In the old days at Biased BBC we used to laugh whenever anyone from the Left would counter our daily charges of left-wing BBC bias by citing three names - Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson. It seemed to be their main argument.
They've got rather more sophisticated these days (with mentions of Craig Oliver, for example, and Cardiff University reports) but their 'counter-evidence' (on blogs, newspaper comments fields and Twitter) still often boils down to repeating "Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson". They think it's their trump card.
I was thinking about that again because I was just watching Andrew Neil interviewing Conservative minister Sajid Javid on The Sunday Politics. Andrew going at Mr Javid with Tom Watson-like terrier intensity. It was a classic case of 'interviewing 'from the Left', and a superb piece of interviewing. Yet Andrew Neil isn't 'of the Left'. He's just doing what a professional BBC interviewer is supposed to do, without fear or favour.
It has to be said though that being held up as the absolute model of impartial BBC interviewing by blogs which non-right-wingers (like Owen Bennett Jones) tend to see as heavily right-wing (and biased), probably won't help Andrew Neil fend off the charge that me must be biased because he's known to hold right-wing views.
All I can say is that his body of work speaks for itself. He may have strong views but he knows his role is to play devil's advocate when interviewing people he agrees with. Moreover, in the days when I counted interruptions, Andrew Neil's results showed that he was (on average) tougher with Conservatives than with Labour politicians. Right-wing bias was something he didn't display.
Therefore, he is the model of impartial BBC interviewing. QED.
You already knew I'd agree with you, Craig, so let me just add a couple more reasons why Neil's body of work shows up his biased colleagues in contrast.
ReplyDeleteNeil does not do what Evan Davis does regularly: restate his guest's answer in a way that completely twists and misrepresents what was just said. You don't often hear one of Neil's guests come back with, "No, that's not what I said at all."
You don't see Neil helping his guests with their answers, gently (or sometimes not so gently) nudging them to better phrasing and stating of their policy in a more coherent fashion. Stage Performer Maitlis and Andrew Marr will often do that when a guest on the approved side of an issue can't get their story straight or spell out a policy in a way that the Beeboid knows won't play well with the average voter. Sometimes one can almost hear them saying, "Please don't say it like that, say it this way."
Neil's questions are just as likely to go after a Conservative from the Right as from the Left, and the same goes for his questions to Left-wing guests. It's not always from the same perspective.
With Neil, it's generally all delivered in the some tone until a guest starts dodging or telling obvious fibs. You don't see him start off an interview angry with his guest, an attitude which is not exactly uncommon in his colleagues on Today or Newsnight or even the BBC News channel.
Having said that, he does sometimes reveal his personal opinion on things, and he could do less of that in my opinion. But his interrogation of guests is by far better than the other high-profile, highly-paid presenters.