Making an introduction

Spot the use of labels - and the non-use of labels here - from Evan Davis on Wednesday's PM.

Well, no one can speak for the whole population of Leavers, but let's talk to Claire Fox, the director of the Academy of Ideas, who is sympathetic to the Leave cause, and political commentator Steve Richards. Very good evening to you both.

Though he does quite a bit of presenting for BBC Radio 4, Steve Richards is a Remainer who wants Brexit scrapped, but - being the BBC - was he ever likely to have been introduced as such like the likes of Evan? 

(Very interesting discussion though).

Is the BBC biased against Jeremy Corbyn?

'Is the BBC biased against Jeremy Corbyn?' was the questioned asked by Roger Bolton on today's Feedback in the light of a three-part Radio 4 series called The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn.

We heard from four listeners:

• My name is Karen Lakin. I listened with interest to 'The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn' this week and I was relieved by the balanced approach of the reporting. It highlighted to me the not-so-subtle misrepresentation of Jeremy. 
• Duncan Shipley, Dalton. Hatchet job drivel dressed up as documentary show. Extremely weak.
• Nick Hyder. 'The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn' is an essential listen.
• Simon Warner. Although Steve Richards did make a worthy attempt to create a balance portrait of Jeremy Corbyn I rather felt as if the programme was light on centrist voices within the party. The usual suspects, like Owen Smith and Margaret Hodge, did stand-up and express a more negative reading of the Labour leader but the programme more generally relied on voices who were in favour of what he was doing - Len McCluskey, John McDonnell and so on.  

So plenty of praise there, including for the programme's impartiality, but also complaints of bias from both sides of the Labour divide - which cancelled each other out in true 'complaints from both sides' fashion. (Very nice for the BBC).

The overall effect (accidental? deliberate in the juxtaposition of self-cancelling voices?) was to make this programme sound as if it actually might have been impartial (as least as far as Labour's factions go). 

What followed was an interview with Steve Richards, transcribed below. It too had the effect of making it seem that The Long March of Jeremy Corbyn is a particularly fine piece of impartial BBC broadcasting (as least as far as Labour's factions go).

But what of the BBC as a whole?

Steve says the BBC failed to grasp the significance of Jeremy Corbyn to begin with. It underestimated him. Only the 2017 election changed that.

That seems true to me, though Brexit has probably had something to do with the fluctuations in the BBC's attitude to him too.

Steve also says that the BBC has been excellent at giving voice to the range of Corbyn supporters, thus changing the political debate....

....which is an interesting idea.

It's an idea that could easily (and mischievously) find itself recast to parody a familiar line of argument from the likes of Samira Ahmed & Co. about Nigel Farage and his (in)famous 31 appearances on Question Time: By so heavily platforming voices from the far-left, the BBC is guilty of normalising them.

I have to say though that I'm personally entirely comfortable with hearing the broadest range of views possible, and don't begrudge Owen, Ellie Mae, Rachel, former Newsnight Paul, Kerry-Anne & Co. their generous season tickets to appear on the BBC in the slightest. The more the merrier I say.

Roger Bolton (a man with a left-wing past) then pursued a fascinating line of argument over how the Left has been accustomed to seeing the BBC as a bulwark to balance out the right-wing press.

I think there's something in that too.

By implication, that's surely also why the further reaches of them are now so constantly angry at the BBC for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about/reverential towards oooh Jeremy Corbyn.

And that's surely why the likes of (far-left) Media Lens - very early, lonely pioneers of this kind of left-wing BBC-bashing - have always singled the BBC out, along with the Guardian and the Independent, for especially intense criticism. They seem to see them as 'traitors' - a soggy, left-liberal 'centre ground' constantly letting the Left down by not being even more biased in their direction than they already are.

(The newer crowd, however, appear more likely to unthinkingly accuse the BBC of being 'Tories' or 'right-wing', being less grounded in intellectual politics than those old-school Media Lens activist types.)

And something similar might well explain the remarkable Lord Adonis/Alastair Campbell double act and their stupendous campaign against the BBC's pro-Brexit (sic) bias.

Roger Bolton has cracked it!

Anyhow, that's more than enough of that. Here's the transcript:

ROGER BOLTON: The series has three different presenters. The first programme was presented by the political journalist Steve Richards, who two years ago was the man behind a previous series called simply The Corbyn Story. I asked him why he felt now was a good time for another programme. 

STEVE RICHARDS: I made a series of three programmes about Jeremy Corbyn at the end of his first year as Labour leader, and it seemed to me that at the end of the first year since the general election there was an equally compelling case to re-visit Jeremy Corbyn. It seems to me he is still living through the most extraordinary story in British politics since 1945 - the rise of this figure who had been on the backbenches now established as a leader after that election, which I consider to be a success for him even though he lost. And so, he is just fascinating and I wanted to follow through that curiosity for a second time. 

ROGER BOLTON: There's a lot of suspicion of though the BBC - not necessarily of you. A lot of emails to us talk about you being extraordinarily fair-minded - but that's not the BBC. I mean there are emails like, "I see the BBC has a whole series now of Corbyn-bashing", "hatchet job drivel dressed up as a documentary show", etc, etc. So there's a great suspicion. Do you think on the whole that the media have been, and the BBC has been, fair to Corbyn? 

STEVE RICHARDS: Well, it depends what you mean by 'fair'. I think at the beginning all media outlets, including the BBC, struggled to quite recognise the significance. That was up until the general election. I think he was viewed in the media through the prism of 'this is all gonna be heading for disaster'. I think since the election there has been a greater understanding of his significance. And the BBC now - and this I think is a healthy thing and one of the consequences of Corbyn - are very good actually at putting up a range of voices who are close supporters of his, and that has changed the political dialogue on the media.  Not surprisingly it did take time. 

ROGER BOLTON: But you'll never satisfy the Left in one way, will you? They look and say the media is biased against it. They look at the Daily Mail, they look at the Daily Telegraph, they look at the Sun, whatever, and, therefore, they look at the BBC, in a way, to counteract the balance. 

STEVE RICHARDS: Well, certainly those who thought my programme was biased against Jeremy Corbyn should listen to it again. I mean, the majority of contributions...Because we were trying to understand him you have to speak to those who are close to him and, therefore, the majority of the contributions were from people trying to shed light on him from a quite sympathetic perspective. But, you're right. The role of the BBC is not counter the Daily Mail. The role of the BBC is to be  balanced and, therefore, you have to include other points of view as as a matter of duty. But also it would be an inaccurate picture to present the current situation within the Labour Party as some sort of harmonious paradise. I mean, that would be wrong. So the BBC has duties of impartiality that are well known but you also got to tell the story as it is in reality. 

ROGER BOLTON: Do you prefer making these sort of documentaries to doing straight interviews, in the sense that a lot of our listeners say a lot of political interviewing has become 'bang bang', 'yes, no', 'polarised positions'? Do you prefer though gradual exposition and exploration of ideas? 

STEVE RICHARDS: I love doing considered political journalism, at a time when politics is so fast-moving, but I think the interviewing is also...I agree with some of those listeners who think it's too much of a sort of shootout at the O.K. Corral style of political interviewing. And I wish in some ways that the interviews we did for the series could be put on a website or something because the interviews themselves, I think, are quite interesting, because if you just have a conversation with these people they engage with you... 

ROGER BOLTON:  But don't you think there's an additional problem here? That those who were operating from outside what was the political consensus need more time to have their ideas expressed or exposed? 

STEVE RICHARDS: I completely agree. And they need to be tested over time. And you have to get through all the cliches about, you know, 'back in the 1970s', you know, in the context of, say, that Corbyn programme. It's much more complicated and interesting than that. And that does take time and it needs space, And, if you've got three minutes you just say to Corbyn or McDonnell, 'You know, so you want to take us back to 1970 with nationalisation?', they'll say 'No, no, we're not. We want to do this, this and this', and it's over. So, yeah. I haven't thought about it like that before but the old consensus was familiar terrain for the interview and the listener, and this is all new, and it needs space. 

ROGER BOLTON: Our thanks to Steve Richards. 

Shyness

Last night's Newsnight ended with a discussion about Mrs May's extremely low-key approach to the media. 

Being Newsnight it was dominated by left-of-centre voices, but was still interesting nonetheless - especially for Steve Richards's insightful-seeming description of the Prime Minister's character and its effect on her approach to the media:

Her approach is really interesting, I think. She, as a personality, is much shyer than Tony Blair, David Cameron. I think she's a shy person. It's quite interesting, in such a public position. I think her media performances are authentically awkward because she is shy. So she doesn't enjoy them. Cameron and Blair, on the whole, enjoyed them. And so it's partly her own reticence. Now she can get away with it with opinion poll leads and an opposition in disarray. But there will be times when it becomes an issue for her. I've got no doubt. 

Have we ever had a shy prime minister before?

Tory former Thatcher minister Sir Malcolm Rifkind...and "another former foreign secretary"

Taking about Steve Richards and BBC bias (as we were)...

Today's Dateline got off to a weird start. Steve Richards of the Independent was playing his usual "lickspittle of the political establishment" role over MPs' pay and expenses and both Roger Cohen of the New York Times and Maria Margaronis of The Nation then started denouncing undercover journalism. All four guest expressed sympathy for Sir Malcolm Rifkind. 'It's a great shame for him and terrible, dishonest journalism from Channel 4' was the general consensus among the profoundly left-liberal Dateline panel. 

Besides the biased weighting of the panel overall, the very odd thing about the programme's coverage of this story was the lop-sided way it was set up. 

If you've followed the Sir Malcolm Rifkind/Jack Straw story this week, can you see any imbalance in presenter Shaun Ley's way of introducing? (and, if you can't, please hurry along to SpecSavers):

...and a former British foreign secretary caught in a media sting insisting he should be allowed to top his inadequate parliamentary pay.

Let's talk about someone else who's been in the headlines this week: Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was one of Britain's most prominent Conservative politicians. He was a cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, rose to be foreign secretary and until this week he chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee. He and another former foreign secretary were secretly filmed pitching for work with a Chinese company. The company was fake, set up by journalists trying to catch out politicians. Now, it's not illegal in Britain for politicians to earn money outside the day job but Sir Malcolm's defence that "I do want to have the standard of living that my professional background, a lawyer, would normally entitle me to have" went down so badly that Downing Street withdrew its support and he's now quitting as an MP. 

Only one politician named. Only one political party named. Only one former prime minister named.

Only when Maria Margonis, several minutes later, mentioned the name "Jack Straw", did Shaun Ley feel the need to clarify that Mr Straw was the other "former foreign secretary" who'd been stung (without naming his party). 

Yes, Sir Malcolm made the most memorable remarks and held a key select committee job, but Jack Straw was, in many ways, a much bigger - and certainly better-known - political beast. Why choose not to mention him (or his political party) by name at the start?

Steve Richards on the BBC

In the light of today's parliamentary report into the BBC...

Steve Richards - the left-leaning former BBC political correspondent who went on to become the chief political columnist for the Independent - has written a thought-provoking piece for the Guardian about the BBC. 

Yes, I can guess what some might be thinking ("Steve Richards...the Independent...the BBC...the Guardian. No thanks"), but - as ever - reading a considered argument which goes against your own point of view can only be a good thing, so please give it a read.

Steve clearly still carries a torch for his former employer (which still employs him from time to time), though he's got some reservations - plus some high ambitions for the corporation:

There is no need for newspapers to explain what is happening if they do not wish to do so. The BBC is in an altogether different position. It cannot make waves by picking a side to cheer for. But in the election and well beyond, the BBC could have a distinct role. It could seek to explain, make sense of what is going on and proclaim this as its overwhelming task.

How does he get to that point? Well, recalling former DG John Birt, he has this to say about charges of BBC bias:

What [Birt] captured particularly well was the wilful misreading of “bias” by the BBC’s critics. There is no conscious partisan bias at the BBC. If journalists want to exert influence to the left or right they do not join the BBC, which is much closer to the civil service in its determined non-partisan approach.

When I was at the BBC I had no idea how my colleagues were planning to vote. I discuss little else these days with my fellow columnists. But of course the huge constraints can be frustrating for BBC journalists. They read the newspapers and the Twitter debates and want to be part of the action. As a result there tends to be a bias in favour of the latest political fashions as long as they cannot be defined as “left” or “right”.

For Steve Richards what bias there at the BBC is manifests itself in following "the media fashion". The newspapers set the ball rolling, and the BBC follows. 

The historical example he cites (from the time when he was reporting for the BBC, in the early 1990s, was the way the BBC joined in the fashion for presenting John Major as being "hopelessly weak". The Labour-supporting columnist now thinks the latest fashion is to portray Ed Miliband as "useless", and that the BBC is, again, following the newspapers. 

What the BBC isn't doing, and should be doing (according to Steve Richards), is going beyond what the rest of the media are doing and explaining. 

Instead of going along with the fashionable "cartoon" of John Major as a weakling or of Ed Miliband as goofy - or of Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind as "cartoon characters" ("one moment senior respected ministers and the next a couple of greedy villains") - the BBC should be explaining why John Major's position was difficult (in economic and parliamentary terms), or why Ed Miliband's position is difficult (the legacy of the Blair-Brown feud), or what the Jack/Sir Malcolm story tells us about what we expect from our elected representatives. These are things Steve Richards thinks the BBC tends not to do as much as it should. 

What he feels the BBC needs is "some bias in favour of understanding": 

More ambitious peak-time current affairs, longer sequences in some bulletins for a single issue, discussions that are allowed to breathe.

This Birtian "appetite to explain and analyse" is, he argues, rather lacking at the moment: 

Instead, TV reported one damned event after another, as one historian wrongly described the writing of history. No connections were made or context explored; pictures drove the story, the so-called human interest story topped others, the vox pop was hailed as giving space to real people and panels of public figures or pundits were put together to provoke wholly predictable clashes.

*****

There's a lot to unpack there, isn't there? But how to unpack it?

Take the dodgy ad hom route that a pro-Labour, ex-BBC man would say that, wouldn't he? Or that Steve Richards has long been the lickspittle of the political establishment, its most doughty media defender (even during the Expenses Scandal)? Or that Labour supporters tend to think that - despite the odd grumble about how, say, the BBC reports Ed Miliband?  

Or make the 'populist' point that the popular fashions in the media - that John Major was weak, Ed Miliband is useless, and Jack and Sir Malcolm a pair of less than entirely honourable gentlemen - might, perhaps, have a strong basis in reality? And that a publicly-funded broadcaster attempting to explain - or, as many might see it, explain away - such things might not prove very convincing?

No, maybe it's better to  argue that, though some of the BBC's critics do advance the "conspiratorial" point that there is conscious, partisan bias at the BBC (though it's always been very hard to prove that, except in certain isolated cases), there remains an alternative, more easily demonstrable kind of bias: bias by groupthink, borne of like-minded people working together.

This is the kind of bias described by those many BBC presenters/reporters, past and present, who've admitted the BBC is basically stocked with liberal-minded types, by the BBC senior managers who've 'fessed up to the BBC's biased past (especially on subject like immigration), by that BBC internal survey which showed a massive self-declared bias towards a 'liberal' rather than a 'conservative' way of looking at things), etc.

In party political terms, where (pace Steve Richards) the BBC might very well be consciously aiming at not being partisan, that's the kind of bias that might be measured by 'unconscious' things like how often, on average, BBC interviewers interrupt politicians of a particular party. If (on average) they interrupt politicians of certain parties much more than others then a bias (borne of groupthink) may very well be discerned (as it was in 2009-10).

Anyhow, those who tend to blog about BBC bias, or comment on blogs about BBC bias, plus the vast hordes of people who comment below the line at the Spectator, Telegraph, Times, Daily Mail, Breitbart and, these days, even at the Independent and Guardian (and, if they can get away with it, on the BBC website), probably won't be persuaded by Steve Richards.

And they are even less likely to warm to his idea that the BBC should take on the role of the nation's 'explainer' of politics - given that that very role is one such people think the BBC already occupies, to the detriment of the nation.

I can see some truth in what he says about how the BBC follows the media - and not just the Guardian. In terms of investigative reporting, it's definitely more a 'follower' than a 'leader'. And it rarely breaks major stories. The few it does break seem to be handed to it by interest groups (charities, lobby groups, campaigners, think tanks, etc).

And I can see a good deal of truth in his charge that the BBC has become more concerned with "one damned event after another" these days, plus his charges about them having pictures drive stories, having human interest story top others, and endlessly using pointless vox pop, and gathering together panels of public figures or pundits were who put together to provoke wholly predictable clashes.

But the BBC is still - despite what Steve says - fully capable of 'explaining' a story, of making 'connections' and 'exploring context', as this week's staggeringly biased BBC reporting of that Today survey into British Muslim opinion shows.

The BBC tried so hard to present it as showing an overwhelmingly positive overview of Muslim opinion. Other media outlets, like the Times, spun the same story negatively. And several left-leaning commentators, from Dan Hodges to David Aaronovitch, sided with the Times.

Conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious, the bias over the BBC's reporting of this story was - to my mind - clear. An angle was being advanced with considerable vigour - and a deeply contested one at that. And if that's Steve Richard's idea of Birtian 'explaining' then please count me out.


Further reading: 

Dan Hodges - Over a quarter of British Muslims have sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo terrorists. That is far too many

Stephen Glover - Their survey of British Muslims delighted the BBC: In fact, it contains some profoundly chilling findings

David Aaronovitch - These Muslim delusions are a danger to us all

Maajid Nawaz - Why the survey of British Muslim attitudes is so profoundly disconcerting

National Secular Society - New poll shows significant minority of UK Muslims support attacks on Charlie Hebdo