BBC to probe its reporting on small boats
THE BBC yesterday ordered a review into the impartiality of its coverage of migration, including small boats crossing the Channel.
The corporation has previously been accused of failing to provide balanced coverage on immigration and of being reluctant to discuss public concerns surrounding the issue.
Yesterday the BBC announced it had begun a review to analyse whether its output suggests ‘any underlying assumptions, explicit bias or revealed preference over time’.
The project will also look at how it has covered the Government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, the impact of migration on communities across the UK and the programme for refugees fleeing Ukraine.
It will ‘consider whether due impartiality is being delivered across BBC content and that a breadth of voices and viewpoints are being reflected’. As well as broadcast and online coverage, the review will also investigate the way the corporation handles the issue through its social media channels.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, and Samir Shah, chief executive of the independent television and radio production company Juniper, will lead and write the review.
They will look at major areas of migration policy that are deemed ‘controversial’ and ‘relate to public policy and political controversy’.
As part of the project, the authors will carry out audience research to see how far viewers and listeners think it achieves fairness and impartiality.
They will also consult experts, ‘informed commentators’ and other ‘interested parties’ with a ‘full range of views’ covered. The review will point to ways in which coverage can be improved. And while it will focus heavily on news and current affairs output, the BBC said the project will ‘not be limited to these areas of content’.
Recent controversy surrounding Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker’s antiTory Twitter remarks about the Government’s migrant crackdown will not fall within the remit of the review.
Bill Cash, Conservative MP for Stone, Staffordshire, questioned how effective the review was likely to be.
He said: ‘I’m extremely sceptical, even cynical, about the question of whether this report will have any serious impact on the lack of impartiality which is endemic in the BBC.’
BBC chairman Richard Sharp, who will leave the role next month, said: ‘Madeleine Sumption and Samir Shah are well known for their expert understanding of the issues involved in delivering impartial coverage of migration, which is an important and often intensely contested subject.’
He added: ‘Their combination of evidence-based academic research and working knowledge of impartiality in broadcasting make them highly qualified to lead the thematic review into BBC migration output. Their findings will ensure the BBC continues to have the correct approach to producing coverage that audiences can trust.’
The BBC said the review will start ‘in the coming days’, adding it was committed to publishing the findings and recommendations.
In 2018, the BBC withdrew an educational film about immigration amid concerns it was biased. The video had claimed that the debate over net migration had fuelled a ‘huge rise’ in support for far-Right politics.
Helen Boaden, former director of BBC News, said in a 2013 review that the corporation’s ‘deep liberal bias’ stopped it from properly reporting on immigration when she took the job in 2004.
‘Sceptical it will have any serious impact’