Penguins and Polar Bears

OMG The Daily Mail, bless them, give so much free content to their website users that people ought to be at least a bit grateful to them, despite everything.

So much content. No paywall. And no licence fee. And certainly no paywall/licence fee collectors.

Today, they've been reporting on immigration matters under the headline: Migrants 'are staying in four-star hotel rooms at £125-a-night on the taxpayer' as Britons struggle to afford spiralling energy bills amid cost of living chaos, saying that “more than 18,000 migrants are staying in hotels across Britain”.

Meanwhile, over at the licence-fee-funded BBC News website, 'blog favourite' Dominic Casciani has a new piece with a very different headline: Asylum seekers: The homes where ceilings have fallen in. 

He writes:

Damp, debris and falling ceilings - a BBC investigation into accommodation for asylum seekers has uncovered serial concerns about housing conditions. Refugee organisations say they hear regularly about properties residents believe are unsafe, and they struggle to get help on a national phone line.

The BBC and OMG The Daily Mail really are at absolute opposite poles on this - though I'm not sure which are penguins and which are polar bears.

The piece by the BBC's Dom C results from “a BBC investigation”. 

Or so Dom says. 

I'm inclined to agree with StewGreen when he writes, over at Biased BBC, that “since the article quotes charity Refugee Action I suspect the report actually comes from them”.

I strongly doubt that Dominic Casciani didn't do too much investigating here, and that he mainly just listened and took notes from campaign groups and talked to one asylum seeker called Adam. 

Could be wrong of course, but that's what it looks like to me.

To conclude then: I don't believe that the Daily Mail is approaching this without a biased agenda. And I certainly don't think the BBC is approaching this without a biased agenda either. 

Only one of them claims to be impartial though. And only one of them extorts a licence fee from the British public. And it's not OMG The Daily Mail. Cue RVW: