The BBC understands

I was reading some criticism of the BBC's reporting of Lord Frost's resignation from the government and checked out how BBC One's late evening bulletin reported the Mail on Sunday's scoop. In their main headlines, the BBC said:

The BBC understands the Brexit minister Lord Frost has resigned from the Cabinet. It's believed Lord Frost, who's led negotiations with the EU, stood down over the political direction of Boris Johnson's Government.

The BBC ''understood'' it through reading it in the Mail on Sunday.  

They are quite shameless.

Also, via BBC reporter Damian Grammaticas, we got the return of an old favourite - the BBC's favoured use of ''hardline'' to describe Brexit supporters in the Conservative Party:  

He helped Mr Johnson win the backing of hardline Brexit supporters in his party, advocating a tough approach to Brussels.

Says hardline BBC reporter Damian Grammaticas.

"Injecting a bit of realism"

Another beauty?

And, on a similar front, the following report from Damian Grammaticas on tonight's BBC One early evening news bulletin reported the remaining EU's position whilst framing it in terms of Angela Merkel's talk of British "illusions". Damian then added, without appearing to quote either directly or indirectly, and thus giving the impression that he was 'telling it how he sees it'...:

What EU leaders are most worried about is what Angela Merkel has called "illusions" on the British side about what can be achieved in Brexit negotiations. This process today is about injecting a bit of realism into the debate: The EU's red lines. 

Then came a clip from a Mrs Merkel press conference where our Damian, like Chris Morris before him, was shown NOT exactly asking the German leader tough questions from the opposite standpoint (the British pro-Brexit standpoint): 

What illusions do you think some in the UK harbour?

Further EU points followed, from EU spokesman and Damian himself, all pointing to the difficulties for the UK. Anyone waiting for a British pro-Brexit riposte or some points from the BBC reporter putting the counter arguments (for the sake of balance)...

(...eg. this kind of thing:

)

.... will have been left waiting. It was the EU's case, presented as "firm" and "very clear", all the way.


P.S. Though ITV's coverage this evening reported much the same thing, they did at least cite the views of Theresa May and David Davis and described the EU summit as "a carefully staged show of unity" - and that's a good deal more than the BBC did. 

And the winner for 'Most Biased BBC Report' is....

Spot the UK's contribution to the EU in the BBC's chosen graphic (clue: look to the right of his shoe)

Well, ten minutes after posting that piece about BBC Europe correspondent Damian Grammaticas's Remain-biased piece for Monday's BBC One News at Six his latest report popped up on tonight's BBC One News at Six...

...and I think we may now have the winner in 'Most Biased Report in the BBC's EU Referendum Coverage' category.

I know it's an early call but I really can't see anything topping it over the next six weeks. It was that biased.

It discussed the UK's contribution to the EU - a highly controversial issue. And what did impartial BBC Europe correspondent Damian tell us? 

Well, firstly, he showed us a dramatic graphic showing the huge amount of money we make as a country each year (UK GDP 2014 - £1,817 bn) and then total government spending (£747 bn). One and a bit columns of huge numbers of coins stacked up next to him. The graphic then shed two tiny coins to show us our EU contribution (£11 bn). It make it look like mere chicken feed (or sparrow feed).

[Of course, comparing our EU contribution to the totality of the UK economy (and the totality of UK government spending) is the most extreme comparison imaginable. Of course it will make our EU contribution seem tiny. It makes nearly all UK government (i.e. UK taxpayer) spending seem tiny.]

A second graph then showed us that we put in way less than Germany and France (and even Italy). Ah, but we put more in that Malta: so a third graph was then used to show that "we pay by far the lowest measured by our share of national income" [his emphasis].

Why this "special treatment"? In two words (Damian's own two words): "Maggie Thatcher".

He called the rebate our "discount".

"What happens to our cash?" he then asked. More than half "comes back to us", he answered, "to be spent in the UK". He then listed all the wonderful things the EU spends this money on here before saying:

If we controlled this money we could spend it on other things. But only by depriving these of funding.

And by 'these' he meant the list he'd just given: farmers, "poorer regions, roads, ports, businesses", "research grants, universities, companies like Rolls Royce".

. 

Would you want to "deprive" those things of funding by voting to leave the EU? That was very clearly the unspoken question Damian Grammaticas was putting to BBC One viewers here. 

After all this there's still the UK's net contribution to the EU of £5.5 bn [half of that 'chicken feed' figure he quoted earlier]. Damian quickly told us that we're one of 10 countries that pays more in that we get back [so we're far from alone] and that Germany and France pay more than us anyhow. The money goes to Europe's farmers, poorer regions and Europe-wide projects - infrastructure, energy, "spent in space even - European rockets and satellites" [and who doesn't like European space missions involving the UK?].

And this tiny £5.5 bn figure? 

Essentially it's our fee for entry into Europe's single market, with which we do more than 40% of our trade.

Who wouldn't want to pay such a tiny amount to get us that much, and as well as saving Rolls Royce? 

Frankly, my Biasometer was going off the scale by this point. But then came Damian's closing comments and it exploded. The BBC man - despite a pretence at even-handedness - played the 'uncertainly card' (the ace in Project Fear's pack):

But all these figures could be dwarfed by what might happen to our economy if we quit the EU. If it grew a lot or shrank a lot the impact either way on our government's finances and on us all could be huge.

And that was how it ended.

******

As always, I'm very willing for people to patiently explain to me why this isn't an extremely biased piece of BBC reporting (perhaps the most blatant piece of BBC pro-Remain bias so far). Please do so if you can.

As it is, even after all these years of writing about BBC bias, I'm frankly astonished that the BBC dared to put something so biased out on their main early evening TV news bulletin. 

Another BBC primer

As per David Keighley at News-watch...

Who's this, giving us an introduction to the EU? (there's a small clue in the above photo!):

The EU, as it says on the tin, is a union, a club, more than half a century old, now 28 nations.  But how big is it?  China is more than twice the size – so too in the United States of America. But compared to America, the EU’s population is far bigger, and its combined economies rival the US. The EU is the world’s biggest single market, people and goods, money and services flowing freely. And there’s the euro – now used by 19 nations and more than 300 million people. To make this market work, EU countries have removed some borders and pooled some decision-making. So who wields power? National leaders do, they gather regularly to take big decisions jointly, such as on the migrant crisis and set the EU’s priorities. Government ministers from each country do – they meet their counterparts every month, when they’re coordinating economic policy, it’s the Chancellor, George Osborne who goes. They, together with the elected European Parliament approve or reject any new laws. 10% of its members are from the UK. And to keep the EU running, are 55,000 civil servants. The UK government employs six times the number.  Most of the EU’s civil servants work for the Commission. It’s independent of governments, draws up the laws, makes sure countries follow them. The European Court rules on any disputes and the Central Bank manages the euro. So what does the EU govern? Well, it has sole power to strike trade deals, makes competition rules like capping mobile roaming charges and fixes fishing quotas. The EU shares with member states the power to act in areas like the rights of workers and consumers, protecting the environment. And its powers are growing. It oversees banks in countries that use the euro, and monitors levels of national debt and deficit in all EU nations. Helps coordinate border controls, has a bill of rights for EU citizens, embassies around the world, even peace-keeping troops. So this union is economic, but political too, growing and changing all the time.   

Given that he's saying - in contradiction to those who oppose the UK's membership of the EU - that it's national leaders who "wield power" in the EU rather than the unelected EU Commission, and that, with the elected EU parliament, they approve and reject all laws, I'm guessing it must be some pumped-up Remain campaigner. (David Cameron? Alan Johnson?) 

Plus this speaker keeps emphasising the UK's big role in "wielding power" in the EU. (So is it perhaps George Osborne?) 

Well, whoever it is says the much-criticised EU bureaucracy is merely there to keep things running and, besides, it's much smaller than the UK's very own bureaucracy - so that's all right then! (Peter Mandelson, maybe?)

Every the Commission does sounds benign. It's "independent of governments" (which is nice). It does things that might please right-wing people and left-wing people, such as "capping mobile phone charges", "striking trade deals" and "protecting the environment". 

Sounds great, doesn't it? Who could object? (even if it sounds like pro-Remain campaign material too!)

And as for the many criticisms of the EU? Well, there's nothing about those here. Nothing about the EU Commission being the unelected law-makers of the EU. Or about the downsides of those "fishing quotas". Or anything negative frankly. It's all nice and positive (just as campaign material should be)...

...except (expected punchline alert!)...

...it's not a pro-Remain campaigner, it's the BBC's Damian Grammaticas and a piece of his that's been all over the BBC in the past couple of days (well, BBC One news and the website at least).

It appears to be only the first of his reports on EU referendum issues. God knows how biased the rest of them will be after this first effort!

Thugs

One on the complainants on this week's Newswatch raised a similar point to one made by someone at ITBB a few days back. 

It concerned the reporting of Damian Grammaticas from a far-right protest in Brussels, including this passage from one of his pieces:

Police reinforcements arrived. Officers here are overstretched already by the terror alerts. The riot squad moved in. There were cheers. The thugs beat a hasty retreat.

The point made by the Newswatch viewer was: 

Your correspondent describes the protesters as 'thugs', which shows a bias and opinion that should not be expressed by a neutral news provider. The protesters may have a view not shared by the majority, but this terminology does the BBC no favours when reporting what should be a factual account of events.

The point made here was:

Interesting use of words by Damian Grammaticus on BBC News. Several times he referred to "thugs" from the far right coming to disrupt commemoration in Brussels. I've no problem with that description, given their behaviour was thuggish. But when has he or any other BBC reporter referred to Islamists or Leftists involved in similar scenes as "thugs". Never I think. In fact the BBC has a problem with even uttering the word terrorist a lot of the time - preferring "gunman", "militant" or "guerilla". There was a far worse event in Pakistan today - in which scores of mostly Christian children were deliberately murdered by Islamist butchers, but no such epithets were cast their way.

And that is surely the point. It's all very well for Damian Grammaticas to call white, right-wing thugs "thugs", but you won't hear him call Islamists or Leftists names like that.

More broadly, why is it acceptable for a BBC reporter to describe far-right Belgian protesters (if that's what they all were) with such a "pejorative" term when, famously, (a) the BBC opposes calling terrorists "terrorists" because it contains a non-neutral "value judgement", and (b) when Lord Hall refuses to allow the BBC to call Islamic State 'DAESH' on the grounds that it's a "pejorative name" and that, by seeing to take sides against IS, it "would not preserve the BBC's impartiality"?

In the words of that Jacobean play, It's A Mad World, My Masters, isn't it?