The BBC at it again - EU referendum

[Timmy40]

They just can't help themselves can they? In anticipation of the coming In/out referendum the BBC seems to already have begun it's campaign for the 'In' vote.

I've just listened to a 15min feature which was completely bias, it gave the impression that all Business would vote to stay in, dribbled out a few stats about just how much we sell Europe and then gave someone trying to point out that all Businesses don't agree we should stay in about 2 seconds of air time before the presenter waded in an talked over him listing various reasons we must stay in.

Surely if they are unable to present an unbiased viewpoint they need to realise this, admit it to themselves and practice some self censorship?

[Timmy40]

Cheese Mechanic said:

rohrl said:

I heard an interview with the boss of the CBI on radio 4 yesterday. He was arguing that the UK should stay in a reformed EU and the interviewer was putting the arguments to him that reform would need treaty change and that other business leaders and business groups had said that the UK would be okay outside the EU.

Bloody anti-EU BBC.

In general the BBC is very biased toward the EU. It receives (BBC) large grants from them (EU) so perhaps not surprising, irrespective of its charter.

"Balance" shown on R4 would be oiutweighed many times by bias on mainstream TV channels BBC1 etc

It was on radio 4 today that I heard the program that caused me to post, so perhaps they were told in no uncertain terms to get back firmly on message......

[Timmy40]

MintyScot said:

Fortunately this referendum isn't being ran by the SNP. Else we would get continuous referendums until the "correct" settled will of the UK people was achieved.

You mean like the Irish referendum on the Euro?

[Timmy40]

Zod said:

Saying that the BBC is institutionally biased is not the same as claiming that the election result was manipulated.

Quite. However what it does say to me is that if voters both for and against are compelled to pay a license fee, then the least the BBC can do it to be genuinely impartial, otherwise it's a bit insulting to be forced to pay for media content to be produced and disseminated which is clearly biased towards the EU camp.

[Timmy40]

IainT said:

Going back to the election and looking at the treatment Labour got and it seemed to me that they generally got a harder time in interviews than the Tories - either that or they just weren't good enough to stand up to the interviews!

I'm looking back to the night before the election and the last prime time news on BBC Radio news when they proceeded first to play a full extract of Millibands final rallying speech, the simply mentioned in passing that the other leaders were also out campaigning. There was a consistent bias.