The Beeb's impartiality during the EU referendum campaign was surprising and admirable.
Yet now that Remain lost the referendum, the Beeb is showing its true pro-EU colours...
STEPHEN GLOVER: During the referendum, the BBC was laudably impartial. I just knew it was too good to be true!
By Stephen Glover for the Daily Mail
13 October 2016
Much to my surprise, the BBC played with a remarkably straight bat during the weeks leading up to the referendum vote on June 23.
I was surprised because I know the great majority of the Corporation’s journalists to be Remainers, and with the best will in the world I thought it would be impossible for them to suppress their natural inclinations.
An impeccable source also told me that the BBC director-general, Tony Hall, loathed Leavers and all their works. It was suggested to me that his robust viewpoint might be allowed to affect Auntie’s coverage of the issues.
BBC Director General, Tony Hall, pictured, loathed Leavers and all their works
Cameron's spin doctor Sir Craig Oliver, pictured, has written a book on the Brexit story
But in the event, my expectations were confounded. It is possible that the BBC’s head of news, James Harding — a former editor of The Times newspaper who is not necessarily an enthusiastic Remainer — applied a restraining hand.
A more cynical interpretation would be that most BBC journalists were so convinced that Remain would triumph that they felt comfortable in obeying the impartiality rules which the Corporation is meant to observe.
So religiously did they do this during the campaign that, in a telephone conversation with Lord Hall, David Cameron complained that Remainers’ rebuttals of Leavers’ assertions were inevitably seen as ‘partial’. He wanted BBC journalists to ‘stamp their own independent authority and analysis on the output’.
We know this happened because Sir Craig Oliver, Mr Cameron’s spin doctor, has said so in a book about Brexit. According to Sir Craig, Lord Hall told the PM he would ‘look’ at his complaint. Greatly to his shame, Sir Craig approves of this disgraceful prime ministerial meddling in the Beeb’s affairs.
Perhaps Lord Hall would care to confirm that this conversation took place in the manner described by Sir Craig, and that he gave Mr Cameron cause to hope that his utterly improper and arguably unconstitutional interference might be attended to.
What is indisputable is that the commendable balance which BBC journalists for the most part exhibited during the referendum campaign has been jettisoned, and replaced by an hysterical anti-Brexit partisanship which offends against the Corporation’s obligation to be neutral.
The transformation in the way Brexit was covered by the Beeb was evident soon after the result. Every bit of apparently bad news, such as initially declining business confidence, was gleefully reported, while abundant good news about consumers’ enduring confidence was largely neglected.
In recent weeks, the rapid fall in the pound has given the BBC’s doomsayers a new lease of life as bulletin after bulletin leads with stories about its descent, and relatively little attention is given to the competitive economic attractions of a devalued currency and the soaring stock market.
For example, two days ago, the prime 8.10am slot on Radio 4’s Today programme was introduced in the following way: ‘It’s been a while since we’ve had a full-blown currency crisis. Well, we’ve got one now.’ This was tendentious. It is a matter of opinion whether there is such a crisis.
BBC1’s News At Ten on Tuesday evening led with an even more apocalyptic judgment. A hitherto obscure foreign exchange executive called Kathleen Brooks announced that the fall in the pound showed that financial markets believe ‘Brexit is going to be very negative for the UK economy’.
In the same bulletin, Kamal Ahmed, the BBC’s increasingly gloomy economics editor, declared that the pound’s drop was a ‘fundamental market judgment on the threat to the UK economy’, and he warned, as though it were an indisputable truth, of ‘an economic slowdown next year linked to Brexit’.
This remorseless negativity contrasts with the measured response of the highly respected former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who points out that the British economy was ‘slowing somewhat’ before the Brexit vote, and suggests that in some respects the fall in the value of sterling is welcome.
My argument is not that the fall in the pound shouldn’t be reported in detail. Of course it should. The objection in all these instances — and countless other ones I haven’t the space to include here — is that fact is overlaid with the opinion that Brexit is bound to be an economic disaster.
So we have the BBC’s assistant political editor, Norman Smith, writing on Twitter yesterday during Prime Minister’s Questions: ‘Stand by for another tumble on the pound following Theresa May’s remarks on the single market.’ A senior BBC journalist is now in the prediction business — wrongly, in this case, since yesterday the pound rose against the dollar and the euro.
Even when there is cheering news, Auntie is apt to look the other way. Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced a new forecast suggesting that Britain would be one of the fastest growing Western economies this year, while slightly downgrading its forecast for next year.
BBC’s News At Ten chose to lead with next year’s more pessimistic prediction, and only later was this year’s very encouraging forecast parenthetically mentioned. Nor was it pointed out that the further ahead the IMF looks, the poorer its record for accuracy tends to be.
This is not even-handed or responsible reporting on the part of a hugely powerful public service broadcaster which, according to several estimates, accounts with all its national and local outlets for some 50 per cent of all the news disseminated in this country.
There could be little objection if the BBC were a newspaper which people can choose to buy if they want to.
The Guardian and the Financial Times take a very similar anti-Brexit line to the BBC. This can be irritating.
Indeed, I have recently grumbled about the FT’s bias in these pages.
But what a newspaper does is ultimately its own business. The BBC has unequalled power, and it is in the unique position of being funded by a tax which everyone who watches television must pay.
In the run up to the referendum vote, the BBC was laudable in its impartiality
It is beyond dispute that the all-powerful BBC is run by a small liberal metropolitan elite
The mighty BBC
Founded on 1st January 1922, the BBC is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation
It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with around 21,000 employees
Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London, is the official headquarters of the BBC. It is home to six of the ten BBC national radio networks, BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1xtra, BBC Asian Network, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 4 Extra. It is also the home of BBC News, which relocated to the building from BBC Television Centre in 2013. On the front of the building are statues of Prospero and Ariel, characters from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, sculpted by Eric Gill. Renovation of Broadcasting House began in 2002, and was completed in 2013
Until it closed at the end of March 2013, BBC Television was based at BBC Television Centre, a purpose built television facility and the second built in the country located in White City, London. The building's name and image is familiar with many British citizens
The fact is, as we know, that the all-powerful BBC is run by a small liberal metropolitan elite. This is beyond dispute. BBC panjandrums such as its former director-general, Mark Thompson, and its presenter, Andrew Marr, have admitted as much in the past.
Last week, Helen Boaden, a former BBC radio chief, put it well when she criticised the Corporation’s culture of ‘posh young men’ with a ‘massive sense of entitlement’. In her view, there is a ‘born-to-rule’ mentality among senior male staff.
These people are members of the ‘sneering elite’ invoked last week by Theresa May in her speech at the Tory Party conference. They look down on those who voted Brexit, and won’t accept the democratic outcome.
Politicians come and go, but, preposterous as it sounds, these superior creatures see themselves as the nation’s guardians.
Many times have I inveighed against the excessive power of the BBC news machine, and I watched with a sinking heart as the Cameron government predictably failed to bring it into the modern era when recently renegotiating the Beeb’s charter for the next decade, and wringing precious few concessions from the overweening institution with its left-of-centre agenda.
Of course, the BBC is in many ways a great organisation. But it is not the government of this country. I do not — and, much more importantly, I’m sure, the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU do not — wish to be directed and manipulated by a small elite that won’t accept what happened on June 23.
That is why I believe that in taking sides Auntie is playing with fire. She justifiably remains for the most part popular and loved. But if she is seen to obstruct the will of the majority by trying to undermine the result of the referendum, she risks ending up by being widely hated by Brexit supporters.
For its own sake, as well as the country’s, the BBC must recover that sense of fairness and balance which characterised its coverage of the referendum campaign. Why do I fear that it will fail to do so?
Read more: STEPHEN GLOVER: During EU referendum the BBC was laudably impartial | Daily Mail Online
Yet now that Remain lost the referendum, the Beeb is showing its true pro-EU colours...
STEPHEN GLOVER: During the referendum, the BBC was laudably impartial. I just knew it was too good to be true!
By Stephen Glover for the Daily Mail
13 October 2016
Much to my surprise, the BBC played with a remarkably straight bat during the weeks leading up to the referendum vote on June 23.
I was surprised because I know the great majority of the Corporation’s journalists to be Remainers, and with the best will in the world I thought it would be impossible for them to suppress their natural inclinations.
An impeccable source also told me that the BBC director-general, Tony Hall, loathed Leavers and all their works. It was suggested to me that his robust viewpoint might be allowed to affect Auntie’s coverage of the issues.
BBC Director General, Tony Hall, pictured, loathed Leavers and all their works
Cameron's spin doctor Sir Craig Oliver, pictured, has written a book on the Brexit story
But in the event, my expectations were confounded. It is possible that the BBC’s head of news, James Harding — a former editor of The Times newspaper who is not necessarily an enthusiastic Remainer — applied a restraining hand.
A more cynical interpretation would be that most BBC journalists were so convinced that Remain would triumph that they felt comfortable in obeying the impartiality rules which the Corporation is meant to observe.
So religiously did they do this during the campaign that, in a telephone conversation with Lord Hall, David Cameron complained that Remainers’ rebuttals of Leavers’ assertions were inevitably seen as ‘partial’. He wanted BBC journalists to ‘stamp their own independent authority and analysis on the output’.
We know this happened because Sir Craig Oliver, Mr Cameron’s spin doctor, has said so in a book about Brexit. According to Sir Craig, Lord Hall told the PM he would ‘look’ at his complaint. Greatly to his shame, Sir Craig approves of this disgraceful prime ministerial meddling in the Beeb’s affairs.
Perhaps Lord Hall would care to confirm that this conversation took place in the manner described by Sir Craig, and that he gave Mr Cameron cause to hope that his utterly improper and arguably unconstitutional interference might be attended to.
What is indisputable is that the commendable balance which BBC journalists for the most part exhibited during the referendum campaign has been jettisoned, and replaced by an hysterical anti-Brexit partisanship which offends against the Corporation’s obligation to be neutral.
The transformation in the way Brexit was covered by the Beeb was evident soon after the result. Every bit of apparently bad news, such as initially declining business confidence, was gleefully reported, while abundant good news about consumers’ enduring confidence was largely neglected.
In recent weeks, the rapid fall in the pound has given the BBC’s doomsayers a new lease of life as bulletin after bulletin leads with stories about its descent, and relatively little attention is given to the competitive economic attractions of a devalued currency and the soaring stock market.
For example, two days ago, the prime 8.10am slot on Radio 4’s Today programme was introduced in the following way: ‘It’s been a while since we’ve had a full-blown currency crisis. Well, we’ve got one now.’ This was tendentious. It is a matter of opinion whether there is such a crisis.
BBC1’s News At Ten on Tuesday evening led with an even more apocalyptic judgment. A hitherto obscure foreign exchange executive called Kathleen Brooks announced that the fall in the pound showed that financial markets believe ‘Brexit is going to be very negative for the UK economy’.
In the same bulletin, Kamal Ahmed, the BBC’s increasingly gloomy economics editor, declared that the pound’s drop was a ‘fundamental market judgment on the threat to the UK economy’, and he warned, as though it were an indisputable truth, of ‘an economic slowdown next year linked to Brexit’.
This remorseless negativity contrasts with the measured response of the highly respected former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who points out that the British economy was ‘slowing somewhat’ before the Brexit vote, and suggests that in some respects the fall in the value of sterling is welcome.
My argument is not that the fall in the pound shouldn’t be reported in detail. Of course it should. The objection in all these instances — and countless other ones I haven’t the space to include here — is that fact is overlaid with the opinion that Brexit is bound to be an economic disaster.
So we have the BBC’s assistant political editor, Norman Smith, writing on Twitter yesterday during Prime Minister’s Questions: ‘Stand by for another tumble on the pound following Theresa May’s remarks on the single market.’ A senior BBC journalist is now in the prediction business — wrongly, in this case, since yesterday the pound rose against the dollar and the euro.
Even when there is cheering news, Auntie is apt to look the other way. Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced a new forecast suggesting that Britain would be one of the fastest growing Western economies this year, while slightly downgrading its forecast for next year.
BBC’s News At Ten chose to lead with next year’s more pessimistic prediction, and only later was this year’s very encouraging forecast parenthetically mentioned. Nor was it pointed out that the further ahead the IMF looks, the poorer its record for accuracy tends to be.
This is not even-handed or responsible reporting on the part of a hugely powerful public service broadcaster which, according to several estimates, accounts with all its national and local outlets for some 50 per cent of all the news disseminated in this country.
There could be little objection if the BBC were a newspaper which people can choose to buy if they want to.
The Guardian and the Financial Times take a very similar anti-Brexit line to the BBC. This can be irritating.
Indeed, I have recently grumbled about the FT’s bias in these pages.
But what a newspaper does is ultimately its own business. The BBC has unequalled power, and it is in the unique position of being funded by a tax which everyone who watches television must pay.
In the run up to the referendum vote, the BBC was laudable in its impartiality
It is beyond dispute that the all-powerful BBC is run by a small liberal metropolitan elite
The mighty BBC
Founded on 1st January 1922, the BBC is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation
It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with around 21,000 employees
Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London, is the official headquarters of the BBC. It is home to six of the ten BBC national radio networks, BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1xtra, BBC Asian Network, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 4 Extra. It is also the home of BBC News, which relocated to the building from BBC Television Centre in 2013. On the front of the building are statues of Prospero and Ariel, characters from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, sculpted by Eric Gill. Renovation of Broadcasting House began in 2002, and was completed in 2013
Until it closed at the end of March 2013, BBC Television was based at BBC Television Centre, a purpose built television facility and the second built in the country located in White City, London. The building's name and image is familiar with many British citizens
The fact is, as we know, that the all-powerful BBC is run by a small liberal metropolitan elite. This is beyond dispute. BBC panjandrums such as its former director-general, Mark Thompson, and its presenter, Andrew Marr, have admitted as much in the past.
Last week, Helen Boaden, a former BBC radio chief, put it well when she criticised the Corporation’s culture of ‘posh young men’ with a ‘massive sense of entitlement’. In her view, there is a ‘born-to-rule’ mentality among senior male staff.
These people are members of the ‘sneering elite’ invoked last week by Theresa May in her speech at the Tory Party conference. They look down on those who voted Brexit, and won’t accept the democratic outcome.
Politicians come and go, but, preposterous as it sounds, these superior creatures see themselves as the nation’s guardians.
Many times have I inveighed against the excessive power of the BBC news machine, and I watched with a sinking heart as the Cameron government predictably failed to bring it into the modern era when recently renegotiating the Beeb’s charter for the next decade, and wringing precious few concessions from the overweening institution with its left-of-centre agenda.
Of course, the BBC is in many ways a great organisation. But it is not the government of this country. I do not — and, much more importantly, I’m sure, the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU do not — wish to be directed and manipulated by a small elite that won’t accept what happened on June 23.
That is why I believe that in taking sides Auntie is playing with fire. She justifiably remains for the most part popular and loved. But if she is seen to obstruct the will of the majority by trying to undermine the result of the referendum, she risks ending up by being widely hated by Brexit supporters.
For its own sake, as well as the country’s, the BBC must recover that sense of fairness and balance which characterised its coverage of the referendum campaign. Why do I fear that it will fail to do so?
Read more: STEPHEN GLOVER: During EU referendum the BBC was laudably impartial | Daily Mail Online
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