Snapshots

Among the instances of BBC bias that I've heard for myself over the past week, a pair of special Trump-related Radio 4 daily programmes stand out for being entirely typical of that BBC radio station and its failings when it comes to impartiality. 

Alan at Biased BBC was worried about both of them, suggesting that the omens weren't good (impartiality-wise) - and he was not wrong.  

Trump: The Presidential Precedents (daily at 1.45 pm) was the less egregious. Given that its presenter, historian Adam Smith, is very strongly anti-Trump on Twitter, it could have been worse. A lot of it was interesting, despite all of the recurring academics being clearly like-minded (left-liberal). However, there was a central theme running through all five episodes (on Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Warren Harding, FDR, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan): and that was race - namely that all of these outsider anti-Washington types were pitching to the angry, white, working class, and that racism played a part in these presidents' electoral successes and is feeding into today's Trumpery....

....much as James Naughtie was suggesting this morning and Newsnight strongly implied last night.

The BBC is clearly going to run and run with this one. 

The other series was America Rewritten (daily at 9.45 am) - a series in which Observer associate editor Robert McCrum discussed the prospect of a Trump presidency with various (left-liberal) writers - at least of couple of whom also write for the Observer/Guardian. 

The point about bias here is that BBC Radio 4 would never have commissioned a right-wing/pro-Trump journalist to interview six right-wing pro-Trump writers. They just wouldn't. 

Nor did they consider it a problem to broadcast a series in which every participant in which was, in some way, strongly anti-Trump (though they reflected that very differently) in the week leading up to his inauguration without any counterbalancing series. 

To give you a proper flavour of this, here - at some length - are extracts from each of them...