Everyone trusts polls. So here's a poll, courtesy of YouGov and published in The Times just under a month ago. The question put is a good one. (Wish we'd thought of it!). 702 people took part.
Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov's Times article is headlined:
...though that could have read:
46 per cent say BBC 'biased'
The BBC might take comfort from the 'complaints from both sides' argument but given that nearly half of respondents think the BBC is biased can hardly be much comfort for them!
As I may have said before...
More and more people are angry at the BBC - from the Corbynistas and the SNP on one side to all the many-and-various 'people like us' on the other.
The old 'complaints from both sides' no longer washes either. Both sides are firing from different sides at the same place (loathe as they would be to admit it): the place where the BBC sits.
And the BBC doesn't sit where many of us/they sit. It (generally-speaking) sits with people other than us/them, somewhere on the socially-liberal, strongly pro-EU, economically-centrist, politically left-leaning, pro-modern-Establishment spectrum between Ken Clarke and Angela Eagle.
Here endeth the lesson.
Bias from the BBC is evident in the BBC News website day after day. One particularly annoying example is the article featured from 6th and 7th January. 'The Bank's Michael Fish Moment'. Here is a cynical attempt to cover up news which they don't like. The article, by Kamal Ahmed, covers the news that the UK's economic performance as been strong in recent months. By using this 'jokey' headline, the BBC editors use frivolity in order to divert readers' attention away from news which doesn't fit in with their pro EU anti Brexit narrative.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes me feel uneasy is that Michael Fish died only a few weeks ago, yet the BBC see fit to besmirch his memory - by association - as a means of obfuscating an important news story. His good name can be sacrificed just so long as it takes attention away from a story they would prefer to bury. What a disgusting trade-off!
You had me worried about Michael Fish for a second there. Thankfully, he's still alive. (Wasn't it Ian McCaskill who died last month?) He was on Twitter yesterday saying, "I reckon that Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England owes me a gold bar or two!!" and "My forecast (better than the Bank of England's !!) is now online at http://netweather.tv . Frost free for us all". And he was right about that!
DeleteI'm very sorry Craig and Michael Fish. The fact remains that this 'jokey' headline was used to divert attention away from the story.
DeleteTrue.
DeleteIt also depends where the centre is -
ReplyDelete28% thinks it's left wing, and the other 18% think it's not left enough. So that's 46% who think it's left leaning.....and 11% who don't know so that's 57% of people who don't think it's right wing. Lol
That's the problem with stats you can make them say what you want as soon as you use anything but the numbers.
Another angle: Over 50% more people think the BBC is biased to the left than think it's biased to the right.
ReplyDelete