BBC biased or incompetent?

Boris Johnson pulled interview after criticism by head of news, says Channel 4. One other journalist said that by doing so Johnson, who had been accused by Dorothy Byrne of avoiding interviews, had in effect , "shot himself in the foot"

All the news channels in this country have been biased for years. BBC is the worst. I actually stopped watching. I go online to read news. The only television news I watch is Euronews and occasionally Channel 4.

I am no supporter of Farage but perhaps he kept being invited onto QT because he gave what newspaper editors call "good copy". He would answer questions, whether people liked the answers or not. How many party notables (from all parties) have we seen dodging questions and merely repeating the party mantra

Does it have to be “either/or”?
Both, all too often it seems.

So POGS, could you respond directly to Varian's '"How can anyone possibly excuse the BBC inviting Farage onto QT 29 times before the referendum ."'

why would they have invited him so often. Or Isobel Oakeshott for that matter, again and again?

Jura

"So POGS, could you respond directly to Varian's '"How can anyone possibly excuse the BBC inviting Farage onto QT 29 times before the referendum ."'

why would they have invited him so often. Or Isobel Oakeshott for that matter, again and again?"
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Another ' So POGS' start, I am noting this on a regular basis.

Jura I answered the question varian posed ' directly' . I refer back to my 4th August posting to varian the following :-

"How can anyone possibly excuse the BBC inviting Farage onto QT 29 times before the referendum ."
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You gave the impression Farage had been on Question Time 29 times prior to the Referendum as though it were an advantage to promote the UKIP party and sway the referendum result.

I am reminding those who did not see the original Huffington Post article it was a number gained by delving back 6 years earlier to 2010.

It puts a different slant on things because using the referendum is a tad disengenuous as it was 6 years after the Huffington Post collected it's data.

Happy to be corrected."
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In other words the statement about the referendum was bunkum, we did not know in 2010 there would be a Referendum in 2016.

Conveniently using figures going back as far as 2010 sound plausible if there is no mention of that fact or unless you read the article. Stating ' before the Referendum' was set to give the impression the figures were fairly current, during the Referendum campaigning. A good ploy but a tad disingenuous, in my opinion. .

If I were trying to be clever I could say/ask why did the B B C Question Time programme have the Tory / Pro EU Ken Clarke on the show 59 Times but I wouldn't because it has no bearing to the Referendum which is the focus I take issue with.

I will happily repeat another point. The QT panel usually consists of 3 left, 2 right wing panelists. It should either have 2 from left and right or 3 from left and right. Then you have the issue of where politically Dimbeby and Fiona Bruce seem to sit, that would no doubt cause another argument.

The figure of Farage on QT relates to the years up to and including 2016. They were not collected in 2010 but include his appearances in that year and between 2010 and 2017.

2016 ( not 2017)

The point is that during these years leading up to the fraudulent referendum the only other MEP invited to speak on QT was Tory ultra-brexiter Hannan ( no-one is talking about leaving the single market). He appeared once, Farage 29 times. MPs from other parties appeared but NO MEPs, as has been previously explained.

Matters relating to the EU should have been discussed by MEPs from all parties on QT but that clearly did not suit the agenda of the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation.

Indeed. As for Isobel Oakeshott- the word traitor has been bandied around far too much in last few years. But in her case, it applies 100%. And yet, she was still invited many time on QT after her rôle in Cambridge Analytica and Aaron Banks was discovered- and motivated partly for her Brexit views, but also for money, for a book.

The lunchtime news from the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation featured a series of "vox pops", as usual involving Leave voters.

Typical comment "we should just get on with it, it's dragged on too long and we need to get it over and concentrate on other things"

Naturally, the BBC don't challenge any of these statements and explain that far from "getting it over" a catastrophic no-deal brexit, or indeed any kind of brexit, would only be the beginning of years and years and years of wrangling over trade negotiations and chaos, and inevitable bitter arguments about who to blame.

For anyone who thinks "getting on with it" is the same as "getting it finished", it needs to be pointed out that if you are, like so many of us are "fed up of brexit", the only way to actually put a stop to this nonsense is to Revoke Article 50.

If only the BBC were not so hellbent on promoting brexit, they might be prepared to explain this.

I must have been watching a different news coverage from the BBC as it has had quite a diverse section of people being interviewed, as with Sky News.

I have been watching Sky and BBC news on the 24/7 T. V coverage all day so maybe the time allocated BBC News coverage has come over differently?

The BBC is very biased on a variety of topics they seem to decide on an editorial line in the same way that a newspaper does.
The difference is that the majority of viewers believe that the BBC is unbiased which it is not

I find this debate interesting. I, and many others I know of believe the BBC to be completely right wing biased. (QT, Laura Kuenssberg) to name but a few examples. Whereas others on here seem to be convinced they are Left Wing. Perhaps they really are 'on the Fence' - I still veer towards it having a Right Wing bias though.

I think the BBC is very pro-brexit, and has been very keen to promote Farage for years. I think its political stance is firmly right-wing as so many of its political commentators and interviewers are obviously Tories.

However I think the BBC could also be seen as socially liberal, which annoys all the "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" reactionaries and hence leads to accusations of a left-wing bias from them.

We should not just accept this and agree, as I have heard their spokesmen claim that one type of bias cancels out the other and being accused of bias from both ends of the political spectrum proves they are impartial. It does not.

In Today's edition of Politics Live ob BBC2, Jo Coburn allowed Boris Johnson loyalist Nick Gibb to repeat umpteen times the fallacious argument that MPs who are trying to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU with no deal were making it more difficult for Johnson to get the EU to offer a "good deal". If Jo Coburn was not prepared to question the truth of that statement, she should at least have shut him up when he repeated it again and again and again.

I think this shows us a number of things - that the Johnson supporters have no decent arguments, that Nick Gibb is obeying Cummings instructions to repeat, repeat, repeat (which worked at the time of the fraudulent referendum) and that the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation is still indulging this nonsense.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0008dkk/politics-live-politics-live

Right wing Alison Fuller Pedley who chooses audiences on Question Time is right wing and almost fascist. Britain First, the EDL and various other things have been liked by her.
^Far-right Islamophobe Douglas Murray is “always a great panellist” on Question Time, Pedley writes. She “likes” far-right journalists Melanie Phillips and “shock jock” Jon Gaunt. In May, she “liked” a clip of Nigel Farage obliquely excusing violence. The same month, she encouraged Brexiteers “Better Off Out” and UKIP South Leicestershire to join a Channel 4 audience. In 2008, she invited two Republican groups to apply for a US Question Time audience. It seems these right-wing groups are the only ones Pedley publicly contacted*.

None of this takes place in a vacuum. Recent Question Time audiences seem angrier and more Europhobic, a fact that has not passed viewers by. “I haven’t been able to watch it due to the absolute absurdity of the audience”, writes one reddit user – “very extreme nowadays and not just your average opinionated types who just want to vent. There’s no nuance to it anymore, it’s all highly polarising rhetoric.” When Question Time aired from Boston (where Pedley invited the local EDL) people tweeted: “Since when was the agenda on #bbcqt set by the National Front?” “#bbcqt is the worst I’ve ever seen, can’t watch any more. Vile, racist and disgusting #switchingoff”.

Oh for Heavens sake!
The BBC is not weighted on the side of Brexit at all and presents views from both sides.
Always best to watch a variety of tv news though.

trisher ...that is nicely balanced out by many episodes of the programme having mainly left wing audiences, or if not mainly (in numbers) then they shout the loudest.
I expect lots of people won’t watch it anymore citing those
Noisy left wingers, hissing, booing and generally acting in an ignorant manner.
Both sides do it!

Agreed Lemongrove- if you read left wing and right wing stuff in turn and know people’s biases, you can allow for it and find the middle ground.

I agree that QT has been more right wing lately, but maybe they are just trying to redress the balance because they used to be famously left wing. Now the boot is on the other foot.

lemongrove the audience at QT is supposed to be balanced for each episode. There is no evidence of Pedley ever contacting left wing groups.

lemongrove; did you actually READ what trisher had written? Also, going right wing from left wing doesn't redress the balance. To redress the balance surely one needs to make sure that the audience is balanced and not extreme.

I must mention here the interviews conducted by Evan Davis during the 2015 general election. He interviewed each party leader in turn, which were mostly okay. However, his interview of Nigel Farage was just beyond belief. He interrupted every reply with another question (or rather accusation) after about three words. He was aggressive and extremely rude. His questions were not even relevant to the election. I fully expected Farage to walk out, I really did, but he remained in his seat and made it through. I would have walked out! I have never seen an interview like it. Evan Davis showed an extreme left wing bias and clearly hated Farage. The next evening he was most polite to Nicola Sturgeon for her interview. I complained to the BBC (a first!) and got the usual guff back.

Are you a Farage fan by any chance Chestnut?