Media Matters
Yes, there was media bias in the election – but on both sides
One interesting aspect of the election campaign is that Tories and Labour alike are convinced they were unfairly treated by the media. Can they both be right?
Almost immediately after the result, Jeremy Corbyn complained that he had ‘received more personal abuse than any other leader has ever received by a great deal of the media’. John Mcdonnell, the outgoing Shadow Chancellor, suggested Mr Corbyn had been ‘demonised’. Other colleagues joined in. The chief culprits appeared to be the ‘Tory press’, in particular the Daily Mail and the Sun. But the BBC was not spared. Shadow Cabinet member Andy Mcdonald muttered darkly about it, though he came up with no worse example of alleged bias than a reporter’s suggestion that Mr Johnson’s victory was ‘richly deserved’.
As for the Tories, their complaints were against the broadcast media. They were upset that Channel 4 had produced a block of melting ice to mark the Prime Minister’s refusal to attend a debate on climate change. Nor were they happy with Andrew Neil’s three-minute tirade on BBC1 against Mr Johnson (during which the PM’S trustfulness was impugned) for declining to be grilled by him. Such lèse-majesté!
What truth is there in allegations of bias by Labour and the Tories? Quite a lot. But there is a misconception. Newspapers in this country have always been partisan, and are permitted to be by law, whereas broadcasters are enjoined to be neutral. They shouldn’t be judged by the same yardstick.
For example, the Guardian’s ferocious columnist Polly Toynbee complained about ‘the lies of the extreme Tory press’. She didn’t provide any examples but was presumably objecting to numerous references in the Mail, Sun and Daily Telegraph to the Labour leader’s erstwhile support for the IRA and his inability to stamp out anti-semitism in his party. One may surmise that Messrs Corbyn and Mcdonnell were also not overjoyed by such coverage.
But surely in a free society newspapers must be allowed to make harsh judgements. (They obviously can’t invent facts, and Mr Corbyn can refer a paper to IPSO, the press watchdog, if he can find any instances of this happening. I doubt he can.) During the campaign, Ms Toynbee was just as nasty about Mr Johnson and the Tories as right-wing newspapers were about Mr Corbyn and Labour. People make their choice as to what they read. It’s worth pointing out that while the circulation of most titles has plummeted in recent years, Guardian Online (in which Ms Toynbee’s anti-tory diatribes regularly appear) vies with Mail Online as the most widely read newspaper website.
One can appreciate that it can’t be fun to be torn apart in the public prints, but there is nothing that can be done about it – though if Mr Corbyn had won, he might have tried to. Broadcasters are expected to behave differently. This is partly because they are protected by law from competitors entering their markets. The publicly funded BBC is particularly powerful. According to the media watchdog Ofcom, BBC1 is the most-used source of news for a sizable 58 per cent of the population.
If I worked for Labour, I could probably cite examples of broadcasting bias against my party. As it is, I can’t find any. But I think there were times when Auntie picked on Mr Johnson. I’ve mentioned Andrew Neil’s rant. Another instance was Andrew Marr’s interview of the Prime Minister during which, according to one analysis, he spoke for 43 per cent of their exchanges, and accused his subject of ‘chuntering’.
It’s not just the BBC, though. Channel 4 (whose head of news recently described Mr Johnson as a ‘known liar’) was debunking the PM when it replaced him with a block of ice. Sky News is not over friendly, either. Its political reporter Lewis Goodall, a former Labour Party activist, is notably anti-tory. During the campaign, he despatched an enthusiastic tweet extolling Laura Pidcock, in which he suggested she ‘could sweep the party in a leadership election’. (She lost her seat.) Goodall has been hired by BBC2’S Newsnight, where he will join fellow Guardianistas.
There can surely be little dispute that there is an anti-tory predisposition among many broadcasters. It’s partly the consequence of a centre-left cast of mind, which is prevalent at the BBC. But there is more to it than that. Our highly-paid media aristocracy increasingly looks down on usually poorer and sometimes less clever politicians. Andrew Neil, after all, is a man of the right. He is an excellent interviewer, and interrupts less than some of his colleagues, but he has an entitled air and is terribly pleased with himself. He’s not alone.
The Government is threatening the BBC by suggesting that it might decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee and won’t let ministers appear on Radio 4’s Today programme, where they are unlikely to be allowed to finish a sentence. We’ll see what happens, but I think the Tories will discover that these very grand, usually leftish nabobs will not be easily cut down to size.