I see that Peter Preston of the Guardian/Observer is calling on the BBC to stop being so 'fair and balanced' and start getting onside with "Project Calm Rationality" instead.
He also wants pro-Leave guests (such as Dan Hannan) to be introduced with 'health warnings' (such as that he's never "negotiated a trade deal, as opposed to writing leaders for the Telegraph") and for the BBC to play the 'authority' card by not "pretend[ing] that the accumulated weight of the IMF, OECD, Bank of England, White House, NFU, TUC, CBI and IFS can somehow be wiped away when Chris Grayling demands his rebuttal moment".
That, of course, is how 'climate change sceptics' are already dealt with by the BBC - especially following LordLawsongate at Today.
In this, PP echoes (albeit more crudely) Prof. Timothy Garton-Ash who argued a while back that "the BBC is too timid" and that "being impartial on the EU is not enough". The BBC, he says, is guilty of "fairness bias" - giving equal airtime to unequal arguments, without daring to say that, on this or that point, one side (in his view, the Remain side) has more evidence, or a significantly larger body of expert opinion, than the other (the Leave side). He wants the BBC to give "judgements" (and I think we can safely assume that he thinks his side will be the one getting the lion's share of the favourable 'judgements').
It's an interesting gambit: Say the BBC is too impartial (music to their beloved BBC's ears!) and then demand it stop being impartial and come down instead on the their side instead - the side of 'rationality', 'evidence', and the great and the good. It's a strategy that's worked well for such people over 'climate change', so (I guess they're thinking) why not try it again here?
