Comment by piltdownman
2 days ago
The BBC has never been impartial to internal concerns - domestic politics in particular. Leveson Inquiry recommendations not being implemented is the tip of the iceberg in relation to the extent of client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-sc...
The thing is, the BBC is incredibly partial, depending on which area of the BBC we're talking about.
BBC News on the web vs BBC News the programme, vs BBC worldwide (which is a seperate org inside the BBC), then there's regional BBC and the prime time talk shows (the hard hitting Andrew Neil and co).
So, when someone says "the BBC is biased against the left" or "the BBC is biased agains the right"; ironically they can both be right, and it's not an indicator of impartiality. It depends on which section of the BBC we're talking about.
And you're totally blind to the bits of the BBC you agree with; you will think those bits are the impartial ones.
The BBC is institutionally biased in two major ways:
* Pro the royal family since it is chartered by them.
* Against Scottish independence since it would lose 10% of its funding.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the national media service being 'pro the nation' (counting the UK as the nation for arguments sake).
That said however they can't make things up, or overtly bury critical stories...but putting a softer slant on them wouldn't be unreasonable.
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I used the BBC just an example. Starmer seems to have the same attitude. If both Farage and Corbyn, and Polanski and whoever is leading the Conservatives and LibDems are attacking me, then I must be super in the middle i.e. I must be so doing it all super right!
I don't think Starmer really knows what he is doing one way or another. The Island of Strangers speech out flaked Farage to the right.
Dominic Cummings had a bunch of interview appearances online. His experience in office when he was working with Johnson (and many Ministers in general) is that they don't actually understand what they can and can't do in the job. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar situation is present under Starmer.
I think we can fairly easily dismiss Cummings' views on anything. He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit, and that the the best team to carry out that out was to be headed by Boris Johnson.
He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
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I mean where is Sir Humphrey Appleby when you need him!
Johnson's incredibly colourful reaction to Starmers trade deal, in that he was 'acting like an orange-ball chewing manical gimp', speaks volumes about the discourse around Starmer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ld3qkz
Hislop is particularly scathing, albeit cynically pragmatic, since Starmers appointment - "“Keir Starmer is the man who likes to sit on the fence unless you don’t like fences and then maybe he can find a hedge, or if you don’t like hedges he’ll find a wall."
“People have suggested Keir Starmer is very boring, but I think that’s partly his superpower, in that being interesting in the way his predecessor was manages to lose you elections.
“You have to be careful when you dismiss people as boring. Everyone thought John Major was boring, but then you had him for two elections.”
> client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
BBC Caught Altering Budget Article to Be More Favourable to Labour - https://order-order.com/2024/11/01/bbc-caught-altering-budge...
When Ivor Caplin, the former Labour MP that, among other things, attacked Musk for talking about Pakistani rape gangs, was arrested for pedophilia [1], this is the article they published - no photo, no name, no party affiliation, and no followup article - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg45y4r0yngo
BBC omits identity of Nigerian murderer from article about how he killed his wife [2,3], making it entirely about "gendered violence" instead. Readers can't make the incorrect inference if you simply withhold information from them.
BBC omits all criticism of Starmer from their reporting on his meeting with Trump [4].
The famous Trump capitol speech splicing: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-revea...
When Farage's private bank account was closed due to his politics, the BBC first simply took the bank's word that this was entirely due to financial considerations. When Farage obtained internal documents of that bank, explicitly saying he met financial criteria for an account, but it was closed despite this due to his politics, the BBC issued a correction article trying to imply his politics were merely "also" considered [5].
BBC uses all-white stock photos to warn about obnoxiously loud phone use on trains [6].
But makes sure to use a racially-diverse cast for the 1066 Battle of Hastings [7].
This is not the only such instance, nor a coincidence, by their own admission: Moffat even talks about the idea he mentions above — the excuse of “historical accuracy” that some people often give to justify an all-white cast — “[W]e’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’” [8,9]
"Piers Wenger said failing to update the classics with diverse characters would be a dereliction of duty" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/24/bbc-drama-boss-d...
They cropped a photo to remove a weapon from a protester: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/bbc-cropping-out-weapon-black-...
They instruct white parents to teach their children about white privilege, and to examine their biases if their toddler has only white friends: https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/articles/zrgcf82
They had and defended a no-whites-allowed internship (despite BAME-workers already being slightly over-represented at the BBC [10]): https://metro.co.uk/2018/01/19/bbc-criticised-for-banning-wh...
They censor their own shows to be more racially sensitive on re-broadcast - without mentioning it until pressed: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/the-bbc-quietly-censo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Caplin
[2] https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/benalmadena-torremolinos...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyw7g4zxwzo
[4] https://x.com/chrismid/status/1950163250852540547 (contains links to full Trump-Starmer meeting and the BBC articles, on the off chance you don't trust a random tweet)
[5] "On 4 July, the BBC reported Mr Farage no longer met the financial requirements for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. The former UKIP leader later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered." - https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66288464
[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce83p1ej8j7o
[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/07/racially-diverse...
[8] https://www.themarysue.com/steven-moffat-on-doctor-who-diver...
[9] https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/moffat-on-diversity-in-doctor-...
[10] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/670266/BBC-advert-white-pe...
I've no idea what Dr. Who, murder-reporting, period dramas or stock photography choices have to do with the Labour party, but I'll pretend you're arguing in good faith and address what I believe to be the point in your copypasta.
The most empirical and robust study regarding bias was performed by Cardiff University in 2013. Its major finding regarded the dominance of Conservative party political sources in BBC coverage; in coverage of immigration, the EU and religion, they accounted for 49.4% of all source appearances in 2007 and 54.8% in 2012.
The data also showed that the Conservative Party received significantly more airtime than the Labour Party. In 2012, Conservative leader and then Prime Minister David Cameron outnumbered Labour leader Ed Miliband in appearances by a factor of nearly four to one (53 to 15), and governing Conservative cabinet members and ministers outnumbered their Labour counterparts by more than four to one (67 to 15).
In reporting of the EU the dominance was even more pronounced with party political sources accounting for 65% of source appearances in 2007 and 79.2% in 2012.
In strand two (reporting of all topics) Conservative politicians were featured more than 50% more often than Labour ones (24 vs 15) across the two time periods on the BBC News at Six
This is evident right up to the 2019 election - BBC Question Time editing out audience laughter at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fumbling responses, and soft-shoeing his ascendancy by excusing him from the tender mercies of Andrew Neil - unlike his opposition.
https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-...
Wait a news channel gave more air time to the current prime minister and his cabinet, the guy and team with the power, than someone else. Consider me shocked!
Have you considered that by choosing different time periods you get different results.
Maybe the BBC bends the knee to whoever is calling the shots, that's what it looks like to me.
Cardiff University is extremely unlikely to be neutral, and a study done more than a decade ago tells us little about the state of the BBC today.
The OP gave many examples but you only need to know one: the BBC broadcast fake footage of Trump created by splicing together different parts of a speech he gave. The parts were separated by more than 50 minutes and they hid the splice by cutting to the crowd. This manipulation of the public only came to light because an internal whistleblower tried to report what happened, then discovered the BBC institutionally supported this kind of video manipulation so blowing the whistle internally was useless. He reported it to the Telegraph instead.
In other words:
• The BBC broadcasts fake news clips.
• It does so deliberately, with the full approval of its board.
• They refused to apologize or clean house.
• They probably do it a lot and get away with it.
That's it. That's the only thing you need to know about the BBC's political bias.
And it's not just them. Channel 4 News broadcast an entirely fake video of Farage during the last election. It framed him by using an actor who was collaborating with an undercover film crew (and the actor was acting at the time). This was proven beyond all doubt and C4 refused to do anything about it. Once again, institutional fraud in service of election manipulation.
There's no real gap between using actors or mid-sentence splices and using AI, special effects or other standard Hollywood tactics. So the idea that British TV news is biased in favour of the right is farcical on its face. Let us know when they're regularly faking videos of Starmer! I grew up in Britain and the state of Britain's institutions is just shameful. It's tin pot third world stuff. British people need to understand that their state owned TV channels are completely unreliable sources to learn about the world from.
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> I've no idea what Dr. Who, murder-reporting, period dramas or stock photography choices have to do with the Labour party
If you believe the most relevant political division in the UK is Labour vs Tory, then it does all seem a bit random.
Your bias is showing…
This is the same BBC that's put Nigel Farage on Question Time more than any other politician
Or frequently gives a platform to the various think tanks of the Tufton St mafia