Does the BBC favour the Tories?

[Petronius16]

This link suggests it does

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1206992886841192451.html

What do you think?

[InfiniteSheldon]

No it's embarrassingly woke and Left wing

[bellinisurge]

I'm old. It's pretty common for one side to say it favours the other. I remember such arguments since the 1970s argues either way.

[SmellMySmellbow]

Does a bear shit in the woods?

[AnotherEmma]

What Smell said

This is from the Guardian, which some may find unacceptable "woke" and left wing, but here it is anyway

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/election-coverage-bbc-tories

[Bluerussian]

No not at all. I have heard it said before though and also heard that it favours socialism. The BBC can't win really.

[donquixotedelamancha]

Do ITV or channel 4 spend such time and effort listening to criticism and trying to achieve balance?

I think it's reasonable to suggest that the BBC has certain subtle institutional biases (like being London centric and middle/upper class).

I think imagining a deliberate agenda in favour of one political party is tinfoil hat territory.

[Petronius16]

Shame there weren't more responses, but thanks to those who posted.

I feel that the BBC is generally a bit leftie but the research sent to me and Peter Oborne's article would suggest the opposite.

[Lurkerlot]

Question Time certainly does. The Bruce, opened the first of year b6 saying the audience will be heavily tilted with conservative voters, as This represents the way the country voted.

[FlourBug]

Seems creepy Cummings is after them anyway, bias or no bias, and what creepy wants, creepy gets (for the moment)

[Arseaboutdarkly]

He's long gone past creepy - in fact he's getting to the point he won't be allowed out in the daytime. Yeah, he's out to get the beeb, god knows why they did everything they could to help knobble Corbyn.

[Arseaboutdarkly]

The bbc has never been viewed as impartial (no idea what you mean by benign) that I remember. Righties have always complained about left-wing bias and more recently the blatant right-wing bias of Laura Kuenssberg has shocked a lot of people.

[Lurkerlot]

I suppose if your political compass places you somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, then the BBC can be perceived as being “leftie”. The same the other way, to which the beeb would respond if they are upsetting both sides then they are doing something right

[WhatKatyDidNot]

I think the BBC favours establishment values - so probably economically rightish and culturally leftish.

[ExEUCitizen]

My opinion on the BBC news site now is that it largely prints what it is told to - most of the articles are re-hashes of press releases, many of them from government. Balance now is achieved only by picking a range of organisations to take press releases from. Haven't they been slashing the number of actual journalists for years? A 'reality check' section started appearing at some point, probably to rival or inspired by FullFact, which to me merely serves to underline the point that they no longer provide much analysis outside of that.

The main bias it seems to have to me, like other publicly funded organisations at the moment, is to the lowest of what is popular. The news site is becoming little more than a celebrity chat magazine.

[ExEUCitizen]

Essentially, like the rest of and indeed the whole principle of public information, it has been hollowed out and told to follow the money. It is, quite simply, a sitting duck vulnerable to whatever gets thrown at it. This is what people have been voting for for years when they voted to thin down the state and attack the public sector. Funny how few seem to be enjoying the results.

[Newmetoday]

The BBC are so left wing it isn’t funny. They are the very definition of woke

[WhereShallWeMoveTo]

I think it’s fairly well established that the BBC favours the left but of course I imagine the left like to accuse them of the opposite. It’s pretty difficult to report on politics in a way that everyone considers truly impartial and factual.

[SilverySurfer]

The BBC is and always has been left wing. All BBC jobs are or were advertised in the Guardian and their coverage of the 31 Jan celebrations war glaringly anti Brexit.