Senior Tories warn BBC as they compile damning bias dossier
THE Conservatives have assembled a dossier of evidence about alleged antiTory bias by the BBC as it prepares to mount a pre-election challenge to the Corporation’s impartiality.
Senior party figures, who are tracking the BBC’s news coverage, contrast wall-to-wall coverage of Tory scandals involving MPs William Wragg and Mark Menzies with that of problems afflicting Labour, such as the Angela Rayner council house row.
They are understood to have raised concerns in particular about the BBC News website, which they say is feeding licence fee payers a ‘diet of woke bias’ – a view which The Mail on Sunday understands is shared by some senior figures at Broadcasting House.
A Tory source said: ‘The BBC aren’t even pretending to be impartial in their news coverage these days. Last week the Times had two prominent stories: One broke the news about Menzies [misusing campaign funds to pay off ‘bad people’], the other that Angela Rayner was facing multiple lines of investigation by the police over her council house sale. Guess which one they followed up?’
The source added: ‘Anything negative about an obscure Tory gets wall-to-wall coverage but stories about Labour figures get the absolute bare minimum. There are some good journalists there who try to balance things out but some people at the top of the organisation have scant regard for their obligations and are driving it off a cliff.’
The BBC strongly denies the claims of bias. However, an analysis of articles published on the BBC News website between May 2023 and April this year has found at least 40 which allegedly show anti-Government bias, including BBC journalists apparently mocking Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In a December article covering a behind-the-scenes BBC documentary following the lead-up to the King’s Coronation, Mr Sunak is likened to an ‘intern’ by one of the Corporation’s royal correspondents, Sean Coughlan. In the film, written by the Mail’s royal writer Robert Hardman, Mr Sunak is shown wearing a smart suit and tie as he visits Balmoral.
After greeting the King and Queen Camilla, the Prime Minister and Charles are shown enjoying a genial conversation. But the BBC man writes in his article: ‘Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bobs about on a visit to meet the King, looking like an intern wondering how long he can stretch out the small talk.’
In another example, a minutelong clip of a longer radio interview with Mr Sunak last July about the Government’s new carbon capture project was uploaded to the news website and solely focused on the presenter grilling him about whether he will take a private jet to Scotland to unveil the green scheme. Other BBC online articles are singled out by the audit for ‘parroting Labour lines’ or using ‘negative framing’ and ‘hyperbolic language’ to report on the Government’s policy plans.
Last December, the Campaign for Common Sense found the news website had been pumping out weekly articles on Britain’s ties to the transatlantic slave trade, with as many as 55 separate stories on slavery appearing online up to September last year.
In January, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said there was a ‘perception among audiences’ that the Corporation was biased as she set out reforms bringing the BBC’s website and social media channels under the policing of Ofcom to ensure impartiality. In February, a poll of 2,010 people by Public First, the policy research firm, found that working-class viewers are switching off from the BBC because they find it too ‘woke’.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘We take our commitment to impartiality very seriously, making our own editorial judgments about stories and their newsworthiness . . .
‘The BBC news app and website offer audiences high-quality, accurate and impartial BBC journalism, which is why one in three adults in the UK come to us every week for news they trust. It’s totally untrue to say that the site is under review. The BBC is for everyone and, since people are rapidly moving to digital platforms for news, it’s right the BBC provides them with trusted journalism online, as well as on TV and radio.’
‘The Corporation has parroted Labour lines’