BBC bias. Boris 51.5%: "tight margin". Hollande 51.7%: "clear victory"

[longfingernails]

The left-wing propoganda spouted by the BBC really is relentless.

I am disappointed that they got off with a cash freeze in the licence fee. A 75% cut would have been far more appropriate.

To some extent your view of the game will depend on where you sit in the stands.

As long as the Beeb upset both sides I think they have it about right.

I had interpreted it as being to do with the gap between the first and second placed candidates:

Hollande 18,000,438
Sarkozy 16,869,371

Johnson 1,054,811
Livingstone 992,27

The Daily Fail always has a go at the BBC. It's almost their favourite sport second only to misogyny and just ahead of immigrants.

It does like having a go at the BBC which it thinks is left leaning, but it is only quoting the Director General of the BBC in that article.

I don't think Hollande was a clear victory. The margin is very tight. The analysis on the French news last night showed that if Le Pen's votes had gone to Sarkozy he'd have been returned. She must be rubbing her hands with glee!

The BBC is a waste of space. The sooner the licence fee is axed, the better.

do you enjoy commercials, Josephine?

I don't watch them, we don't have any kind of TV service anymore.

I meant radio

commercial radio is dire

BBC radio is pretty dire as well for the most part. We only really listen to 5live, Talksport and the Absolute stations.

BBC also reported that Hollande was against austerity and for growth.

Implying what? That Sarkozy was against growth?

Awful biased reporting.

Sarko didn't want growth at the expense of austerity was my understanding...

I agree with the OP. Emily Mantlis (champaigne socialist yuk) was pratically wetting her knickers as the tories dropped like flies. The bbc are quite dreadful in their bias.

Channel 4 news is worth watching. It's often interesting to see how different their 7 o'clock News is from the BBC (TV or radio). Often they choose completely different stories to focus on.

Not sure how you can avoid being biased when you are reporting the news, tbh. It's in what you choose to report, the angle you look at it from, how long you give it, what time of day you tell it, who reports it - and with new research/studies etc it's also who paid for it to be done. What I don't like is when a news organisation is lazy and just goes with whatever press releases the govt put out for the day, without choosing its own agenda.

The sooner the BBC is made subscription only (so those of us that don't watch it and don't want to pay for left wing propaganda are no longer forced to) the better!

Solopower and you do realise that Channel4 is funded by the license fee in part.

I track to the left on some issues so am not a conspiracy theorist Tory seeing bias lurking everywhere. However, I do think the BBC is biased in much of its reporting. On economic data in particular some of the more positive data that we've seen of late has been whizzed over with no analysis, yet when bad news occurs it gets the full treatment.

To be fair this prob just balances the right wing bias of much of print media, Sky etc.

'The sooner the BBC is made subscription only (so those of us that don't watch it and don't want to pay for left wing propaganda are no longer forced to) the better!'

That day will never come, because then the left wing would lose its funding stream and people might choose not to subscribe.

The difference is one is state media, the other is private. One is funded by taxes of all teh people and one is commercial and you are free to choose not to fund it.

The US does not have a national state broadcaster, the Soviet Union did.

Actually I pick up my copy of The Economist instead for sensible, balanced, properly informed, pithy and intelligent analysis and I suggest you do the same.

Is that a joke? The Economist is actually the Daily Mail for Ayn Rand acolytes. See here for some of the growing amusement at the Economist's complete lack of rigour crookedtimber.org/2012/04/30/tough-clear-headed-reform/ It's increasingly ignored/irrelevant in my field (finance) because you really can predict exactly what they are going to say about any given issue simply by downloading a Thatcherite Free Markets app and then pressing play.

And the US has some of the worst public discourse it's ever been my misfortune to listen to. Would you really rather have the US's media over ours? Really? Really??

claig is just a tin foil wearing loon

Claig what is Nation Public Radio then in the US? scotch mist

I know the BBC has a left slant and I understand why the licence fee will never disappear, because otherwise we would never be sold political points of view.

In a free market system, there would be competing philosophies and no monopolies. Climate catastrophe, green policies, EU membership and other political lines would be much more difficult to promote without a licence fee.
Fox News is sceptical on most of those.

But I like the BBC and I am glad that the Director General said that the 'massive' lean to the left of the BBC is changing.

Never heard of Nation Public Radio, and anyway radio is not TV, which is teh dominant media.