, 1 undecided

26/5 - 2 Remain, 3 Leave

2/6 - 3 Remain, 2 Leave

9/6 - 2 Remain, 3 Leave

16/6 - 3 Remain, 3 Leave (cancelled at the last minute, due to the murder of Jo Cox)

Sub total: 23 Remain, 21 Leave, 2 undecided

Final total: 39 Remain, 35 Leave, 3 undecided

Panels biased towards Remain - 6

Panels biased towards Leave - 6

Balanced panels -  3

newspapers and On Orlandonewspapers

The other horror this past week (happening while I was too busy) was the appalling Islamist terrorist attack on gay people in Orlando.

That was another atrocity which it didn't feel remotely right to post about at the time - despite the rest of the world seeming to rush in regardless.

Bloggers are too often guilty of rushing in, abruptly judging and then fulminating furiously about things. It's a regrettable tendency, and - despite trying my best - I've not been entirely innocent of it myself over the years. (Sue, in contrast, has been entirely innocent of it).

And when it comes to blogging about BBC bias, the even-more-regrettable tendency is to end up, in the wake of every major atrocity, sounding as if we think the guiltiest party of all is the BBC and then, 'as a result', making feverish claims about the BBC's utter wickedness.....

.....such as one (genuine and confident) prediction I saw from a seasoned anti-BBC, anti-Islam blogger firmly asserting that the BBC would "tell us" that the victims, being gay, "deserved it, {as} they so offended Muslim sensibilities".....

.....thus, I fear, risking the entirely reasonable charge that 'we've' completely lost any sense of perspective.

Looking back as coolly as possible, I'd say that the BBC's initial coverage - as the story broke - was 'fair enough' (or at least the little bit I saw of it).

I monitored it at the time and found that - though the corporation wasn't first off the mark - the BBC was quite quick to report that the police suspected the killer of having "leanings" towards Islamic terrorism.

And, despite the subsequently pulling by the BBC of the 'the BBC has learned' card (after many other internet outlets had pipped them to the post by around half an hour), the BBC was also fairly quick to report the killer's (Muslim) name.

Plus, as I also recorded at the time, that night's main BBC One evening news bulletin) did repeatedly report the killer's possible links to Islamic groups, including Islamic State, and mentioned the killer's Afghan heritage.

And when the BBC reporter, inevitably, brought in Donald Trump at least she did it with a modicum of 'balance':

And as people call for calm after this devastating attack we have heard from Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, who said that this all proves that he was right about Islamic terrorism. Now, some people say that Mr. Trump is just stoking fear and playing politics at a tense time in America; others say that he has a point and that more needs to be done to contain the terror threat on home soil.

The next morning's Today, however, did largely hunker down onto 'safe' BBC issues such as gun control (a subject I've not heard dwelt on in the BBC's coverage of the murder of Jo Cox) - though, that said, Marco Rubio did appear on the programme to raise 'uncomfortable' questions about the Muslim angle (the programme's one concession to that angle).

I hadn't (and haven't) the time to monitor anywhere near enough of it to judge, so the question stands: Was the BBC biased in its coverage of the Orlando massacre of gay people by a Muslim fanatic?

I'm willing to stand corrected.

newspapers and Update on BBC One's News at Six newspapers

And here's an update on our monitoring of BBC One's News at Six and its weekend equivalents' choice of EU referendum-related angle - as ever defined as "which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin".

We left it with a startling:

21 for Remain

7 for Leave

Here's how things have gone since that last post:


31/5 Tempers fray about the EU referemdum. Meanwhile campaigners to Leave call for VAT on energy bills to be scrapped

1/6 Take back our immigration policy by exiting the EU, say Leave campaigners. 

2/6 The German chancellor Angela Merkel intervenes in the EU referendum debate suggesting the UK is unlikely to get a good deal if it leaves. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn says the case for staying in the EU and rejects criticism that Labour isn't getting its Remain message across.

3/6 He's accused of scaremongering but the boss of one of the world's biggest banks says jobs could go if the UK leaves the EU.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive JP Morgan: After a Brexit, we cannot do it all here.  And we will have to start playing for that. I don't know if mean a thousand jobs, 2000 jobs. It could mean as many as 4000.

5/6 A former prime minister launches a scathing attack on the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. Sir John Major, who wants Britain to stay in the EU, says the claims being made by Leave campaigners are deceitful.
Sir John Major: What they have said about leaving is fundamentally dishonest and it's dishonest about the cost of Europe.

6/6 Just over a day to register to vote in the referendum. Millions haven't and opinions are divided.
Vox pop 1: I'm going to vote Stay which is probably what you don't want to hear.
Vox pop 2: Years ago we used to be Out and we managed fine.

7/6 The Archbishop of Canterbury attacks Nigel Farage . He says some comments on immigration legitimize racism.

8/6 The EU referendum. The voters registration deadline is extended after the website crashes.

9/6 A warning from two former prime ministers: leaving the EU could tear apart the UK and threaten stability in Northern Ireland. Sir John Major and Tony Blair, speaking in Londonderry, from different parties but one message today.

10/6 Labour insiders tell the BBC increasing numbers of their supporters want to leave the EU.

11/6 Jeremy Corbyn says he's working very hard to put the case to Labour voters for remaining in a reformed European Union.


Frankly, suddenly things have got slightly complicated. It's not beyond dispute on some occasions here (unlike previously) to decisively assign some of these to one side of the EU referendum campaign to the other. For example, though citing Remain concerns, is the 10/6 one helpful or unhelpful to Remain? (It's so double-sided I can't assign it to either side). And can we give the 6/6 one to Remain just because the pro-Remain vox pop came first? (No, in my opinion). And is Jeremy Corbyn saying something not very specific helpful to Leave or Remain. (I'll assign that to pro-Remain as it's a sort-of pro-Remain statement from someone who's supposed to be in the Remain camp).

Still, by my reckoning that's: 2 more for Leave and 6 more for Remain, changing the ongoing total to:

27 for Remain

9 for Leave 

...which, as you might have spotted for yourselves, is still an exact 3:1 imbalance in favour of Remain (as it was last time).

Please check these figures out for yourselves though. If you disagree, please point out why below.

newspapers and Au revoir newspapers

For my final post before I officially begin my two-week holiday in Raqqa, here's a Bank Holiday Monday smorgasbord...

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Today

I was going to begin it with John Humphrys's interview with Jackie Walker, but Sue and Sarah AB have absolutely nailed it already. 

"Bungled" is le mot juste. My original thoughts were to outline JH's interviewing here with phrases like "gumming" and "whacking her with a moth-eaten feather duster" but "bungled" is a much more precise way of putting it.

JH was simultaneously woefully under-prepared and distressingly OTT. She walked all over him - much to the delight of her fans on Twitter (the usual crowd).

Now Ms. Walker, without refusing to apologise for her false and obnoxious comments (indeed by openly revelling in them), is now back in the Corbynista fold. In contrast, suspended Labour MP Naz Shah, who has apologised and apologised and apologised (and won a good deal of respect from most quarters for so doing), is still suspended.

Go figure!

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Start the Week

This morning's Start the Week from the Hay Festival had me completely hooked. 

Its theme (perfect for a sunny bank holiday morning) was 'Spooks, war and genocide', and I found myself thinking rather more deeply about the issues raised than I might normally do. 

Now, I could share some of those new, deep thoughts with you (and say how fascinating former British soldier Harry Parker's novel sounds) but, instead, I'll just narrow things down to the programme's main point of disagreement: the question of how to get the balance right between the needs of national security and human rights (an issue I've never quite managed to satisfactorily resolve inside my own muddled head). 

The two poles of this vital argument were represented by Michael Hayden, the former director of the US National Security Agency who George W. Bush made Director of National Intelligence and then director of the CIA, and Philippe Sands, the  human rights lawyer who wants to see Mr. Bush tried. They engaged with each other thoughtfully and respectfully, both acknowledging the complexity of the issues involved. And both of them came across well. 

Disappointingly, presenter Tom Sutcliffe - representing the BBC here - marred things a bit by getting excessively hot-under-the-collar with Mr. Hayden on a couple of occasions over the Bush administration's use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. If Mr. Sands could remain calm and friendly towards the highly thoughtful Mr, Hayden, then surely Tom ought to have tried to keep his cool too. Plus he stopped Mr. Hayden in his tracks as soon as he began suggesting that President Obama was not only a continuation but, in some ways, an amplification of President Bush on some key national security issues. 

Much as I like Tom Sutcliffe (especially for Round Britain Quiz), I have to say that his own biases were showing through there. He should have kept calm and trusted his listeners. We're quite capable of making our own minds up (or at least trying to), thank you, without having some BBC/Guardian voice vigorously 'virtue signalling' at us.

I haven't so far mentioned that journalist Janine di Giovanni was also a guest on Start the Week there, did I? Apologies. A case of #everydaysexism probably.

Speaking of which...

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Woman's Hour


Also surprisingly fascinating was today's Woman's Hour. Yes, the subject was extremely niche - high-profile media types worrying about (women journalists) getting on (or not getting on) in the media - but it was also curiously thought-provoking, and it got better as it went on. 

Lots more deep thoughts flowed in my head as a result which, again, I won't bother you with. So what will I do instead? Well, I'll simply transcribe the start of the bit about the (in)famous Katie Hopkins, starring 'token male in the lionesses' den' Nick Ferrari from LBC (who you'll be relieved to hear survived the ordeal unscathed). It's quite revealing, I think, about the BBC mindset:

Emma Barnett (Woman's Hour presenter): The digital landscape is changed hopefully. It has also meant that, commercially...you mentioned commercial earlier, Camilla - what sells, what doesn't...we may have got to position where people are more extreme to get hits. So let me bring in somebody who, if you're talking about female polemicists in the modern day: Katie Hopkins. I want to understand. Does she fit in as a polemicist, someone like that? Or is she part of the kind-of internet culture provocateur? Nick, I'll ask you. What would you make of somebody like Katie Hopkins? Is she evening up the score for female polemicists? 

Nick Ferrari: I don't know whether she's evening out the score but obviously she's got a role to play. Yes, she's a voice. She's a voice who has a certain audience. It has a certain resonance. There are people out there who follow her. It might be totally opposite as I see heads shaking just about all around me at this table... 

Emma Barnett: A lot of heads shaking on this programme! 

Nick Ferrari: There's a lot of...they're even shaking in the control room. I've lost the whole...I've lost everybody...I've lost the whole of the BBC on this one!! 

Emma Barnett: Welcome to Woman's Hour, Nick Ferrari!

Indeed, Emma! 

(It was Nick's first appearance). 

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The World at One

For today's The World at One it was back to the Hay Festival. The main news story of the day, however, was the latest batch of Albanian economic migrants getting rescued in the English Channel. 

Interestingly, from yesterday's BBC One news bulletins onwards, the BBC hasn't hidden the fact that these escapees from Calais are Albanians. They haven't exactly gone overboard, however, in stressing the 'economic migrant' point and what that suggests: that there are obviously a lot of economic migrants from (non-war-torn) Albania (or now-peaceful Kosovo) in the camps at Calais. 

Why haven't we heard about them before? And, given that it eventually was revealed that Albanians (and others from the Balkans) also made up a surprisingly large number of those trying to get into Germany last summer, why haven't we heard much (if any) discussion on the BBC as to why that's the case? Just why are so many of these people from the Balkans trying to get here? (They aren't Syrian refugees. They aren't unaccompanied children.) It's a very under-reported (almost unreported) story, isn't it? 

Richard Galpin's report featured two interviewees: very briefly UKIP's Henry Bolton, ("UKIP's candidate to be Police and Crime Commissioner in Kent - a job he didn't get", as Richard introduced him") and, at much greater length, Damian Green PM ("former Home Office minister"). Mr. Green described the people crossing the channel as "refugees" - and wasn't picked up on that. 

We also got the reflections of Salman Rushdie on the subject. (Salman was with Martha Kearney at the Hay Festival.) He waxed literary and somewhat nebulous on matters political. He extolled the wonderful things about immigration for the UK but then conceded that there's probably been too much, too quick recently. That's worrying for him not so much in its own right but more because it's leading to the rise of the far-right across Europe. 

He did tell us an interesting story though about his final abandonment of his Muslim faith as a 14-year-old though. His coup-de-grace was to eat a ham sandwich. (By coincidence, I'd just eaten a ham sandwich before listening to him this lunchtime). 

The closing discussion between a historian, a neuroscientist and a novelist, focused to a surprising extent on the BBC's favourite subject: Mr. Donald Trump. (Boo!)

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Top Gear


How you doin'? 

Well, thanks for asking but I've nothing much to say about Top Gear (though, in true blogger style, that isn't going to stop me). 

I didn't watch it but I've read lots about its disappointing ratings, its largely unenthusiastic critical reviews and its less-than-wildly-enthusiastic public response  - with the exception of Matt LeBlanc, who everyone seems to have found likeable.

('So boring it barely exists': readers review the new Top Gear was the Guardian's less-than-Friendly headline.)

The BBC News website, as is its way, had the news of those ratings as one of the top five stories on its homepage earlier this afternoon. Oddly, they've now dropped it down to their Also in the news section! (O the embarrassment!) 

Despite not being entirely able to disguise the fact that Top Gear's return was something of a flop, the BBC article tried to be as Panglossian about it as it can be, casting that 4.4 million figure in the best possible light, quoting Chris Evans's tweets rather than all those negative tweets everyone else is citing, and describing those reviews as "mixed", #bbcbias.

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Marr


Catching up with yesterday's stuff, The Andrew Marr Show has received lots of comment as usual. I'm still recovering from Amanda Platell's semi-pornographic on-air flirting with Yanis 'Spock' Varoufakis - by far the most graphic flirting I've ever seen on the Marr show (even including all of Andrew's own sterling efforts while interviewing glamorous Hollywood actresses). I felt that the programme's producers missed a trick by not providing the paper review with a Barry White soundtrack.

As David P noted in the comments (after vomiting), Mr. Varoufakis was on fine form throughout. He may have been a complete flop as Greek finance minister, but he's great entertainment - and worrying 'right' about quite a lot of things (though I didn't buy his anti-Brexit point). He's what the Greek's might call 'a phenomenon'.

Doc Fox and Tony BLiar followed.

The Corbynistas on Twitter weren't at all happy at the good doc's appearance (some even blamed the 'Tory' BBC' for inviting him on, saying he's always on)...,but that was as nothing compared to how they reacted when the hated Tony came on. Liam was quickly forgotten, and all Hell broke loose.

Channelling the spirit of the blessed Boris, I'd said that was happened on Twitter at the point of the hated Mr. Blair's arrival was comparable to how Euripides's Bacchae reacted to King Pentheus after he banned their worship of the beloved (Jeremy Corbyn) Dionysus. They went into a wild frenzy and wanted to tear him apart. And Andy Marr went the way of Actaeon at the hands of these hermaphrodite maenads too, purely through association. (The world of 'BBC bias' gets madder and madder).

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The World This Weekend


My 'big thing' yesterday, if I'd had the time to post about it, was going to be Mark Mardell's latest EU referendum special on The World This Weekend. 

Our Mark had wangled another BBC jaunt (at our expense no doubt), this time to Berlin. He liked Berlin...which is nice.

There all-and-sundry sent us a postcard saying how much they want us to stay in the EU. They love us and wouldn't be too mean to us if we leave the EU but they so want us to stay and they will be mean enough to make us regret leaving.

All voices sang from the same Lutheran hymn sheet...except for the lady from what Mark called the "hard-right" AfD, who rather fancied seeing what would happen if we left.

'Will you punish the UK?' was Mark Mardell's question throughout.

His two studio guests, back in Blighty, were Sir Vince Cable and Gisela Stuart. That was fair enough. Gisela got a little less time than Sir Vince but Sir Vince was interrupted, while Gisela wasn't. Also fair enough.

I saw a detailed comment elsewhere, however, saying that Mark Mardell cut Gisela Stuart off, that there was hardly any time for Gisela, that unelected/kicked-out Sir Vince got an easy ride, that Mark Mardell ignored the main issue of the day "which was the immigration figures", and that there was "a long, biased report featuring only pro EU bigwigs and foreign students"...

...which reminded me of the danger I face, as a blogger, when it comes to the fraught question of confirmation bias.

That commenter spotted that Sir Vince got more time than Gisela but didn't recall that Sir Vince also got interrupted, unlike Gisela. He also didn't notice that Mark Mardell did raise those immigration figures during that interview (if only once). Nor did the commenter remember MM's interview with that striking AfD lady (despite remembering the pro-EU/pro-UK students who appeared for less than 30 seconds). And Gisela Stuart, if you listen back, didn't get cut off by Mark Mardell for reasons of bias. MM was clearly chafing at Sir Vince for time reasons in advance of his Berlin report and when Gisela begun replying to Sir Vince MM had already begun his link to the report. He immediately said he'd return to Gisela and Sir Vince later, which he did (and which is something else that commenter didn't remember).

This isn't a sneer at that commenter. It's a reminder and a possible mea culpa. We all hear what we hear. We only seem, however, to remember parts of what we hear on occasions. Something in us makes us forget the bits that don't confirm our point of view. And we also mishear things, perhaps for the same reason. We're all at risk of doing it. It's human nature. We probably all need to re-check what we've heard. Here endeth the lesson.

This feature struck me as being strikingly pro-EU-biased nonetheless. Please feel free to debunk me if you think I'm hardly any more reliable than the commenter above. I could be wrong.

I don't think I am though. This kind of thing has marked Mark Mardell's The World This Weekend for months.

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Farming Today


Talking about the BBC's EU referendum coverage, it would be wrong (and downright silly) not to acknowledge that certain BBC programmes really have been 'getting it about right'.

I've been fairly studiously monitoring Radio 4's Farming Today - one of the few BBC programmes the Sunday Telegraph's Christopher Booker thinks is beyond reproach - for some time.

And I agree with Christopher. I think Farming Today's EU referendum coverage has been beyond reproach.

Try Friday's edition, perhaps, for a taster.

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Countryfile


Countryfile on BBC One also did an EU referendum feature, courtesy of Tom Heap, this week.

Countryfile is a programme that matters. It has a big audience (bigger last night than the much-hyped Top Gear). Being Tom Heap, about whom we've written before, I expected heavy bias. I don't think I found it.

The structuring was very BBC. First came a section starring pro-Remain David Cameron, with two pro-Brexit voices as 'vox pops'. Then came a section starring pro-Leave Boris Johnson, with two pro-Remain voices as 'vox pops'.

I watched the Dave/Boris interviews closely. I spotted that Boris got more questioning from Tom than Dave and that Dave was photographed holding a lamb while Boris just stood in front of a stream, but I also note that people on Twitter then claimed that Tom - despite all that questioning - seemed to like Boris more. You see what you see. I sniffed hard and smelled a bit of pro-Remain bias. Others sniffed and found pro-Brexit bias. And all of us mainstream political types on Twitter, one way or the other, were utterly overwhelmed by the usual deluge of furious-sounding Corbynistas complaining that it was the 'Tory' BBC featuring nothing but Tories, making crude jokes about Mr. Cameron and pig farms, and wondering why Jeremy Corbyn wasn't appearing.

Complaints from all sides. And, maybe, here they have a point.

I was, however, being in holiday mood, mainly focusing on the lighter stuff. I was concentrating on Dave in his casual jeans, Boris in his traditional farmer's outfit and Anita Rani in her wetsuit - and on the stunning photography from the Countryfile crew of Snowdonia, especially the beautiful shots of Snowdon, Llanberis, the lake of Llyn Padam, ruined Dolbadarn Castle and the mountains guarding glorious Llanberis Pass. I think that's one of the most 'romantic' spots in the UK (only Morecambe Bay beats it for views) and Countryfile really did it proud.

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BBC News at Six

Talking of the BBC's EU referendum coverage...

Our latest stats regarding BBC One's News at Six coverage, specifically monitoring which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin now shows (not including Monday 30/5, which I've not watched yet), and following on from our last update, now read:

21 for Remain

7 for Leave

Two of the latest batch are, unusually, hard to call, so they haven't been included them the tally (either being neutral or too hard to decide upon). I'll list them among the others below, so please feel free (if you're more certain than I am) to allocate them to one side or the other:

22/5 Referendum battle lines are drawn over the Health Service and the chances of Turkey joining the EU. With controversy over what future migration levels might be David Cameron clashes with one of his own ministers on whether Britain could veto Turkish membership. The head of NHS England says the Health Service would be effected in a UK exit caused an economic slowdown. We'll be exploring the latest arguments from the two sides, with less than five weeks to go.

23/5 Voting to leave the EU would trigger a year-long recession. A bleak forecast from the Treasury. A warning from both David Cameron and George Osborne: at least half a million jobs could go

24/5 David Cameron: I think there's some very strong retail arguments about the cost of a holiday...
Newsreader: Now it's air fares on the line in the EU referendum debate. Claim and counter-claim. How do voters react?

25/5 A top economic group says quitting the EU could mean two extra years of austerity. Leave campaigners say it's propaganda.

26/5 Immigration takes centre-stage in the referendum debate as the annual figures show the numbers are up. The difference between those coming in and those leaving was over 300,000. More than half were from the EU.
Boris Johnson: That is pushing up our population growth. It's putting huge pressure on housing, on services such as the NHS and, of course, on school places and everything else.
Newsreader: We'll be getting the reaction from voters about these new figures.

27/5 Lurid and misleading. An influential group of MPs slams the claims being made by politicians on both sides of the EU referendum debate. The Treasury Select Committee says the public is rightly fed up about bogus and confusing arguments made by the Leave and Remain campaigns.
Andrew Tyrie: What we've got is an arms race of claim and counter-claim. It's not just confusing the public; it's impoverishing the political debate.
He called for an amnesty on misleading claims made by politicians. But is it likely?

28/5 Young people are being urged to register to vote in next month's European Union election. The former Labour leader Ed Miliband said millions of them are yet to register, just days before the deadline. Well, meanwhile the Employment minister Priti Patel has said Britain faces a brighter economic future outside the EU.

29/5 Downing Street says Leave campaigners in the EU referendum are trying to distract voters from the real economic cost of leaving the European Union. It comes after two senior Conservatives told the Prime Minister he must admit he can't cut immigration while Britain remains in the EU.

That's a pretty clear 3:1 ratio in favour of Remain.

The extent to which that reflects the relative fire power of the two campaigns rather than blatant BBC is open to question. The imbalance is clear and striking though.

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Newsnight

As for Newsnight, it's a while since I updated you (and a full update will be posted when I get back), but we left our count of pro-Remain, pro-Leave guests,, as of 17 April, as: 

36 Pro-Remain

22 Pro-Leave

7 Questionable  

Well, here's what's happened since:

18/4

Joint interview: Daniel Hannan, Conservative (LEAVE); Liz Truss, Labour (REMAIN); Juergen Maier, CEO, Siemens UK (REMAIN); Nicola Horlick, CEO, Money & Co. (REMAIN); Gerard Lyons, economics adviser to Boris Johnson (LEAVE); Farzana Baduel, Curzon PR (LEAVE)

19/4

Interview: Pascal Lamy, former EU trade commissioner  (REMAIN);

Interview: David Owen, former UK Foreign Secretary (LEAVE)

20/4

Joint interview: Suzanne Evans, Vote Leave (LEAVE); Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post (REMAIN)

22/4

Joint interview: Liam Fox, Conservative (LEAVE); Louis Susman, former US ambassador to UK (REMAIN)

25/4

Joint interview: Penny Mordaunt, Conservative (LEAVE); Alan Johnson, Labour (REMAIN); Richard Walton, former counter-terrorism chief at the Met (LEAVE); Colonel Richard Kemp, former Joint Intelligence Committee (LEAVE); Robert Wainwright, director, Europol (REMAIN); Shami Chakrabarti, human rights lawyer (REMAIN)

28/4

Interview: Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (LEAVE)

9/5

Interview: Liam Fox, Conservative (LEAVE)

Interview: Yanis Varoufakis. former Greek Finance Minister (REMAIN) 

10/5

Joint interview: Kwasi Kwateng, Conservative (LEAVE); David Hanson, Labour (REMAIN); Dr Rohini Deshmukh, GP (LEAVE????); Harriet Sargeant, Centre for Policy Studies (LEAVE); Jonathan Portes, NIESR (REMAIN?????); Rev. Alyson Buxton, Rector of Boston (REMAIN????)

12/5

Interview: Lord Lamont, Conservative (LEAVE)

Interview: Michel Sapin. French Finance Minister (REMAIN)

16/5
Joint interview: Douglas Carswell, UKIP (LEAVE); Amber Rudd, Conservative (REMAIN); Dr Dia Chakravarty, Taxpayers' Alliance (LEAVE; Tara Palmeri, Politico (LEAVE?????); Sir Stephen Wall, former UK diplomat (REMAIN); Minette Batters, NFU (REMAIN)

17/5
Interview: John McDonnell, Labour (REMAIN)

18/5
Interview: Liz Truss, Conservative (REMAIN)

Interview: Suzanne Evans, Vote Leave (LEAVE))

20/5

Joint interview: Peter Oborne, Daily Mail (LEAVE); Polly Mackenzie. former Lib Dem advisor (REMAIN) 

23/5

Joint interview: Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (LEAVE): Chuka Umunna, Labour (REMAIN); Charles Crawford, former diplomat (LEAVE); Ngaire Woods, Oxford University (REMAIN); Kathrine Kleveland, Leader of the Norwegian 'NO to EU' party (LEAVE); Peter Sutherland, international businessman and former Attorney General of Ireland (REMAIN)

25/5
Interview: Alan Sugar, businessman (REMAIN)

26/5 
Interview: Theresa Villiers, Conservative (LEAVE)
Interview: Nicola Sturgeon, SNP (REMAIN)

27/5
Interview: Chris Patten, former BBC Trust chairman (REMAIN)
Interview: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative (LEAVE)

That raises our running total to:

60 Pro-Remain

44 Pro-Leave

12 Questionable  

As for the sub-trend of regarding who gets most of all of the solo appearances (i.e. not in joint interviews), well, that continues as well. I make the totals for that:

Remain - 25

Leave - 14

Both have balanced out more in recent weeks, though Remain still has a clear advantage.

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Newsnight (again)

In the meantime, however, a new feature was added to Newsnight's coverage - a series of personal reflections from non-politicians. I've been monitoring that too. Here's how that's going:

20/4

My Decision video: Dreda Say Mitchell, writer (LEAVE)

28/4

My Decision video: Michael Morpurgo, writer (REMAIN)

4/5

My Decision video: Sir Tom Hunter, entrepreneur and philanthropist  (UNDECIDED)

9/5

My Decision video: Tracey Emin, artist (REMAIN)

My Decision video: John Timpson, businessman (LEAVE)

19/5

My Decision video: Gillian Duffy, 'that bigoted woman' (LEAVE)

24/5
My Decision video: Hilary Alexander, former Telegraph fashion writer (LEAVE)

27/5
My Decision video: Charles Moore, former Telegraph editor (LEAVE)

That's working out (so far) as: 

Pro-Remain; 2

Pro-Leave: 5

Undecided - 1

...which, as you can see, is trending firmly in the other direction to the earlier stats and, thus, somewhat complicating matters.

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Twitter

Some good news. Jon Donnison has stopped tweeting anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stuff. His Twitter feed has gone from inflammatory to innocuous this year. That's progress.

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Talking of Twitter, the main hashtag on Twitter regarding 'BBC bias' at the moment is #toryelectionfraud #BBCbias. The Corbynistas have gone from nowhere (except Media Lens) a few years back to pretty much 'owning' the 'BBC bias' market on Twitter. Even the cybernats are being put into the shade by the Corbynistas.

A small, utterly unrepresentative social media echo chamber, always righteously banging on about BBC bias without just cause?

Strangely (and apologies for not mentioning this earlier), I'd been seeing this joint hashtag for ages in the run up to the elections this May. I'd particularly noticed that they were furious at Laura Kuenssberg (as they are about most things) for failing to tweet about it. Then on the day after polling day this year, Laura K did tweet about #toryelectionfraud and the BBC One News at Six mentioned #toryelectionfraud and the BBC's Twitter feed mentioned #toryelectionfraud. 

In the interests of disinterested, honest blogging, I could see their point. I don't know what to make of it though.

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newspapers and Wrongly claimed newspapers

Tonight's BBC One evening news bulletin began with the following headline:

Referendum battle lines are drawn over the Health Service and the chances of Turkey joining the EU. With controversy over what future migration levels might be David Cameron clashes with one of his own ministers on whether Britain could veto Turkish membership. The head of NHS England says the Health Service would be effected in a UK exit caused an economic slowdown. We'll be exploring the latest arguments from the two sides, with less than five weeks to go.

The bulletin (courtesy of BBC reporter Alex Forsyth) quickly - and explicitly - ruled who was right and who was wrong over that Turkey 'controversy': 

Sitting on Europe's south-east flank, Turkey's now at the centre of this referendum battle. Its role in tackling the migrant crisis has renewed talk of it joining the EU, and that's allowed those who want the UK to leave to raise questions about immigration and security. Like this minister [Penny Mordaunt] who today wrongly claimed the UK had no power to stop Turkey joining.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Penny! (according to the BBC).

We then got clips of Dave and Boris both saying (in the past) that Turkey should join the EU.

Then Alex did a 'Reality Check' for us. She 'made it clear' that Turkey wasn't going to be joining the EU any time soon. And blog favourite Prof. Anand Menon (the one who did that massively pro-EU series on the EU for The World at One) then duly appeared as Alex's 'talking head' to say (correctly) that the UK has traditionally been Turkey's biggest cheerleader as regards its entry into the EU and to emphasise the point that it's not "anywhere near becoming an EU member". And Alex then capped that by saying of Turkey's prospective EU membership, "It is in fact [emphasis hers] some way off..." (BBC message reinforcement on overdrive, I think, here!)

So relax about Turkey! (And don't, whatever you do, mention that Turkey has already been granted free visa access to the EU as part of the panicky EU-Turkey migrant deal!)

And then it was onto Steven Simons warnings of the dangers to the NHS from a Brexit.

The bulletin gave Mr Simons' warning (on the Marr show), then featured a clip (from a week ago) of Bank of England governor Mark Carney saying leaving the EU would result in a recession. Ellie Price of the BBC said that Mr Simons (unlike those Leave campaigners) took Mr Carney's warnings "very seriously" and cited his own warning about 130,000 EU NHS workers quitting the NHS in the wake of a Brexit. Ellie called his intervention "highly significant" and "highly political" - and "highly unwelcome" for some. She then, for illustration of the last point, featured a brief clip of Lord Owen (of David Owen fame) huffily making an unpleasant personal attack on Mr Simons (accusing him of making "a very considerable mess of" running the NHS). Then came a clip of a Vote Leave campaign video and its "claim" that leaving the EU would relieve pressure on service and free up extra resources with that famous �350 million a week figure - at which the BBC's Ellie said; 

That's a figure Remain campaigners point out is inaccurate when you factor in the rebate Britain receives for its EU contributions.

Ellie then ended with a 'they say this, they say that' thing, oh so impartially.

Now if that's impartial, then I'm one of Boris's bananas.

newspapers and BBC One 'News at Six' (yet more)newspapers

When we last left our monitoring of which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin on BBC One's News at Six (EU referendum-wise), the tally stood at a hugely imbalanced 14 for Remain and 3 for Leave. 

In the week since we've seen:

15/5 Leave "Boris Johnson compares the EU to Hitler, saying both wanted a single European state. His critics say the comments are offensive".

16/5 Remain "The Chancellor George Osborne has said the economic debate over whether Britain should stay in the EU is over. Speaking at Stanstead Airport Mr Osborne said an exit from the European Union would be 'a one-way ticket to a poorer Britain'".  

17/5 Remain "A war of words inside the Conservative Party over the EU referendum. Lord Heseltine attacks Boris Johnson. Lord Heseltine: "He is behaving now irresponsibly and recklessly and I fear that his judgement is going"."

19/5 Leave "Migration is one of the big issues in the EU referendum debate. The latest official figures show a sharp rise in the number of EU migrants working here. Those campaigning to leave the EU said it proves that UK workers are losing out. Downing Street has said that the vast majority of jobs in the UK are carried out by British workers."

20/5 Leave "Michael Gove of the Vote Leave campaign warns of massive extra demands on the NHS if we stay in the EU".

...which takes the running tally to: 

Remain - 16

Leave - 6

And here's where things get a bit complicated. 

The two Remain-led days' coverage put the respective Remain campaigners' cases first and foremost. They then followed through with that case.

Please contrast that with...

The 15/5 coverage, which may have led with Boris but it did so by somewhat misrepresenting Boris and focusing on the "outrage" he'd caused. Unlike all of the Remain-led stories, this Leave-led story wasn't helpful to Leave (at least it wasn't after the BBC had reported it!). This was 'negative' reporting for the Leave campaigner. It should really have gone in the Remain column.

And the 19/5 coverage was peculiar in its lack of reporting of Leave's points about the sharp rise in EU migrants working in the UK. The BBC suddenly went into pure 'facts and figures' mode. Viewers would have struggled to get any sense of why the figures might be a major issue relevant to the Leave side's case for leaving the EU.

And the 20/5 coverage - the one that looks like a 'proper' Leave-led bulletin was quite the jaw-dropper. I was going to write about this in detail myself, but David Keighley has already done it over at News-watch (complete with a full transcription). 

Michael Gove's claims were pretty much 'rubbished' by the BBC's deputy political editor John Pienaar:

The Leave campaign deny they�re scaremongering but some of the numbers today do look scary and they are meant to. They are also open to question. Take a look. We are told if we stay in the EU that will add between 2.5 and 5 million to the population. Why? Because it assumes that five countries, including Turkey, all join the Union by 2020, which is doubtful.  It takes no account of new controls. David Cameron says Turkey won�t be joining for decades.  But the Leave side say it would add between 6 and 13 visits to A&E departments, and increase of 57%. Why? Because migration and A&E visits have both gone up � there�s no conclusive evidence that the two sets of numbers are linked.

And then John Pienaar did what I'd expect a pro-Remain campaigner to do. He reached back to the pre-Referendum archive to broadcast a clip of Boris to further 'rubbish' the Leave point (fair dos if you're a campaigner; less so {I think} if you're meant to be an impartial broadcaster):

John Pienaar: The leading Leave campaign wasn�t convinced countless Turks were coming quite recently.
Boris Johnson (speaking in March 2016): Turkey�s been a candidate for membership of the EU since 1963.  I think the chances of the Turks readily acceding to the European Union are between, you know, nil and 20%.

Given that all three of the three previous 'Leave-led' stories focused on negative campaigning by Leave (Boris bashing Obama, Michael Gove accusing Remain of behaving badly and Nigel Farage slagging off other Leave campaigners), Leave are still getting the raw end of the deal here - even when their angle is leading BBC One's much-watched early evening news bulletin. 

The stats speak for themselves in suggesting the sheer scale of the pro-Remain imbalance but, oddly, they actually seriously understate the imbalance. The imbalance is even more massive than the stats suggest.