Evidence of BBC bias?

[mrochester]

I see a lot of people claim that the BBC is biased (mostly to the left).

Watching the Graham Norton show there was a joke at the beginning of the show first showing Jeremy Corbyn (with the comment ‘wishing there was a bigger party’) followed by Boris Johnson and a comment about lying.

Would this indicate bias in any particular way to you?

My point was that it was a joke at the expense of both parties and therefore showed no bias either way. Another persons point was that calling someone a liar was more slanderous than a simple comment about wishing for a bigger party. My retort was that this persons own bias (to the right) was what made them think the joke was biased.

If I am trying to decide whether something is biased one way or another I always try and start from the middle ground. It seems a lot of people don’t even attempt to start from this point and simply declare anything they don’t agree with as biased without a critical assessment of the situation, context or content.

Thoughts?

M.

 

[mrochester]

Gut instinct, I would say generally yes the BBC dislike the Tories.

But I could be wrong.

What about in the specific context above?

 

[mrochester]

So you're saying that one instance of equal treatment on Graham Norton makes up for years of stacking programmes like Question Time with mostly remainers and being heavily pro-EU in general?

The left are probably just mocking Jeremy Corbyn because they know he's on the way out of the door, when he lost to Theresa May in 2017 media outlets like the BBC were promoting it as a great victory for him.

The question is whether the above is an example of BBC bias. The point one person has made was that it was because calling someone a liar was more slanderous than the comment made about the Labour Party.

 

[mrochester]

There were jokey comments about the three major party leaders, to suggest there was bias there is utterly ludicrous.

That was my point, and my suggestion that their thinking it was biased because of their own bias and viewpoint was met with much hostility!

It seems people are loosing the ability to see and analyse things from a neutral standpoint.

 

[mrochester]

The problem the BBC have now is that although they may be balanced, people's opinions are so polarised that if you dare say a single tiny negative thing about their comrades or ideologies then they will switch off in a tantrum. An perfect example of how far this goes - a single 90 second clip on Twitter from someone like Carole Cadwalladr like this one is always followed by hysterical people claiming BBC bias, laughingly in this case even though the guy's predictions actually all turned out to be true:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1167732825069670400

A similar, but even more whiney 'bias' tweet with the same clip from Dr. Jennifer Cassidy:

https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1167881779681775619

Just have a look at the comments and bear in mind this guy's predictions turned out to be correct. This is what the BBC are up against, on both sides.

How do we bring people back to the middle and common ground? This polarisation feels to me like people sparring for a fight, or worse, a war.

 

[mrochester]

Unfortunately I don't think it's possible - the genie is out of the bottle. While people like Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, Carole Cadwalladr and Owen Jones seek to polarise people even more, opinions become even more entrenched. It's a real problem if you want to run a balanced mainstream service like the BBC when people are turning into extremists.

I guess the fact that these people have easy access to platforms that allow them to broadcast far and wide is the crux of the problem.