‘Brexit bias’ BBC boss defends news coverage despite failure to research FACTS
BBC director general Tony Hall: ‘We go to great lengths to ensure we balance our coverage and address all issues from a wide range of different perspectives.’ Other than a factual perspective, that is… [Image: Dominic Lipinski/PA.]
Tony Hall’s claim that the BBC has been impartial and addresses issues from “a wide range of different perspectives” is admirable – but irrelevant if it pays no attention to the factual basis underlying each of these perspectives.
This Site last night published an admission by a leading member of the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign that his organisation lied in order to win votes for Brexit – why did the BBC not research the claim, expose it as a lie, and prevent its use? I did – but I don’t have the BBC’s huge audience.
People need to know if public personalities or organisations are lying to them. If the BBC can’t or won’t investigate that, then what is the point of it, as a news-reporting organisation?
The BBC has defended its record on impartiality after it was accused of anti-Brexit bias by a group of mainly Tory MPs.
In a carefully worded response to a letter signed by 70 MPs and published in the Daily Mail and Telegraph, the director general Tony Hall wrote: “Impartiality has always been the cornerstone of BBC News. It remains so today.”
Hall indicated that he had first seen the letter, which accused the BBC of giving too much airtime to remain supporters and which was coordinated by the Tory MP Julian Knight, after it was published by the Daily Mail and Telegraph.
“We go to great lengths to ensure that we balance our coverage and address all issues from a wide range of different perspectives. It is one of the reasons why the public trusts the BBC more than any other source of news.
“I agree with you that these are consequential times. For that reason, it is more important than ever that the BBC’s journalism is independent of political pressure.”
Source: BBC boss defends news coverage after MPs claim Brexit bias | Media | The Guardian
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The BBC has been stuffed to the gunnels from top to bottom with Tories, and it really took hold under Chris Patten ex Tory Minister. the idea it is impartial has probably never been the case I remember Robin Day and Sue Lawley.
This article from George Boit shows how a small elite has taken control of our democracy rendering it useless:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/corporate-dark-money-power-atlantic-lobbyists-brexit
We the public must wake up and defend our democratic institutions, we need to get the Neo-Liberal corporate politicians out of office as they have become the institutional mechanism that deprives us of the ability to effectively communicate what is happening in the world around us.
Blogs such as this have become increasingly important to break through the fake news and even to hold these perpetrators to account.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2512134/bbc-trousers-millions-in-secret-cash-from-brussels-with-300000-coming-after-brexit-vote/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12059280/BBC-has-received-2m-in-EU-funding-in-run-up-to-referendum-fueling-accusations-of-bias.html https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2014/02/the-millions-in-eu-funding-the-bbc-tried-to-hide/ and we are supposed to believe the BBC is impartial in regards to Brexit.
Actually, yes – because BBC coverage didn’t fact-check the lies of the Leave campaign – as admitted recently, see my article published on the same day as this.