The Director General of the BBC is a former Tory electoral candidate. He's a former Deputy Chair of a local Conservative Party branch. He was appointed to his position by a Tory Government. If you think he was put into his role by Tories in order to maintain the BBC's "strict impartiality", then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
The BBC's news and current affairs output is hilariously pro-conservative/pro-State. It's even more strident in Devolved nations. It beggars belief that the BBC QT can turn up in a city like Dundee, the single most pro-Independence, pro-SNP part of Scotland there is, and yet the audience is full of outraged conservatives they somehow managed to locate in SNP central, flinging constant anti-scotland gripes at the one pro-Indi panellist (again, how is this representative? The SNP had been dominant in Scots politics for nigh on 15 years and indi/uk opinion constantly hangs at 50/50, why are pro-Indi voices outnumbered 4-1 on the panel?), who is then interrupted constantly by the host, and never permitted more than a 10 second uninterrupted window to speak, while the pro-union members of the panel are left to speak unfettered?
Total coincidence of course, and nothing at all to do with the fact that QT's long term producers were individuals with known links to the Conservative party, or that these people in the audience presented as "concerned members of the public" were time and time again revealed to be sitting and former Tory councillors.
In an article for The Conservation, Matt Walsh, head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, wrote: “Removing politicians from the list of most frequent guests shows that several high-frequency panellists are being used, most of whom come from the political right.
“The regularly featured journalists are typically opinion columnists who contribute to right-wing press outlets such as the Mail or the Telegraph, or who make appearances on right-leaning broadcasters like GB News and TalkTV.”
Indeed, the five most regular non-political guests have all written for The Spectator: Isabel Oakeshott, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Kate Andrews, Tim Stanley and Camilla Tominey
@midgetastic
Being middle of the road and giving all sides a voice is not the meaning of left wing nor echo chamber
If only the BBC was, in fact, anything approaching "middle of the road" and did indeed give all sides an equal voice, it would be a dramatic improvement on the status quo.
Reporting Scotland - every SNP policy announcement is "controversial", even when the policy itself is identical to those elsewhere in the UK, or the policy is no different to that of a pro-union party. I've lost count the number of policies RS describes as "flagship", even though by definition you can actually only have one flagship policy. Just the other night, 3-5 minute section about a "crisis" in the Scots NHS, no qualifiers at all about how this crisis is defined, just an unqualified claim by the reporter that there is, in fact, a crisis. Similar time devoted to a trust being put in special measures. Same thing happens in Wales, except it's given a 20 second slot and no particular "sky is falling" slant.
I guess this is what happens when you work for a cosy "job for life" institution and then you realise that if the citizens of the country you report on decide to enact a constitutional change, at best, you are going to end up being re-interviewed for your role.