Sunday 30 August 2015

Doubting Tommy



Sticking like an obsessive-compulsive limpet to this morning's Sunday Morning Live...

I really don't trust BBC programmes when they select a range of comments from viewers or listeners to represent a debate.

Tommy Sandhu's selection of Twitter/Facebook comments during the immigration section this morning saw two comments making anti-mass immigration points and three comments making pro-mass immigration points.

Now, we know that's not where the public are.

And given the days when SML used to dare to conduct view polls, which almost invariably would produced outcomes like 90% against mass immigration and 10% for mass immigration, I'm taking the Victor Meldrew line on this: I don't believe it!

However, what I'm failing to remember (until this very moment) is that Twitter - the main source of SML's viewer responses - has a (deserved) reputation for being absolutely swamped (on political matters) by self-echoing left-wingers, It's a completely unbalanced echo chamber (rather like the BBC some unkind souls might say!)

Any response on Twitter, therefore, has to be treated as unrepresentative of anybody other than that particular body of deeply unrepresentative, 'groupthinking' Twitterers.

And such people tend to be strongly pro-immigration and wildly anti-British. (Hence the comments on SML).

In my opinion.

Not in SML's obviously.

Still, I thought I'd waste about twenty minutes of my life skimming all the #BBCSML comments on Twitter from the time of that debate (from 10.00 to 10.25).

Yes, many are the usual Britain-hating left-wing stuff but I was surprised at how many people made anti-mass-immigration points.

I'd put it, from a rough count, at about 50/50 (very unusual for Twitter). 

I've ended up at a different place from where I started here, to my slight surprise. And now I'm confused.

There's some obvious skewing going-on here, but it might be unintended. Or it might not be.


Afterthought: I've finally reached the point tonight where I think it's safe to say that the hashtag #bbcbias on Twitter is now largely the preserve of cybernats.

Rather proving the point of this post I think, a narrow echo-chamber (with at best 5% support across the UK) has pretty much entirely seized control of a key part of Twitterspace (well, key for 'people like us' who complain about BBC bias).

Their ruthless annexation of the idea of 'BBC bias' on Twitter puts us traditional 'BBC bias' bloggers and commenters to shame. We could have got their first and planted our flag but simply didn't even try. Or even think of trying.

1 comment:

  1. The left-liberal elite who run the BBC have persuaded themselves that their viewpoint (mass immigration is good in all respects) is an objective assessment of reality, rather than an opinion. They may concede that mass immigration (not that they'd ever call it that) may throw up challenges which "older, more conservative people" may find difficult to cope with (that is the classic Mark Easton line).

    So, in my view the bias is inbuilt, but they don't see it as bias. They see it as communicating objective truth.

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