Just in case any of you missed it...
There's a striking article at The Conservative Woman by the Institute of Economic Affairs's Ryan Bourne.
There's a striking article at The Conservative Woman by the Institute of Economic Affairs's Ryan Bourne.
TCW's headline writer, as ever, captures the point succinctly: Just three per cent of BBC guests back Brexit.
That's specific to the Today programme and is based on over ten years of comprehensive listening by the good folk at News-Watch.
It's a dramatic and damning figure, isn't it?
The BBC itself is well aware that it's going to be watched very closely in the next few months. so it will be fascinating to see News-Watch's findings for Today over this period.
Can Today finally break out of their seemingly entrenched pro-EU rut?
Can Today finally break out of their seemingly entrenched pro-EU rut?
Rod Liddle, ex of the Today programme, wrote
ReplyDeleteIndeed, when I was editor of the Today programme and had to deal with complaints from the likes of the Eurosceptical Lord Pearson of Rannoch, to the effect that we were not giving them adequate coverage on the programme, a senior BBC executive told me: ‘Rod, the thing you have to understand is that these people are mad. They are mad.’ She was the person in charge of political impartiality for the corporation — but then that’s how bien-pensant opinion of the time had it; not that Eurosceptics were simply wrong, but that they were deranged, doolally. And worse than either of these, they were racist. Their opposition to the euro was xenophobic little-Englander stuff, a hangover from the war, one part Captain Mainwaring and one part Enoch Powell, based on little more than a visceral dislike for and mistrust of krauts and froggies and wops.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2011/07/how-did-i-get-it-right-on-the-euro-easy-i-was-racist/
Nothing has changed.
Very useful data. One caveat: to be fair, Farage was pretty much the only big public voice against the EU for a long time, so it's not necessarily a biased framing for him have 37% of the appearances.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I'd like to see that data because we must then consider how Farage and the rest were treated. If it was night and day like Marr handled his two guests on Sunday, it's even more damning.