The British Brexit Biased Brilliant Betraying Boorish Brazen Bought-off Broadcasting Corporation

There’s a persistent belief among many that the BBC is inherently biased. That’s nonsense.

No group the size of the British Broadcasting Corporation can be absolutely impartial at all times, but to claim that the largest broadcasting organisation in the world has deep-rooted and deliberate bias is a bit off.

BBC or Stalin?

A royal charter and 95 years...all down the pan?

Impartiality is one of the BBC’s core values, and has been since they were invented as a radio network in 1922. The Royal Charter - which lays out the principles and way they’re run - opens with the importance of neutrality. It's physically is built into the BBC's constitution. But does that mean anything?

In clause 3 of 72, the BBC demands absolute independence

A lot of people would say 'no'. The most common anti-BBC claims are made by the tabloid newspapers (Mail, Sun, Express, etc.), and they say the 'beeb' is anti-Conservative and anti-Brexit.

The flaw with these claims is that the papers are owned by a pro-Conservative, pro-Brexit media tycoon: Rupert Murdoch. Obviously, he's biased against neutral news. But also, he doesn't like the BBC.

Pro-Tory...

He wants his media empire (including Fox, Sky, The Times and the Mail) to control all news broadcasting so he can make more money. As long as the BBC is powerful, it'll attract his audience away, and keep revenues low. 

So there's a hidden agenda in their anti-BBC-ness?

A bigger flaw with the way people attack the BBC is that they all have different issues with how it reports. 
A quick search on Twitter and hundreds of people believe the BBC is anti-Tory (Conservative) and hundreds more believe it’s pro-Tory. 
Same again on Brexit (although quite a few more believe it’s anti-Brexit).

Or anti-Tory?

There's often a basic ignorance of facts. The Sun went crazy over the BBC inviting 'vocal defenders of the EU' to its proms. This includes 'remain-supporters' Theresa May, Phillip Hammond, Jeremy Corbyn, and Sadiq Khan. The Sun sees this as further proof the BBC is deeply anti-Brexit. 
OR, maybe they were invited because they’re three of the most important politicians in the country...?

These arguments are often poorly researched, have a hidden agenda, and can be disproved or explained easily. The BBC is built on rules, regulations and principles that means it’s very hard to be consistently biased.

Laura Kuenssberg

The first female political editor at the BBC

This is Laura Kuenssberg. She’s the BBC’s Political Editor. And she comes under more abuse than probably any other journalist nationally. 

She had to have a bodyguard at Labour’s party conference in autumn, and has faced online petitions demanding that she's sacked.

All this because she's apparently biased.



Depending on who you believe, she's either an arrogant Conservative, disgusted by Corbyn, or an anti-Tory, out to stop Brexit.

Text is too small to read, but it's slamming her coverage
of the Labour manifesto

While bloggers and the Labour Party yell at her for being against Corbyn, the newspapers defame her for apparently attacking anything vaguely right-wing.    

I can't believe she's pro-Tory: her most recent blog posts on the BBC website have been over Brexit, and she’s definitely not supportive of the government. A lot of her articles remind us of the weakness of the Conservative majority: ‘Theresa May’s government...[has been] folding, budging, or making new promises to avoid losing actual votes’. 

Daily Express attacks an interview with Theresa May

And the weakness of Theresa May’s government, and their incompetence at Brexit negotiations, is fact, and Kuenssberg is only reporting the news in saying so.

On the other side, her distaste of Corbyn may be explained by the fact that she’s more used to working with more efficient, personal, MPs. 

Corbyn, for all his strengths, is neither efficient nor personal, despite his show persona. She got into hot water over editing an interview with him poorly, but the response from his supporters and the Labour Party has been disproportionately aggressive. Many question whether, as a woman, she's suitable for the role.

Angering both sides is very common in journalism. That's what journalists do, after all; they pose annoying questions and uncover uncomfortable reports. It's clearly a measure of her success and tenacity at balanced reporting that she won the Press Gazette's ‘Best Journalist of the Year’ award in 2016.

She said that she would ‘die in a ditch for BBC impartiality’. That says it all, really.

I honestly can't believe that the BBC is biased. It works so hard to maintain press impartiality, and in doing so has infuriated all sides of the political spectrum. 

Maybe it's the critics who are biased; do they need to learn some hard truths about their own point of view?