Interesting piece of analysis sent to me by a Biased BBC contributor…
“I have looked at the BBC Website Politics Home Page stories for the 3 weeks covering the party conferences. The analysis was done by reading the headline of the story where possible since this is the impression any reader of the page first gets. If unable to allocate the story I clicked on the story to read it in order to categorise it as good(in favour) or bad(adverse).
Over the 3 weeks there were 496 headlines, 35% related to the Conservatives, 37.5% to Labour, 13% to the Lib Dems and 14.5% to Other.
The ratio of good stories to bad were: Conservatives – 3 good for every bad story. Labour – 6 good for every bad story. Lib Dems – 8 good for every bad story.
The coverage figures were reasonable since they equate roughly to the size of each party and/or to the current % vote in Opinion Polls.
But the content of each story was twice as likely to be adverse for the Conservatives compared to Labour and nearly 3 times as likely to be adverse for the Conservatives compared to the Lib Dems.
I would call this BBC bias against the Conservative party.”
David, this sort of analysis is vital to back up what we here instinctively know…. however, no use preaching to the converted !
Earlier I had suggested it would be a powerful weapon for biased bbc to send out an editors’ ‘ pick of the day’ bit of bias to all of the msm news desks. Have you and the other authors considered if it is feasible and worthwhile ?
Great suggestion if the wherewithal is there, but it goes with having a paid spokesman, I would have thought? I’d be willing to pay an annual subscription to fund a paid spokesman for B-BBC if it became a registered campaign organisation. The only problem I would have though is the issue of bias getting blurred with alternative funding or abolition of the BBC. If such a campaign organisation confined itself to common ground among all, I would be interested.
Good work!
Just a point re your comment re the relative size of parties: Isn’t the Conservative far and away the largest by number of votes and number of elected representatives to Parliament?
Is the bBC biassed? Has the Pope got something to do with the Catholic faith?
I wish I had the patience to go through a week’s worth of R4 Today programme. I have reported many instances of bias, however I have never done a detailed analysis of each news item and correlate the findings. I think after 15 hours of detailed listening, my sanity along with the will to live; would be in question.
A complain to the BBC using this text seems an obvious move, if one also doomed to be ignored.
There is one bit of analysis that is even worse.
Think about the cuts. Not getting something that you had before is bad. Blatently obvious and the extent of the BBC analysis.
However, try finding any analysis of what the consequences are of not cutting. It’s increased debts, and a future tax payer pays, or its increases in taxation and a tax payer pays now.
Those increases in taxation means that you have to cut your spending on yourself or your family.
Does the BBC mention that not cutting the public sector means that the individual has to cut to support the state and its profligacy? Not a bit. Out of 40 I look at over a day, I managed to find one sentence, a bit ambiguously mentioning the consequences.
For example, 3 children, earning 45K. The cut in child benefits is a 7% cut in income. Any real mention of cuts in family spending? Nope.
Spot on Nick — and where is the analysis of the financial insanity and irresponsibility which made budget cuts necessary in the first place ?
All of course from the party which vowed `to abolish boom and bust’, and whose leader solemnly told us Gordon Brown was `the best Chancellor the nation had ever had’ – LOL
Isn’t that an example of cutting State spending resulting in a cutting of family income and, presumably, spending, rather than an example of not cutting the State, resulting in cutting family income and spending? Having debts means having to pay interest now as well as pay off the debt in future. Looks as if cutting the State or having the debt both result in a cut in family income and spending.
I wonder what the Conservative Party might call it?
If they are interested.
Or have any cojones.