In the first comment to David’s post about the Norwich North by-election, an anonymous commenter said:
I caught the commentary on The World At One. The report included the returning officer reading the results for the Labour Party, Liberal Democrat Party, Green Party, Conservative Party and …. no, that was it.
As a listener, I got the impression the Greens came fourth. No mention of UKIP beating the Greens in to fifth place (and coming pretty close to the Lib Dems).
This was backed up by a comment from GCooper who said:
JeffD’s report was more or less the same as the one on the BBC R4 6pm news roundup I listened to a few minutes ago.
With one exception. The announcer said ‘….Labour were beaten into second place, ahead of the Lib Dems and the Greens…”
Used as I am to the shocking political bias routinely displayed by the BBC, even I was poleaxed by that.
Again, see this post from Bishop Hill:
I was just listening to the BBC coverage of the Norwich by-election on Radio 4. The reporter was talking about Labour holding on to second place, “ahead of the LibDems and the Greens”.
The problem with this is that UKIP were in fourth place, 600 votes ahead of the Greens.
Can’t mention UKIP on primetime, can we?
Update on July 24, 2009 by Bishop Hill
I notice that UKIP are complaining that the BBC froze them out in favour of the Greens during the run up to the election too. There’s a clear pattern emerging isn’t there?