BBC radio show that’s packed with anti-Brexit comics
THE BBC has been accused of bias and arrogance for stacking Radio 4 comedy show The News Quiz with panellists who savage Brexiteers.
The programme came under attack on the BBC’s own listener reaction show Feedback after licence fee payers claimed it treated those who voted to leave Europe as if ‘they are completely stupid’.
One listener, Sue Cooper, said she used to be a News Quiz fan but has started switching off because of its pro-Remain bias.
‘I am disappointed by the way News Quiz has taken a very Leftwing and anti-Brexit stance,’ she said. ‘It used to be funny but it is now very biased and when they start off arrogantly treating those who voted Leave as though they are completely stupid, I reach for the off switch.’ Radio 4’s comedy commissioner, Sioned Wiliam, denied any bias. ‘I don’t agree that it’s coming from one position,’ she told Feedback.
‘We have a range of political voices. If you look at the last series, there are three episodes that didn’t feature Brexit at all.
‘ We’re not a political programme. We’re a comedy show and we’re there to reflect comedy voices. We try to supplement them to give as broad a range as possible by bringing in journalists and pundits.’
She pointed out that recent episodes of the weekly show, which is currently on a break, have featured Times columnist Danny Finkelstein ‘who was in support of David Davis’s position on Brexit’ and journalist Hugo Rifkind.
However, Mr Rifkind has joined in the mockery of Brexiteers. Last month, he accused Theresa May of having a ‘malfunctioning cyborg brain’ because she believes that no deal is better than a bad deal.
In the same show the panel joked that the UK doesn’t really need a trade deal with Europe because Britons could replace oranges with potatoes rolled ‘in Wotsit dust’.
In an interview last December, News Quiz host Miles Jupp – who once joked on the show that Mrs May’s Brexit plan had the ‘whiff of a sixth form project’ – said: ‘I just don’t think it’s comedy’s duty to be unbiased.
‘We struggled to find many proBrexit voices. And, you know, what difference did it make anyway?’
Yesterday Feedback presenter Roger Bolton told Miss Wiliam: ‘I’m not taking sides on this but it is clear that the majority of jokes are broadly anti-Brexit. When Brexit is raised, on the whole most people’s view would be that the majority of jokes are opposed against the Brexiteers.’
The debate comes amid mounting concerns that the BBC is institutionally biased against Brexit and features the views of Remainers far more than those of people campaigning to leave the EU.
In 2016, researchers found that listeners were two and a half times more likely to hear a pro-EU speaker on Radio 4 than an anti-EU one.
Earlier this year, a cross-party group of more than 70 MPs wrote to the BBC to accuse it of gloomy Brexit coverage. Tory MP Julian Knight warned that it was losing touch with viewers.
The BBC dismissed accusations that its coverage is skewed. Lord Hall, the director general, told the MPs that it had ‘addressed all the [Brexit] issues from a wide range of different perspectives’.