Another day, another baseless accusation of left-wing bias at the BBC.
Another day, another baseless accusation of left-wing bias is levelled at the BBC, this time by Conservative Cabinet minister Chris Grayling.
In an interview with The House Magazine, Grayling has accused the BBC of not acting in a way that is “right and proper for a public broadcaster” because its workforce is dominated by a “left-leaning, metropolitan group of people who are disproportionately represented there”.
He added that “they’ve been unbalanced in the debate over the years about immigration, about Europe. And I think they’ve wised up to that.”
Grayling is just the latest right-winger to accuse the corporation of harbouring a latent left-wing bias. Like a game of Whac-A-Mole, as soon as you’ve rebutted one lot of this tripe some one else comes along spouting it. Considering the extent to which the US media has been cowed by the accusation, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that conservatives this side of the Atlantic have adopted the tactic too.
Just as with Whac-A-Mole, however, it’s important to bash the ‘bias’ accusation with the hammer when it rears its head – the hammer being reason and evidence (and no, I’m not advocating hitting Chris Grayling on the head).
There isn’t a “left-wing bias” at the BBC. In fact, there is a degree of evidence suggesting bias of a quite different sort.
In August 2013, academics at Cardiff University investigated political bias at the BBC. They looked at news coverage from both 2007 and 2012 in order to analyse coverage under both the previous Labour government and the coalition.
Far from left-wing bias, researchers found a clear bias in favour of Tories. Whereas in 2007 Gordon Brown outnumbered David Cameron in appearances by a ratio of two to one, in 2012 David Cameron outnumbered Ed Miliband by nearly four to one. Across the entire period researchers studied, Tory politicians were featured more than 50 per cent more often than Labour ones. The researchers concluded that:
“The evidence is clear that the BBC does not lean to the left it actually provides more space for Conservative voices.”
The same was true of the corporation’s business coverage:
“Opinion was almost completely dominated by stockbrokers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and other City voices. Civil society voices or commentators who questioned the benefits of having such a large finance sector were almost completely absent from coverage. The fact that the City financiers who had caused the crisis were given almost monopoly status to frame debate again demonstrates the prominence of pro-business perspectives.”
This will sound familiar to anyone who has been watching the BBC’s coverage of the tube strike – not to mention the 50p tax proposal announced by Labour a few weeks back, where just about every “captain of industry” was trotted out to doom-monger about the end of capitalism.
Overall I suspect the BBC is actually quite balanced. If it wasn’t, it’s unlikely there would be so many on both left and right ready to deplore its ‘bias’.
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39 Responses to “Chris Grayling is right, the BBC is biased. But not in the way he thinks”
Ivan_Denisovich
This is an example of wishful thinking and flawed logic. Bias cannot be simply measured by the number of appearances made by politicians in the news. I am party politically neutral but pretty convinced that the BBC is culturally dominated by middle class metropolitan types with a left wing bias. However, much more worrying in my eyes is its hopeless establishment bias. People who represent government and favoured NGOs are given far more prominence than their contribution usually deserves.
Ivan_Denisovich
I trust that you are able to support your opinion with “facts and evidence?”
Gary Barker
Oh so you’re suggesting that all the others behind the only ones we can put a public face to are lefties and they only let us see the right wingers to fool us into thinking the BBC is full of right wing Tory toadies? Oh I see. But hang on, Nick Robinson.. He’s the BBC’s chief political ‘editor’.. So does that mean he doesn’t really edit the political news items? Is that just the lefties fooling us again? Yeah I’m starting to get where you’re coming from. Thanks for the Govesque enlightenment.
Gary Barker
‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’
Gary Barker
Chair of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten, former Thatcher Minister, fact. BBC Chief Political Editor, Nick Robinson, former chairman of Oxford Conservatives, fact. BBC Chief Political Presenter, Andrew Neil, Chairman of right wing Tory supporting publication, The Spectator, fact. Your turn, Ivan.