Transcript, 'Newswatch' 12 April 2019, Ric Bailey

Ric Bailey

The transcript below takes us into very familiar territory. 

Here again is a senior BBC figure denouncing "slide rules and stopwatches", and then rowing back somewhat when it's pointed out to him that the BBC itself is perfectly happy to use "slide rules and stopwatches" when measuring things like male-female balance on programmes. 

Shaun Ley did well in putting that point but could have gone even further by reminding Ric Bailey that the BBC's own landmark impartiality reviews also used such methods, without complaint from the BBC.

And, of course, as ever, it's all about 'due impartiality' - that most flexible of terms - which basically boils down to 'editorial judgement'...i.e. the very thing BBC critics are most distrustful of yet which Ric seems to be inviting us to accept on trust. 

And what's the main basis for slippery Ric's confidence that the BBC is getting it about right? Yes, astonishingly, opinion polls 'showing' that the BBC is trusted!

Now, I've seen all manner of opinion polls on the matter and they tend to say very different things, depending on how the question is put and who commissioned the polls. For the BBC to be asking us to trust it on impartiality because some polls say lots of people trust it is an argument built on quicksand. 

A lot of those polls also show plenty of 'don't knows' - and, frankly, why would everyone know whether the BBC is biased or not if many merely dip into BBC news and have never really considered the matter?

And this isn't just Ric Bailey garbling the BBC's case here. This really is the BBC's main argument: Trust us because opinions polls say we're trusted. 

Hmm. I think not, Ric.

Also, it's surely also perfectly possible to update the 'binary' Leave or Remain-voting tags of 2016 into something that isn't "arbitrary". You could, say, divide guests into (a) those who would vote Leave again or Remain again in the event of another referendum, or (b) those who want to stop Brexit completely, those who say they want to honour Brexit but want to keep us within the customs union and those who want us to leave the customs union.

Anyhow, here's the transcript:

Shaun Ley: Let's discuss this now with the BBC's chief political adviser Ric Bailey. Ric, thanks very much for coming in to Newswatch on what's turning out to be a very busy time politically. Has Question Time raised this question of Brexit balance with you? 

Ric Bailey: The obligation for all BBC programmes, and particularly for political programmes - including Question Time - is to be impartial - actually, to have due impartiality. And people forget that word 'due'. It means that programmes have got to think about the context in which they are making judgements about impartiality. So if you think of the context of the referendum, June 2016, voters had a very clear choice between Remain and Leave. It was a very binary moment in British politics, as all referendums are. But particularly so with that one. The situation has changed a lot since then. Our obligation as journalists after that vote was to hold politicians to account for that decision, to hold the Government to account. And don't forget, we've had a general election since then as well, in 2017, when people remind us a lot that both the big parties stood on a platform of exiting the European Union. So to define people individually on programmes like Question Time as either Remainers or Leavers, it's not something to ignore, we've got to take it into account, but it's not the be-all and the end-all any more, because people who might have been on the Remain side in 2016 have stood on a platform saying, actually, now we're going to leave. 

Shaun Ley: What you seem to be saying is that there's no actually objective measure of due impartiality, that the BBC decides from situation to situation what due impartiality means. Now, if that is the case, how do you demonstrate to the audience that you are being impartial if you don't have any criteria, objective criteria, against which that can be judged? 

Ric Bailey: I don't think that it's not objective. I think where you've got to be careful is thinking that you can do this by maths and slide rules and stopwatches...

Shaun Ley: (interrupting) Do you do anything of that kind? Because you do do it during elections. You measure the number of people, the number of contributions from political parties. At the moment, you're measuring the number of women versus the number of men contributors. So you are using those tallies in some circumstances. Are you tallying up people who supported Brexit and people who opposed Brexit? 

Ric Bailey: I'm not saying the maths is irrelevant. What I'm saying is it's not the be-all-and-end-all. So we need to be conscious of how much people are on and what their views are, but we don't go back to some arbitrary definition of what Remain and Leave was which doesn't necessarily fit exactly where we are now. 

Shaun Ley: If you don't have those figures, how can you refute the figures that, for example, Charles Moore used? He quoted the Institute of Economic Affairs. 18 months, it monitored, from June 2016 to December 2017 - so, after the general election - Question Time and its radio equivalent Any Questions, and it suggested that 69% of the panelists had been declared Remain supporters during the referendum and 32% had voted Leave. And even if you included in the Leave column the people who had shifted their positions - they had been Remain during the referendum but now support Leave - it was still split 60-40. 

Ric Bailey: You're still trying to put it in those terms of using slide rules and stopwatches, and measures which are not a definition of impartiality. Impartiality, in the end, is about good editorial judgement...

Shaun Ley: (interrupting) That's the BBC's judgement, not the audience's, is what you're saying. 

Ric Bailey: Of course, and that's what journalism is. Journalism is being asked to make those judgements. And, if you like, one of the tests of that is, what does the audience think of that? And still, the BBC is trusted by more people than any other organisation to be telling the truth and to be giving an impartial account of what's been happening in Brexit, which after all is an incredibly complicated political situation. 

Shaun Ley: What advice, then, have you given to Question Time and to similar programmes about how they construct panels at this very sensitive time politically, when we are still aiming to achieve Brexit but it hasn't been delivered? 

Ric Bailey: So that question of due impartiality ... Obviously programmes have a long timescale in which to think about that. It might be over a whole year or a series of programmes where we make sure that views are represented appropriately. There will be moments where that impartiality needs to be judged on a shorter timescale, as now when we're in an election period, and it needs to be judged more carefully around parties as much as Brexit, Leave and Remain. So you're talking about different ways of approaching this. That's why I am not very keen on the word 'balance' because 'balance' implies only two sides, and actually this is much more complicated than that, and there are many different issues you've got to talk about. 

Shaun Ley: Just before we finish, as we record this interview, we know that there are expected to be European parliament elections. Whats sort of challenge does that pose to BBC News? 

Ric Bailey: I mean, it's a big challenge for everybody. We don't even know if the elections are actually going to take place, so we're starting an election period without knowing if people are actually going to vote. So it's a pretty unique set of circumstances. A and I go back to my word 'due'. Due impartiality means we've got to think really carefully about this particular context and make sure that we're thinking carefully about what 'impartiality' means when we have got this European election, in some parts of the UK we've got local elections at the same time. That's a really complicated position against that background of Brexit. 

Shaun Ley: So a lot of thinking to go on over the coming days and weeks. Ric Bailey, chief political advisor, thanks very much. 

BBC opts against the term "second referendum"

Just under a week ago, a question...

...led me to half-complete a post. 

It originally ran as follows:

Hmm. Checking TV Eyes for Radio 4 from 6-9am that morning [i.e. 24 September] and listing all the mentions of "referendum" by BBC reporters and presenters found the following: 

"another referendum" - 6 

"a second referendum" - 3 

"a further referendum" - 3

"a new referendum" - 2 

So that's 3 uses of "second referendum" compared to 11 uses of the (non 'People's Vote') alternatives to "second referendum". Two of the uses of "a second referendum" came in a single sentence by Nick Robinson.

Well, maybe I should have finished it as it turns out that, yes, there really is a BBC editorial policy about it and, yes, "second referendum" genuinely is deliberately being sidelined as a term by the BBC. 

Here's Roland White, writing in The Sunday Times today:

It’s not just Labour and the Tories who are tying themselves in knots over a “people’s vote” — the BBC has joined in, too. Its presenters and news reporters have been ordered to stop referring to a “second referendum” on the grounds that it annoys people who think we’ve already had one. 

“Some people regard 1975 as the first referendum,” says a memo from Ric Bailey, the BBC’s chief political adviser. “Others insist that, even if 2016 was the first vote, calls for another referendum now would be asking a very different question and therefore should not be described as the second.” The accepted terms are “further referendum” or “another referendum”. 

A BBC radio source seethes: “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

It's also absolutely typical of the BBC.

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, Feedback, 20 April 2018

Gavin Allen (not Max Headroom)

(Transcript....with many, many thanks to Andrew. I do like it when other people do transcriptions!)

ROGER BOLTON: Hello is the BBC the (montage of voices) Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit Broadcasting Corporation? We’re devoting most of this last programme of the present run to your criticisms of the BBC's Brexit coverage. And respond to them we have a veritable galaxy of the Corporation's frontline journalists and executives.

NICK ROBINSON: I'm Nick Robinson presenter of the Today programme and formerly political editor of the BBC.

GAVIN ALLEN: I’m Gavin Allen, controller of daily news programmes.

RIC BAILEY: I’m Ric Bailey, the BBC's chief political adviser.

ROGER BOLTON: But we begin with Brexit. Almost two years ago, just under 52% of those who voted in the referendum said they wanted to leave the European Union. 48.1% voted to remain. The Kingdom is still bitterly divided. Time was when the vast majority of complaints to Feedback of Corporation bias came from the Leave side; in recent months though, in part due to a concerted online campaign, we have been receiving many more from Remainers who routinely refer to the BBC as the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation, accusing it of tamely towing the government line. Here's a sample of some of those comments from both sides of the Brexit divide.

SUE KING: I’m Sue King, and I’m from Herefordshire. I'm dissatisfied with and disillusioned by the BBC's coverage of Brexit. In news and current affairs programmes I’m frequently aware of a pro-Brexit bias in subtle ways, particularly in the Today programme. Interviewers let misleading statements by Brexiteers  go unchallenged.

ANDY FRANKLIN: My name is Andy Franklin and I live in Suffolk. The problem as I see it now is that the BBC can deny biased against Brexit until it’s blue in the face, but just about everyone I’ve ever met who voted Leave has come to that conclusion in droves.  Even on the morning after the vote, the very first interview broadcast was some University Professor declaring that all the intelligentsia had voted Remain and all the thickos had voted Leave, a bias the BBC has been peddling ever since.

JONATHAN MILES:  I’m Jonathan Miles, and I’m from Woking.  Given just how important this issue, the BBC really has done little to educate the public on important aspects of how the EU works and hence what are the likely or possible consequences of leaving.

MARGARET O’CONNELL: Margaret O’Connell.  In a democracy you accept the result and move on, it is over.

JULIAN GREEN: Julian Green: ‘Why does the BBC always refer to ‘when’ the UK leaves the EU, when properly, it should be ‘if’ – the BBC are promoting a falsehood.

ROGER BOLTON: Listening to those critical comments are Ric Bailey, the BBC’s chief political adviser, Gavin Allen, controller of BBC daily news programmes, and the Corporation’s former political editor, now Today presenter, Nick Robinson.  Could I start with you, Ric Bailey, and that point Margaret O’Connell makes, she says ‘It’s over, move on,’ and yet you also heard Julian Green say, ‘You’re talking about when we leave, it should be ‘if’.’ Should it be ‘if’?

RIC BAILEY: I think you’ve got to look at the context of what you’re talking about.  There’s been a referendum, one side has won, both major parties have gone into a general election saying that they will put that referendum result into effect.  And, of course, it’s possible that all that may be reversed and the political reality may change, and so both ‘if’ and ‘when’, in different contexts might be entirely appropriate. It’s not for me to send out pieces of advice to individual journalists like Nick, telling them individual words they should and shouldn’t use.

ROGER BOLTON: Alright Nick, would you use ‘when’ or ‘if’.

NICK ROBINSON: I’d use both. And I would use both.  The truth is, a decision was taken in the referendum.  The government is committed to the decision, the Labour Party is committed to that decision, there’s an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons who say that they voted for it, they voted for Article 50. But it is occasionally worth reminding people this could be overturned, if the public changes their mind, if there was a different vote in Parliament, but let’s not treat it as if . . . no one thinks that we’re going to leave in March 2019, that’s the overwhelming likelihood, but people who want something else to happen want is to try and say that.

ROGER BOLTON: And Gavin Allen, when people use the expression, ‘The country has decided’, don’t you feel like saying, ‘Well has it?’ I mean, Scotland has decided they’d like to remain, Northern Ireland say it would like remain, Wales, yes, and England decided that they would like to leave, but to what extent can you say ‘the country has decided’?

GAVIN ALLEN: I think you have to, you know, it was a UK-wide referendum, and it was 52-48 and we have to reflect that.  So, I think that . . . that’s not to say that we won’t hear views in Scotland, he views in Northern Ireland, across the English regions and Wales that are very different to the outcome of that referendum, but it’s no good pretending that, well, hold on, Peterborough voted this way, so you should reflect that in . . . so it wasn’t the country after all.

ROGER BOLTON: Could I ask you Nick, do you think that there is a campaign against the BBC at the moment? Now, we’ve heard Lord Adonis talk about the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation, a number of people have used that phrase, we do seem to be receiving quite a number of emails that appear to be written for people, shall I put it in that way, is there a real active campaign going on to stop Britain getting out?

NICK ROBINSON: I don’t think there’s a campaign, there is a campaign, it’s clear there is. The very use of the hashtag #BrexitBroadcastingCorporation on social media is evidence of a campaign.  Now, people are entitled to campaign, we get campaigns all the time, only the . . . about a year ago, there was a campaign by Leavers to say that the BBC was biased, there was a complaint about my questioning. We get campaigns all the time, but let’s not be in any doubt that when people start using the same words and the same critique, they’re trying to put pressure on us. Now, it doesn’t mean that the things we heard in your introduction from listeners aren’t genuine, a lot of people feel really, really angry about this, they hope that the country will change its mind, and they’re entitled to do that, but we’re also entitled to . . . to say, as I have in number of recent articles, we know what’s going on here, there’s an attempt to try to shift us.

GAVIN ALLEN: But it’s important as well, it doesn’t mean that we dismiss – and I know Nick’s not saying this either – we don’t dismiss the campaign, so the fact that it is a campaign, the fact that we can recognise it as such, doesn’t mean there won’t be sometimes perfectly legitimate points they raise that make us stop and think, well, actually . . . we do need to tweak our coverage on that element, or do need to give a bit more to this, that we’ve underplayed.

ROGER BOLTON: Can I just finish this section, Nick, by asking you, if you’re optimistic, you see the opportunities that the Brexit gives us, if you’re pessimistic, you see all the problems that exist in trying to change our arrangements.  Of course, it’s easier for journalists to look at the pessimistic side. When you’re trying to deal with the opportunities, that’s more difficult to construct a discussion about, do you think that’s a problem that you have?

Nick Robinson (obviously)

NICK ROBINSON: Well, it’s undoubtedly a challenge, I think that’s absolutely right, and the key therefore is to hear from people who can, as it were, see it optimistically.  That’s why you will occasionally get a Dyson on, for example, James Dyson who’s in favour of leave, or the boss of Wetherspoon’s, we will have him on because he is able to say, ‘This is how I see it’, now the difficulty for listeners who are Remainers then they go, ‘Well why is he saying that, why isn’t he challenged?’ Well, we have them on in order precisely to say that there is another way of looking at this to the way that you do . . .

RIC BAILEY: But there was an entire programme . . .

NICK ROBINSON: The problem with predictions, Roger, there is in truth, you can’t prove a fact . . .

ROGER BOLTON: It’s not factual, it’s not factual.

NICK ROBINSON: . . . about someone’s vision of the future. You can’t do it.  It’s not that the BBC isn’t robust enough to do it, you can’t.

ROGER BOLTON: Ric?

RIC BAILEY: And incidentally, there was an entire half-hour programme which Iain Martin did on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago, precisely on that point about the opportunities Brexit, so they are there, and we are, you know, it’s an active part of our journalism.

ROGER BOLTON: Ric Bailey, Nick Robinson and Gavin Allen, thanks for the moment. A little later will be digging deep into the whole issue of balance and due impartiality.

(Moves on to discuss Enoch Powell programme).

ROGER BOLTON: And now back to . . .

MONTAGE OF VOICES: Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit.

ROGER BOLTON: Still with me in the studio is Ric Bailey, the BBC’s chief political adviser, Gavin Allen, controller of BBC daily news programs, and the Corporation’s former political editor, now Today presenter, Nick Robinson.  Now, we’ve already touched on issues of impartiality with respect to the BBC’s coverage of Brexit.  Although it might sound like a contradiction in terms, if Feedback listeners are anything to go by, balance and impartiality are in the eye of the beholder.

JOHN NEWSON: John Newson.  I do hear BBC Radio 4 broadcasting as the voice of Remain, giving others a daily diet of scary stories about how Brexit will harm Britain.  This doesn’t seem very factually based, because Brexit has not happened yet.

FERN HANSON: This is Fern Hanson from Woking. The audience would be much better informed of the facts around Brexit if the BBC moved away from a political balance towards facts balance. In pursuit of a fact balance it should be noted that there is a huge consensus amongst professional economists regarding the negative economic effect of Brexit.  I have never witnessed the BBC demonstrate this disparity in analysis.  Each side get equal prominence and time programmes.

ROGER BOLTON: Well, let me take up Fern Hanson’s point, with Ric Bailey. Should you move towards a facts balance, rather than a political balance?  Is that possible?

RIC BAILEY: Well, facts are just there to be reported, you don’t balance facts, you have facts and you say what they are.  One of the issues with Brexit is that a lot of this is looking forward, it’s about trying to work out what is going to happen, which, by definition is often speculative or it’s something where different people have different views, they are in the end judgements. So you’re not balancing facts as such.  Balance is something which, during the referendum there was a binary choice, between Remain and Leave, and we were very careful to make sure that we heard from both sides, not necessarily equally, but we did represent facts in the sense of saying, ‘Look, the balance of opinion amongst big business is this – but there are other voices’, since then, that binary choice has gone away, because we now have impartiality in the sense of trying to make sure that all those different perspectives . . . is Theresa May now a Remainer or is a Leaver, of course, she is the person who is actually putting into effect that choice. So that idea that there is now a simple choice between Remain and Leave is no longer there.

ROGER BOLTON: But haven’t you put it too simply yourself, because the people voted to Leave, they didn’t vote on the destination, and there is an argument, which one keeps hearing, ‘Why wasn’t the BBC exploring the destinations,’ because people voted, if you like, to jump, but not know what we were going to jump to?

RIC BAILEY: I think it would be hard to say that we haven’t been doing that.  We’ve been giving a huge amount of coverage to Brexit and to the negotiations and to all the different possibilities.  I think we are doing that, Roger, actually.

As it says on the tin...

GAVIN ALLEN: We’ve also talked, we’ve also talked about Canada+++ as an option, or Norway the model, or the Swiss model, I think we are looking at lots of different ranges of outcomes for this.  And also just . . . I think one of the dangers as well, of balance of facts, as if, if only everyone had the core facts they would make the ‘correct’, in inverted commas, decision and we would all agree on it, it does ignore the fact that in the referendum, in any election, there is visceral emotion as well, there are things that are not to do with facts, or that you don’t even hear the facts that you disagree with, it’s a blend of these things.

ROGER BOLTON: Nick, can I bring up an article you wrote for the New Statesman recently, stressing the importance of impartiality, in part in response to an earlier article by the LBC and, at one time, occasional Newsnight presenter, James O’Brien, where he was arguing that media impartiality is a problem, when ignorance is given the same weight as expertise.

NICK ROBINSON: The assertion made by your listener is that if only people knew the facts, we’d know, the assertion made by James O’Brien is that, you know, look, don’t put on someone who is ignorant.  Who decides this?  Who is this person who drops down from the skies and says, ‘This is true, and this is not’ . . .

ROGER BOLTON: Well . . .

NICK ROBINSON: Now, in certain cases it can be, Roger . . .

ROGER BOLTON: Well it can be known about climate change . . .

NICK ROBINSON: No.

ROGER BOLTON: . . . and for example we see a case reported last week, where Ofcom said that one of your fellow presenters didn’t actually do what he should have done which is to say Nigel Lawson was factually wrong about something he claims.  So, people also want to know are you prepared to do that and,  actually, are you prepared to do that about Brexit?

NICK ROBINSON: (speaking over) Goodness, yes. And, and . . . yeah.

ROGER BOLTON: (speaking over) And are you sufficiently well informed, do you think?

NICK ROBINSON: Not only, not only do we want to do that, but the BBC apologised for not doing that in that particular case. Here’s the point though, it won’t often apply to things that passionate Remainers and passionate Leavers see in their own minds as a fact, but in fact are a judgement or a prediction, or an instinct or an emotion.  The BBC’s job is to hear from people who have unfashionable views, and where possible we should always challenge them and if we don’t get it right, and of course we won’t always get it right, you know, I’m here, I got up at 3:30 in the morning, I’ve done about 10 subjects already, occasionally you will make mistakes, then we explain why we didn’t get it right.  But it’s not a conspiracy.

ROGER BOLTON: Well, I’ll just, if I may, wrap up this discussion by asking you to stand back a little bit and just reflect on what you’ve learned over the past 2 to 3 years.  And one of the things that’s struck me very much is the amount of anger out there, and people irritated, fearing that you, all of us around this table are out of touch and have ignored them.  Nick Robinson, does any of that, across to you?

NICK ROBINSON: Oh yeah, you can’t help but listen to the views that we’ve heard on this programme and think, there are people deeply, deeply frustrated and anger . . . angry about it. And I . . . what I take away from this, why I wanted to appear, I could keep my head down and just do my normal interviews is, we think about this, we agonise about it, we debate much more than people often think, and why do I know this is true? Not because I’m virtuous about it, anybody who comes to the BBC from papers, anybody who comes from commercial telly, where I’ve worked, goes, ‘Boy, you spend a lot of time worrying about this’.  I would urge listeners one thing though: we do it with the best of intentions.  Not that we get it right, we don’t always get it right, we sometimes get it wrong but if you complain with some sense that there is a conspiracy, people will tend to put their fingers in their ears, and go, ‘You know what, we know there isn’t.’ If you say, ‘We just don’t think you’re getting this quite right, you’re not reflecting us’, you will be listened to.

ROGER BOLTON: Gavin Allen, have you changed anything as a result of the last 2 or 3 years, in the way you approach the programs and what you’ve told your producers and your reporters?

GAVIN ALLEN: Well actually, funnily enough, one thing, sort of picks up on what Nick’s just said, which is behind-the-scenes, we have all these discussions, endless debates, and one of the things I do think the BBC is probably quite bad at showing our workings.  I think we can’t plead that we are really battling this every day, we’re having long debates, editorial policy discussions, really self-analysing everything we do, and then not come onto a program like this.  I think there’s also, the other thing I’ve learnt I guess, it’s not that we don’t do this, there is a bit of a default in journalism, not just the BBC, in journalism of ‘where’s it gone wrong, who can we get?’ rather than actually people are desperate for an explanation of just what is happening, just explain it to us.  And I do think that we could do more on that as well, as well as the politics of what’s going wrong, on both sides.

ROGER BOLTON: And Ric Bailey, final word from you? A BBC boss in the past once said, ‘When the country is divided, the BBC is on the rack’, are you actually enjoying being on the rack?

GAVIN ALLEN: (laughs) We’re enjoying Ric being on the rack.

RIC BAILEY: ‘Enjoy’ is probably not the word I’d pick out. Erm, but I think it’s true that when you have something as polarised as a referendum, that it does divide opinion in a way which is different from other sorts of elections, I think people understand what impartiality means when they’re talking about normal politics, and the Conservatives and Labour and government and opposition.  I think what happens in a referendum when you are literally given the choice between X and Y, is that people find it really difficult not just to understand that other people have a different view, but they are entitled to put it, the BBC should be there to do it, and the BBC should scrutinise that very clearly.  And I suppose the last point about that is, accepting completely what Gavin says about we should concede when we get it wrong, and Nick has said that as well, and we should be analysing this and making sure we’re getting it right. We also sometimes need to be really robust against that sort of political pressure, and by that I don’t just mean the parties or the government, but I mean campaigns who are trying to influence us because they know that on the whole, people trust BBC, that’s why they want us to change what we’re saying.

ROGER BOLTON: Well, I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for, my thanks to Rick Bailey, the BBC’s chief political adviser, Nick Robinson from the Today programme who’s been up since 3.30, and Gavin Allen, controller of BBC daily news programmes.

Nice try

David Jordan

Two very senior voices from within the BBC bubble - David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial policy and standards, and Ric Bailey, the BBC's chief political adviser - have penned a rare and important joint piece for a somewhat out-of-the-way pro-public-broadcasting media site called journalism.co.uk headlined Impartiality and the BBC – 'broad balance' in a two-horse race. It concerns the BBC's coverage of the EU referendum.

It's a thoughtful piece, well worth reading. And it's refreshing to read: 

We are never keen on the argument that being attacked by both sides shows you must be getting it right. It’s quite possible to be wrong in two different ways, so we always take such criticisms seriously. In any case, few issues only have two sides, so teetering in the middle of the proverbial see-saw is seldom the right place.  

That said, after reading the piece through, what will you find to be its main message? 

(Shall I save you the trouble?) 

Well, get the smelling salts ready folks. Its message can be summed up like this: We think we got it about right. 

(OK, you can put the smelling salts away now. False alarm!). 

Yes, alas, despite all its welcome hand-wringing, it ends up being wholly and depressingly complacent, always giving the BBC the benefit of the doubt and painting the corporation in the most favourable colours. 

Typically, David and Ric dismiss 'stopwatch' monitoring of BBC coverage and place their trust in the BBC's good judgement. 

Ric Bailey

For them it's all down to the judgements of individual BBC editors to measure the 'balance equations' within their particular programmes.

That, of course, doesn't answer the question of how those individual editors are to police their own editorial decisions. 

Nor does it answer the question of how the BBC's coverage overall can be judged. 

To be blunt, I trust stopwatches more than I trust BBC editors. I don't see why we should take on trust the BBC's claims that their editors - people like Ian Katz - are unbiased. I used my stopwatches on Newsnight during the referendum and found it was far from even-handed. 

It's also characteristic of such pieces that our two brave BBC bigwigs give examples of what went right (eg. an interview with Douglas Carswell) but don't give examples of what went wrong.

Plus they place complete trust in their own reality-checking process - something that continues to ring alarm bells with me. The BBC sitting in statistical judgement on hot topics of political controversy, and doing so under the banner of impartiality, is a much more questionable proposition than our two BBC high-ups seem to realise. 

So, nice try guys but it really isn't washing.

"You get impartiality by really good judgement"

For those who didn't see this week's Newswatch, here's a transcription of the interview between Samira Ahmed and the BBC's chief political advisor Ric Bailey. 

Mr Bailey makes the usual case that the BBC is getting it about right and that you can't measure bias with a stop-watch, as well as having a dig at those MPs who criticised the BBC's Brexit coverage, while Samira Ahmed gets confused between Lloyds of London and Lloyds Bank: 

SAMIRA AHMED: Well, let's take a step back and examine the BBC's approach to reporting on our forthcoming departure from the European Union with the corporation's chief political adviser, Ric Bailey. As you heard, there are strong feelings on all sides. Is there something different about Brexit which makes the BBC's commitment to impartiality actually quite a new challenge? 

RIC BAILEY: I think whenever you have a referendum, in particular, opinion becomes very polarised and views become very entrenched and it is very difficult often to appreciate or even value impartiality in those circumstances. That vote is now done, it's over. Leave have won and our job now is to really scrutinise carefully the execution of Brexit, if you like. How the government carries out Brexit, how it carries out the negotiations, to scrutinise not just the government but other politicians. That's why Andrew Neil did all these interviews this week with party leaders across the UK, but also of course to scrutinise European Union officials and politicians in Europe. So our job now is much more intricate and complicated than a simple, sort of, mathematical balance between people who were Remain or Leave. So that journalistic challenge is really very strong. But the audience trust the BBC to do it more than anyone else. 

SAMIRA AHMED: But, as we were saying, we do get a lot of complaints, especially from pro-Brexit viewers, who say the BBC, they feel, is actually rerunning the referendum by always airing what might go wrong or might not work. How do you answer that? 

RIC BAILEY: There will be parts of the community who will have concerns about it and we should report that. I don't think every time we find somebody who is optimistic or pessimistic we should suddenly have to find the opposite view every time. We're no longer in that situation of a sort of mathematical balance. What we do have to do is report it properly, so that the audience understands what the challenges and issues are. But that must be a broad range. It mustn't just be those people who are worried, it must be also those people who think there are opportunities. 

SAMIRA AHMED: We heard a reference to the march last weekend, that the BBC supposedly goes to great lengths to ensure their coverage is impartial. Could you give us an insight into how you do that, how you monitor and measure impartiality? 

RIC BAILEY: In the end we put a lot of obligation on individual editors of programmes to do that and part of what I do is to help them make those judgements. But across time, it may not be one individual programme, it may be a series of programmes, people have to think about making sure they're getting that range of views, and that will be different for different programmes. 

SAMIRA AHMED: Is that partly about a head count, or about measuring air time? 

RIC BAILEY: I think it's really important that we don't pretend that you can get impartiality by the stop watch, or the abacus or a calculator. You don't measure impartiality by maths. You get impartiality by really good judgement, and that's what our editors are trying to do all the time. 

SAMIRA AHMED: People also wonder how the BBC should be reporting a story like, say, Lloyds Bank moving lots of jobs to Brussels. To some viewers, it is an example of emphasising the negative, when that's only one event in a big, often very quickly changing picture. 

RIC BAILEY: I think you have to make judgements on individual stories, and you have to decide what level of prominence they're due, and you have to take advice on that from the business community and so on. So, in the end, editors make judgements about those things. I agree that it's important that when you hear those stories you are also hearing other stories that might reflect something from a different perspective. After all, this is going to go on for a long time. Over the next couple of years of negotiations there will be many examples of this and I think it's quite right that editors should be challenged to think about a wide range of views, not just those stories that you've heard talked about by viewers today. 

SAMIRA AHMED: On the other hand, many viewers have got in touch with Newswatch to say any criticism, any critics of Brexit, are just labelled 'Remoaners' and they feel the BBC is cowed by the political criticism, notably from those MPs who complained to the director-general. Are you cowed? 

RIC BAILEY: One MP actually said this week that relying on MPs to be arbiters of impartiality was a bit like asking Sir Alex Ferguson to referee a home match at Old Trafford. I think you've got to remember where criticism is coming from. It's very important that the BBC listens to criticism and acts on it, particularly if there's evidence, but it's also really important that we're robust in defending the BBC's editorial decisions and its journalism when we get political pressure. Sometimes there will be genuine issues, sometimes there will be political pressure, and it's very important to the BBC's independence that it withstands that. 

SAMIRA AHMED: Ric Bailey, thank you very much. 

BBC comedy, the EU and BBC bias

This week's Feedback featured a clip from the first episode of the 47th series of Radio 4's eternally somewhat-less-than-side-splitting Now Show - a comedic 'team rant' in favour of the EU and against critics of the EU, 

Unlike the recent 'rants' from Andrew Neil and Emily Maitlis, this particular rant was absolutely nothing new. 

And I'm not just talking about the 46 previous series of the Now Show either. I've heard many a pro-EU rant on BBC Radio 4 comedy shows over the years - or, more accurately, many a rant against critics of the EU - especially UKIP supporters and right-wing Conservatives. 

Left-wing bias on BBC comedy programmes is, of course, hardly news. Even Nick Cohen's recent robust defence of the BBC, which saw very little evil in the corporation, contained this brief aside:

And, yes, thank you for raising it, I know, there is BBC bias. I accept that Radio 4 will give us left- and extreme left-wing comedians but never their right- or far-right equivalents.

But, still, on it goes. 

What is the BBC going to do about it, especially as the EU referendum approaches? Cue Roger Bolton and the BBC's chief political advisor Ric Bailey - whose conversation I will now transcribe.

I can't say that Ric Bailey's tone overly impressed me, and he seemed quite evasive to me at times as well. (And all credit to Roger Bolton for pressing him somewhat here). 

You might also note yet another statement from a senior BBC boss of the BBC's outright refusal to carry out statistical studies - even very simple, routine ones - in order to help monitor and regulate its bias. 

Quite why it's so obvious to Ric Bailey that doing such studies, or even doing a basic count, is absurd isn't explained. He simply caricatures the whole idea, making it into a straw man (or several straw men) and repeatedly sneering at it (as you'll see). 

Frankly, if someone were to listen to all episodes of The Now Show over each series from now until the referendum - as people at the BBC will inevitably do, including the show's producers - it's hardly either time-consuming or rocket science to make a quick note of whether there are pro-EU-biased sections or anti-EU-biased sections in each episode, and then keep a tally. If there are, say, 17 pro-EU-biased sections (of the kind we heard last week) across six series between now and the referendum and 0 anti-EU-biased sections, then there's bias! And simple, cost-free counting will have proved it, won't it? 

Anyhow, here's the transcription:

Roger Bolton: Ric Bailey, will The Now Show be told to make anti-EU jokes in future?

Ric Bailey: Look, comedy and satire are absolutely part of what the BBC has to do when it's covering politics and, of course, when it's covering this referendum. The idea that you do that by numbers and that you count the jokes and then have a sort of grading system for how funny they are...you only have to say it to think how ridiculous that is.

Roger Bolton: But will it require some form of balance? You don't say it's got be 5 for, 5 against, but does there need to be some sort of balance?

Ric Bailey: So, the BBC...every genre has to be impartial. And the word that everybody always forgets when you talk about impartiality is the word "due". And that means thinking about the context in which you are doing the programme. So, a referendum clearly is a very particular context. Now, that's why we have guidelines to spell out what those particular circumstances are, what the context is. But also, different genres give you a different context for how you achieve impartiality.  

Roger Bolton: So in comedy is there any requirement for balance over a period over a controversial subject?

Ric Bailey: Well, like most programmes, there's a long way to go before the referendum. It's a topical satire programme, so its job is to take the mickey out of politicians. take the mickey out of what they say and so on. But the idea that you have to do it in one single programme in a beautifully perfectly mathematically-balanced way would be ridiculous. And the word that gets used in the guidelines for the actual referendum period itself is "broad balance". 

Roger Bolton: But over a period there should be jokes about all sides, not just one side?

Ric Bailey: I always take the view, particularly in comedy, the more the merrier. So, the more you are looking at the whole range of politicians, a whole range of views, and subjecting them to your biting wit the better. Of course, if week in week out any comedy show only took lumps out of one side of an argument or only took lumps out of one particular political party that would not be impartial. But those are the judgements that all programmes make, including comedy, day in, day out, and this is no different. 

Roger Bolton: Well, let's suppose it's 10 or 16 weeks, Before the period starts, when we know the date of the referendum but the so-called campaign period hasn't started, nothing will change? No extra requirements on people to be fair, balanced, to be duly impartial?

Ric Bailey: Roger, my view is: the BBC has to be duly impartial about this referendum. It has to be duly impartial about it today. It has to be duly impartial about it the day before the referendum. There is no difference. Part of the idea of the guidelines is not only to be clear about what impartiality means during that referendum period but it's also to set our the parameters so that programme makers, on behalf of the listeners and viewers, can scrutinise the arguments properly. Sometimes often people think, oh, the guidelines are there to stop broadcasters doing things during these periods. Actually it's the opposite. They're there to set out a broad territory in which broadcasters have the freedom and the editorial judgement. That's the first principle. Editorial judgement must dictate how you approach it. 

Roger Bolton: How well qualified do you think BBC journalists are to cover this issue? Because it seems that James Harding, the director of news, thinks they need some mandatory training. He's going to introduce that. Do you think that's a reflection on the fact that, in the past, the journalists have not been particularly well qualified? 

Ric Bailey: Absolutely not. No, I mean...

Roger Bolton: So why might there be training?

Ric Bailey: Before every election I, as part of the guidelines, talk to journalists right across the board about the particular circumstances of any election or referendum. This is a very important referendum and, whereas most of the time there will be a specialist number of journalists who are likely to cover Europe, this is something that's going to....you've already pointed out, it's already in The Now Show. So lots of people who may not normally be covering this sort of story...It will be part and parcel of their journalism for up to two years. Now, it's really important in those circumstances that we know that everybody understands the issues, the arguments and the very particular context of this referendum.