Bias and the BBC
Is it fair over Brexit and can it survive in the 21st century?
NICK ROBINSON AND CHARLES MOOREthe nation state still thrive? And you might
even discover — surprisingly, for the BBC
— that it actually does.
robinson: Well, there was a very good
three-part series on Radio 4 called The
English Fix looking at how writers like
G.K. Chesterton defined the English char-
acter. It found people who were Leavers,
who loved these writers and talked to
them. There has been an effort — and I
stress it needs to go much further than this
— to say: ‘Well, let’s hear the voices that
we perhaps didn’t hear from enough.’ The
Today programme was broadcast from
Stoke the other day; it came from Hull
recently. This is a good thing. You’re right,
we need to look for more histo-
rians, authors, poets and others
who capture this sense of what
the nation state is. We need to
challenge, we need to scruti-
nise. But we can’t balance, in
the strict sense of the word.
moore: The BBC is very, very
old-fashioned, hidebound by
the idea of seeking the opinion
of a pressure group. It thinks
that there has to be an authen-
tic, official spokesman for eve-
rything. Of course pressure
groups feed on that, very clev-
erly, to promote their agenda.
Then we have the BBC’s spe-
cialist journalists, who will tend
to have the producer’s inter-
est rather than the consum-
er’s interest at heart, because
that’s how they get their contacts. For
example, Clive Coleman [BBC legal cor-
respondent] is very biased in favour of the
Supreme Court because they are judges.
Roger Harrabin [BBC environment ana-
lyst] is biased in favour of everybody green
because he is a green maniac.
robinson: I’d say that neither of them is
biased! But look, Leave was, if you like, a
popular uprising against lots of people in
authority. If the BBC has had a problem
over the decades, it is that we have tended
to be a tad too unchallenging of conven-
tional wisdom. But I do resent the sug-
gestion there is a conspiracy at the BBC
to do down a particular set of opinions. I
hear such suggestions quite a lot. I couldLast week, Nick Robinson wrote an article
in the Radio Times saying Radio 4’s Today
programme no longer has an obligation to
balance its coverage of Brexit. This led to
criticism from Charles Moore that he was, in
effect, admitting to BBC bias. The two met
for a discussion in The Spectator offices.
nick robinson: As you’re so fond of point-
ing out, Charles, most economists, busi-
ness organisations, trade unions and FTSE
100 chief executives were Remainers. The
BBC’s difficulty is that news tends to be
about interviewing people in power: scru-
tinising them, asking tough questions. It’s
right that we should go and look for other
voices, look for critics. But what
we shouldn’t do is treat every-
body as if they fit into a Leave
or Remain category, and seek
to balance every discussion
along those lines. That would be
absurd.
charles moore: I see and accept
that. However, I dispute that —
in most of these cases — these
people are being asked tough
questions. One of the things
picked up by News-watch [an
organisation that monitors BBC
bias] is the balance of such dis-
cussions. There’ll be four people
on one side of an argument, for
example, and one on the other.
robinson: Well the establish-
ment is largely — or was large-
ly — pro-Remain. But there’s
a second problem: it’s rational for public
organisations and companies to be assess-
ing risk and uncertainty. If you interview
the head of the port in Dover, you would
expect him — it happens to be a him —
to be focusing on the challenges that might
be posed by Brexit. So we’d hear his con-
cerns about queues of lorries, and that they
might be worse than anything we saw in
that crisis a couple of years ago. Now, we
should treat such claims with proper scep-
ticism. And ask: ‘Why is he saying this?
Might he have an ulterior motive? Does he
want cash from the government?’ But what
we can’t do is — every day — say: ‘Would
Owen Paterson or Iain Duncan Smith or
Dan Hannan like to come on to say this is
all nonsense?’ And anyway, to put it crude-
ly, what the hell would they know?
moore: Yes that’s true, as far as it goes. But
I question how far it does go. For exam-
ple, News-watch also looked at academics
and lawyers used in a variety of Radio 4
programmes. Eleven of them were Remain
and none were Leave.
robinson: But who are the most prominent
leavers? Boris Johnson, who has never
agreed to come on the Today programme.
Liam Fox, who has never been on the
Today programme.
moore: Yes, but I’m not talking about poli-
ticians.
robinson: Well, let’s talk about businesspeople. The man who runs Next, Simon
Wolfson, has not come on the Today pro-
gramme.
moore: Yes, but I’m talking about academics
and lawyers. The British people voted for
fundamental change. So, as well as perfect-
ly legitimate questions about how bloody
difficult it’s going to be — which it will be
— there need to be some programmes that
frame the opportunities. One thing that is
said as a cliché by Remainers is that the
nation state is dead. But who are the great
powers in the world? The USA, China,
Japan, Russia, India — all nation states.
So why don’t we have a look at that as a
serious proposition? It might make for
a very good Radio 4 documentary: Does