Truthiness: The Telegraph is guilty of lazy and biased journalism but, as ever, it’s all the fault of the BBC (video)

For the second consecutive Sunday (and several days in between) the Telegraph decided to lead it’s news agenda with what it and the Conservative party have decided is BBC liberal bias. Claims of liberal bias at the BBC have been raised by Conservatives for decades and are not without foundation (at least historically). Here is an extract from Wikipedia on the subject:

BBC News forms a major department of the Corporation, and receives many complaints of bias. Some people have criticised the BBC for being part of the establishment. The Centre for Policy Studies– a right-wing think tank – has stated that, “Since at least the mid-1980s, the Corporation has often been criticised for a perceived bias against those on the centre-right of politics.”^[7] Similar allegations have been made by past and present employees such as Antony Jay,^[8] North American editor Justin Webb,^[9] former editor of the Today ProgrammeRod Liddle,^[10] former correspondent Robin Aitken^[11] and Peter Sissons, a veteran news anchorman.^[12]

Former political editor Andrew Marr has argued that the liberal bias of the BBC is the product of the types of people the Corporation employs, and is thus cultural not political.^[9] In 2011 Mark Thompson, the then BBC Director General, wrote, “In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left.”^[13] In 2011, Peter Oborne wrote, “Rather than representing the nation as a whole, it [the BBC] has become a vital resource – and sometimes attack weapon – for a narrow, arrogant Left-Liberal elite”.^[14]

Speaking to journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch in 2009, Jeremy Hunt, the former Shadow Cabinet Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, claimed that BBC News needed more Conservatives: “I wish they would go and actively look for some Conservatives to be part of their news-gathering team, because they have acknowledged that one of their problems is that people who want to work at the Corporation tend to be from the centre-left. That’s why they have this issue with what Andrew Marr called an innate liberal bias.”^[15] The commentator Mehdi Hasan though, has pointed out the right-wing backgrounds of many BBC presenters and journalists, querying why even many “liberals and leftists” accept the right’s description of BBC bias.^[16]

So in the past there might have been grounds for making a serious accusation against the BBC for liberal bias although Jeremy Hunt must be pleased that since August this year the BBC’s Head of News is the former Times editor and Rupert Murdoch acolyte James Harding. And certainly given that the Telegraph has published almost 3,500 articles complaining about “BBC bias” maybe there is still a case for the BBC to answer because a ‘quality’ newspaper like The Telegraph would not waste so many column inches on a politically motivated campaign against the most trusted news broadcasting organisation in the world, right?

The Telegraph’s most recent whine is in respect of BBC News’ reporting of the story, first published by The Telegraph on Sunday 13th October 2013, regarding the number of “economically inactive” migrants in the UK. The 600,000 figure, who were reported by the Telegraph and its regular cheerleader from the cheap seats, The Daily Mail, as “jobless” or “unemployed” was extracted from an EC study of EU migration which was published on 14th October and in which those terms were absent.

The right-wing media pounced on this report as proof positive that there are hundreds of thousands of feckless, migrants sponging from hard-working British families by claiming various welfare benefits and were a little shocked when upon closer examination their interpretation of the EC report was criticised by the EC commission and then various commentators in the wider media. This is what the fact-checking organisation Full Fact had to say on the subject:

Last week, the government unveiled details of its Immigration Bill which aims to save taxpayers’ money by limiting migrants’ access to public services. The Sunday Telegraph added impetus to this already heated debate by reporting that a leaked European Commission report had found that 600,000 “jobless” migrants had made the UK their home, claims which were described by the Commission itself as “a gross and totally irresponsible misrepresentation of the facts.” So what is the source of the controversy? The report in question has now been published, and it does reveal significant problems with the Sunday Telegraph’s story. The 600,000 figure actually refers to the number of economically “non-active” EU migrants living in Britain. While these are people who aren’t in work, it doesn’t follow that they are unemployed. To be unemployed under the International Labor Organization definition, which is used by the ONS and others to calculate unemployment figures, a person must actually be economically active, as they are actively seeking work and ready to begin if it is found. ….We’ll be asking the Sunday Telegraph for a correction.

Full Fact

If you are interested in seeing how the BBC’s Daily Politics and Channel 4 dealt with the issue then you can watch the clips in this post.

But of course, being seen to be wrong and over-playing their hand was never going to be accepted by The Telegraph and the Conservative party as a ‘fair’ outcome and someone else has to be to blame. So into their cross hairs steps Mark Easton with his report on the migration story on the BBC 10 O’clock News on Monday 14th October.

“Last Monday night the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News – its most popular television news programme – broadcast a bulletin by Mark Easton, the home editor, in the wake of the publication by the European Commission (EC) of its report on migration.

The European Commission paper says there were 112,499 EU migrants in Britain seeking work. That bulletin, however, was called into question last night by Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, as lacking in balance.

His spokesman said: “It is difficult to see any balance in this report and sadly there seems to be no attempt to fairly reflect the Government’s view. “We know there’s a great deal of public concern about the number of non-UK nationals in this country claiming benefits – it is a shame the BBC reporting of this story didn’t seek to put forward that side of the argument.”

The Sunday Telegraph

It is the view of this blog that the constant droning whine of The Telegraph about BBC bias is little more than that of a spoilt child that cannot get its own way. The quality and efficacy of Telegraph reporting has been in decline for years as, inevitably, has its reputation for quality journalism. On the 20th October they published multiple articles in the Sunday Telegraph in an attempt to prove by volume of verbiage, if not by quality of argument, that the BBC was biased in its reporting of the EC migrant report.

Before moving on, readers of this blog will be aware that the only major content analysis of BBC news coverage undertaken by a non-partisan research team has been published earlier this year. The research was undertaken by Cardiff University and was “funded by the BBC Trust as part of an ongoing series of studies examining the impartiality of its reporting in areas such as regional news, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Arab Spring, business and science)“:

Our research had two strands. One examined the range of topics and sources featured in BBC broadcast news and how that compared to what was provided by other broadcasters. A second strand looked in detail at the BBC’s online and broadcast reporting of immigration, the EU and religion. We analysed news coverage from both 2007 and 2012 in order to identify any possible changes over time.

And the research concluded:

So the evidence from the research is clear. The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda.

Mike Berry, Cardiff University

So this blog does not need to seek to prove that the BBC is not biased in favour of liberal causes. Notwithstanding the lack of evidence that The Telegraph has tried to muster and we will come on to their painful and tedious ‘analysis’ of the Mark Easton piece shortly; it might be instructive to take a look at a few recent reports from various BBC news broadcasts and see whether there is bias at play.

And what about the Telegraph’s ‘analysis’ of Mark Easton’s report. This blog decided to analyse The Telegraph’s analysis to discover if their criticism has any credibility whatsoever. Here are the results for you to consider (link opens a pdf).

So much for ‘fair and balanced’

EC Report Types Of Benefit Covered

Sunday Telegraph Biased Analysis Of BBC Report

This government has been guilty from its first days in office of misrepresentations, the spreading of falsehoods and ideologically based policy making. Examples of all of these can be found in the following posts:

Updated With Video: Do you want the truth from your government or just what a minister says he ‘believes’ to be true? (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
Do you want the truth from your government or just what a minister believes to be true? Part 2 (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
Do you want the truth from your government or just what a minister believes to be true? Part 3 (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
Talking Bull About The Bedroom Tax….Err I Mean Spare Room Subsidy
Are You Stupid? What Has Happened To Rational Debate Over Immigration? (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
Are You Stupid? What Has Happened To Rational Debate Over Immigration? (Part Two)(imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
£334m Written-off Or Mismanaged By Iain Duncan Smith In Universal Credit “Disaster” (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
Truthiness: “Whipping Up A Frenzy” About Benefit Tourism (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)

The question is, do we want an impartial BBC to report objectively on the performance of our government and to hold them accountable when they lie and attempt to deceive the public or do we want the most trusted news broadcaster in the world to be cowed and debased by threats from political parties that the licence fee funding will be withdrawn if the organisation doesn’t toe the government line? Our democracy demands that the BBC ignores the miserable bleating of the right-wing press and continues to provide the quality journalism that is envied around the world.