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.