The BBC's favourite defence against charges of bias - that it gets complaints from all sides, so must be getting it about right - has always been based on a dubious premise. It assumes that the complaints from each side are of equal validity - or, from the BBC's perspective, equal invalidity.
It doesn't help that so many accusations of BBC bias are invalid (for whatever reason). Look into most of them and they simply fall to pieces.
The world of Twitter is particularly rife with invalid assertions of bias. Just look at this morning's Twitter coverage of the Nicola Sturgeon interview on The Andrew Marr Show and you see posts like these:
I'm no fan of Sturgeon nor the "progressive" @theSNP but #Marr has interrupted her repeatedly whilst Farage got the run of the place. Awful.
Duplicitous little weasel #Marr employs a different interview style with Sturgeon than earlier #Farage who was never interrupted once
Marr show: my only gripe is that Farage was on first and he spoke for 20 minutes,Nicola gets on for 15 mins and was interrupted by Marr
Marr interrupting Nicola way more than he interrupted Farage.
Never heard Marr so quiet. Farage is a slimy little toad and he's not been interrupted once..!!
They are all, every last one of them, talking complete and utter rubbish.
Nigel Farage was interviewed for eleven-and-a-half minutes. Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed for just under 13 minutes. Nigel Farage was interrupted 12 times. Nicola Sturgeon was interrupted 12 times.
Why are these people tweeting (and re-tweeting) such crap? Do they actually believe what they're writing? Or can it all be put down to confirmation bias?
Well, you would probably have to be a robot not to suffer from confirmation bias, according to the psychologists, so I'm doubtless guilty of that too in some of my posts here. I try to overcome it, however, by checking things out and supplying evidence. Any (credible) counter-evidence you spot would always be appreciated.
I watched the whole thing, and it was quite amusing. Marr couldn't constantly interrupt Farage because he realized that his line of attack had been defeated almost from the start. He had nothing to say against Farage's answers because he was prepared only with gotcha stuff, which was easily deflected. He was stumped and gave up.
ReplyDeleteMarr didn't interrupt Sturgeon any more than he did Farage, really. He corrected her on policy because he loves to help guests on his side of the political spectrum get their answers straight. She had a foolish position on Trident and the SNP voting on English matters, never mind declaring the goal of Scottish independence. She couldn't have come across as more dangerous if she tried. Not good for Labour's chances at all.
Also, I noticed she referred to the SNP and their policies as "Progressive" several times. The SNP now stands for Socialist Nationalist Progressives. I'd say the Socialist Nationalist Party, but that would be violating Godwin's Law.