Monday 12 March 2018

A Tale of Two Broadcasters


Jeremy Corbyn went down badly with some (possibly many) on his own side today, as well as with the Conservatives, for what a lot of them saw as ill-judged party-political point-scoring over the Russian poisoning affair. 

Curious to see how the BBC and Sky had reported this, I put him name into TV Eyes and found that Sky News have been going on about him all evening (and not in a good way) while the BBC News Channel has barely touched on his little local difficulty, except for a few very fleeting mentions from the likes of Chris Mason. 

It's a striking difference. 

Just as striking are the two online reports about this part of the story. Sky's report Corbyn infuriates Labour MPs with Russia response focuses primarily on the ire expressed against him by Mr Corbyn's own backbenchers while the BBC News website's report Row over Corbyn spy response focuses primarily on the ire expressed against him by the Conservatives. 

The two articles are like mirror images of each other, the Sky one repeatedly undermining the Labour leader, the BBC one repeatedly undermining his critics, both of them through their choice of language and their overall framing of the story. 

The same story, such different treatments of it; suggesting bias.

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