Tag: bias

The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman has previously noted the sexist undercurrent of the ‘Karen’ meme increasingly being used by the BBC in particular and the Media generally. A Karen is a woman, a middle-class woman, seemingly a non-graduate woman, and a family-oriented woman. Karen thinks her kids can do no wrong. Karen shares Facebook memes to… Continue reading Media Bias Part 4

BBC Sounds produced an episode of the No Country For Young Women podcast in which presenter Sadia Azmat teed up a discussion with the question: ‘How can white women not be Karens?’ Businesswoman Amelia Dimoldenberg told these white women to ‘read some books’, ‘don’t be so loud’ and ‘stop attacking black voices’. Academic Dr Charlotte Riley… Continue reading Media Bias Part 3

On the issue of race in particular, its coverage is askew. I don’t mean simply that it is biased — anyone who follows Auntie’s reporting on Israel is aware of how shared political assumptions can shape broadcast output — but that it is openly biased, almost aggressively so. The BBC is not merely reporting these… Continue reading Media Bias Part 2

The times we are presently living in are the sort of times the BBC was made for: a Western political crisis in the middle of a global health and economic crisis. Throw in a landmark US presidential election and the UK’s final transition out of the European Union and 2020 is a news editor’s dream.… Continue reading Media Bias Part 1

The BBC is losing me. It’s a sudden estrangement and an unwelcome one but I can’t seem to shake it off. The cause is the Corporation’s coverage of this thing that is happening that we still don’t have a name for but definitely should not call a ‘moment’. The butterfly effect from George Floyd’s killing is… Continue reading BBC Bias Part 11

Mosey’s piece in the New Statesman addresses the question of bias directly. Emily Maitlis, he writes, laid out questions which the programme would address but “It was unambiguously clear what Maitlis’s own position was, and she stirred in words such as ‘fury, contempt and anguish’ to describe the national mood when a significant minority doesn’t… Continue reading BBC Bias Part 10

There have been two interesting columns in the New Statesman, (one in the magazine, one online) on BBC bias and other issues about BBC News by Roger Mosey and Mark Damazer, both distinguished former BBC News executives. These are the best pieces I have read about the state of BBC News for some time. I… Continue reading BBC Bias Part 9

Times Radio starts up soon. The Today programme may haemorrhage listeners. Talent is fleeing from BBC News, from Eddie Mair to John Pienaar. Emily Maitlis won’t be sacked, even if the BBC wanted to, because it is having too many problems with women presenters, most recently, Naga Munchetty, Samira Ahmed and Carrie Gracie. None of… Continue reading BBC Bias Part 8

This is an understatement. Too many BBC reporters and presenters think they are addressing like-minded people, especially about Brexit, Johnson and Cummings. Damazer is wrong. Bias is not “rarely an issue”. It is a growing issue, on Twitter and on air. Why are there so many interviewees from Novara Media, an unrepresentative Leftist organisation? Why… Continue reading BBC Bias Part 7

On 29 May, The Mail Online reported that the BBC had announced that Richard Sambrook, former head of BBC global news, will be heading an inquiry into whether tweets by BBC talent breach its impartiality policy. Sambrook has been in BBC News and Current Affairs for thirty years. For those of us who have been… Continue reading BBC Bias Part 6