Further to an earlier post, here's another example of the contrast in treatment between those two potentially game-changing developments in the EU referendum: Mark Carney's intervention (helpful to Remain) and those 1.5 million extra EU migrants revealed by the NI numbers (helpful to Leave).
Last night's BBC One News at Ten dealt with both stories. It led with Mark Carney and devoted more than 5 minutes of its its time to that story. In contrast the EU immigration story was treated as a 'news in brief' item and given just 23 seconds in the middle of the bulletin. BBC One viewers who blinked might well have missed it. They certainly will have missed its significance, given how briefly it was mentioned - unlike the Bank of England governor's anti-Brexit warnings.
Kamal Ahmed further boosted his intervention by telling BBC viewers that, "One person in polls comes out as most influential to the public on the issue of the European Union and the referendum, and that person is Mark Carney. That's why his words today are so important because it appears from the polling evidence that the public do listen to him."
Good catch, Craig. The BBC knows all to well which issue is more important to which side, so the producer's own personal perspective is on display here.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I would suggest it's fair enough for Ahmed to say people listen to Carney. If he gave an opinion that Carney was right and the NI immigration numbers were wrong, that's different.
All journalists are lazy - just some are more so than others. I would bet a large sum of money that Ahmed was fed that line about Carney being the most trusted person by the Remainiacs - more particularly the egregious Daniel Korski in No. 10 who is pulling most of the strings, though strangely journos don't see fit to tell us that.
ReplyDeleteI must say one thing - however this campaign ends up, it has been an object lesson in bias.
ReplyDeleteWhen you care about something, you really do notice all the little tricks of the media trade. The one I have noticed recently is the false choice exclusion gambit (by which you exclude other reasonable arguments).
I heard an example of this today: one of the usual BBC suspects on PM talking about EU migration policy - no doubt one of those "Reality Check - don't you dare go thinking for yourselves" exercises. I came in half way through but by the end it was clear a false choice had been set up between: (a) You stop migration because you see no moral requirement to help your European neighbours deal with the issue of migration and (b) you share the burden of migration with your European neighbours because you realise you have a moral requirement to do so.
But that is just one view of the position. One might equally say we have a choice of (a) failing to recognise our moral responsibility to UK citizens, particularly young people and continuing in the EU despite its proven inability to control its own borders as any state entity should and (b) recognising our moral responsibility and withdrawing from the EU in order to secure our borders and protect the future of our children and grandchildren.
But that sort of choice analysis will never be heard coming from the lips of any BBC person.
Perhaps the BBC could mention that Carney is a Canadian ex employee of Goldman Sachs.
ReplyDelete