The BBC is supposed to remain politically neutral and balanced. Many people think they aren’t.
I think the BBC does a good job of being ‘politically neutral and balanced’ in terms of sticking to their own internal rules about what that actually means, but I think the questions about what is ‘politically neutral’ needs re-examining in light of increasingly sophisticated political spin machines adept at squeezing through messages with hidden biases.
This isn’t the same as Victoria Derbyshire literally laughing out loud at a Tory spokesman but letting similar howlers from Labour pass without so much as a snicker on Radio 5 today . That sort of bias is obvious enough that people are capable of making up their own minds on it – although I can understand why this sort of thing is infuriating.
But here I’m talking about a much more subtle form of bias that comes from failing to recognise political frames and subconscious bias.
Take, for example, a new policy announced in the Queen’s Speech which the BBC describes, unqualified, as:
There will also be free social care for the neediest pensioners in England.
Is that bias free? Is that politically neutral? Sadly not. The very same policy could just as easily be described as:
Taxpayers to be compelled to pay for the personal care of the neediest pensioners in England.
Why would the second version be considered politically biased, while the original is not? They are both loaded with meaning that frames the way the reader understands the policy. The first conceals the downside of the policy, while the second stresses it. Both are biased.
If the reporting of a policy excludes the downside then it is biased in favour of the policy’s authors.
So perhaps a politically neutral and unbiased way of reporting this policy would be:
The Government wants taxpayers to pay for needs-tested personal care of pensioners in England.
That is as near as possible an unloaded and neutral reporting of the facts as possible.
So why do we have a Public Service Broadcaster that doesn’t consistently apply proper balancing across the board, across every outlet, in every medium?
As the General Election approaches, I’m beginning to be worried that the BBC News website is becoming their weak link, that in order to keep things simple, accessible and as up to date as possible they’re letting things through that they shouldn’t.
UPDATE:
Thinking about it, the response is likely to be that the BBC will let Conservatives or Liberal Democrats do the job of explaining the downside of a particular policy – which doesn’t work, because obviously the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are biased and less likely to be trusted than the BBC.
Tim Carpenter (LPUK) said...
18 Nov 09 at 4:10 pm
Taxpayers forced to pay for the care of those who did not save then being forced to pay for their own out of pensions and savings.
patently said...
18 Nov 09 at 4:40 pm
The update doesn’t let Auntie Beeb off the hook.
If you report “Free Apple Pies for everybody”, and then leave it to others to explain why this is not a good idea, you are offering the assumption that it is prima facie a good idea. You offer the benefit of the doubt to those offering free apple pies for all. You place the burden of proof on those objecting to free apple pies for all.
You avoid entirely the question of why people do not have enough apple pie of their own, whether it is right for the State to distribute apple pie, whether the State can actually afford to do so, where there are in fact apple pie shortages, and so on.
Such a report is therefore still biassed. Only your suggested “The Government wants…” report avoids bias.
David Weber said...
18 Nov 09 at 4:43 pm
“So perhaps a politically neutral and unbiased way of reporting this policy would be:
The Government wants taxpayers to pay for needs-tested personal care of pensioners in England.”
I disagree that this is politicall neutral, as it stresses the “taxpayers to pay” element first, without even mentioning “free at the point of access”.
This is pedantic, I’ll admit, and I don’t have a huge problem with your way of phrasing it — but I don’t think it’s entirely neutral. Of course, it’s impossible to word anything in an entirely neutral way, but I think it might be better phrased as:
“There will be taxpayer-funded personal care, free at the point of access for the neediest Elderly pensioners in the country.”
Of course, YMMV!
Stu said...
18 Nov 09 at 5:03 pm
Ah, but Dave – “for the neediest” is emotive. I agree with Charlotte’s ‘needs tested’ as a more neutral phrasing.
But yes, taxpayer-funded is better than ‘taxpayers will pay’, and I’m not certain about ‘The Government wants’ as an opening. Could be construed as making the government sound frivolous. Perhaps:
‘The Government has announced taxpayer-funded plans to supply needs tested free personal care to elderly pensioners.’
Possibly a bit of a mouthful…
Incidentally, ‘free’ is technically accurate, isn’t it? A pensioner receiving personal care now has not paid for it and is receiving it free. The reason the NHS is free ‘at point of care’ is because somebody being treated has theoretically already paid for their treatment through NI. That isn’t the case with this care scheme, and it will be many years before the people paying for the care now will be in receipt of the care in the future. A subtle but important distinction, no?
Jonny said...
18 Nov 09 at 5:16 pm
Everyone is biased. I have no problem with bias.
The issue is balance, and you achieve that by having competing views aired simultaneously.
The Today programme, for example, would benefit from having a Conservative editor and presenter to go up against the current crop. Thus would the BBC fulfil its charter obligations.
A more interesting philosophical debate lies in where to place the centre point, the fulcrum on which the balanced debate rests.
And that’s before you even begin to worry about how to incorporate the Lib Dems into all this…
DavidNcl said...
18 Nov 09 at 6:06 pm
Do you think the BBC or any of the other broadcasting cartels are anything other that a state propaganda machine?
Constantly Furious said...
18 Nov 09 at 10:49 pm
BBC talk. It’s easy!!
Gordon Brown today confirmed that the sun rises in the East.
David Cameron today denied that the sun sets in the West.
Oranjepan said...
19 Nov 09 at 12:05 am
Um, I like a bit of frivolity (take that as a euphemism if you want), but the claim that ‘free personal care’ is achievable is not technically incorrect.
It could be that they are taking the narrow definition from the pov of the service recipients, or that they have found a way to indenture carers at no extra cost etc… there are infinite possibilities.
Of course it’s a reasonable assumption that there will be extra costs to the taxpayer, but it is still an assumption with no factual basis until the proposer makes it explicit.
There are two politically acceptable ways to respond to such a technical argument.
Either you can ask a partisan question about how they plan to fund it and create doubt in the public mind about who will suffer as a result (dog-whistle to ‘honest hard-working families who pay their taxes), possibly emphasising the bureaucracy and wastage which makes it unworkable given the government calculations, but which opens you up to accusations of being uncaring and not supporting national health services (dog-whistle to NHS fetishists).
Or you can impartially query how representatives of the carers industry would respond, noting the proportion of carers who are family members working for free and who don’t qualify for benefits (empathy with real people, implicit criticism of failed system and ill-considered proposal whose effect will be little more than a fart in a hurricane).
The first method is the respose of a Conservative, the second is that of a LibDem.
The first will win as many votes as it loses, the second will have no discernable effect on its’ own.
But it will start to matter further down the line when you want to hold up your track record as the party most able to reliably balance each side of the argument to those people to whom this single issue matters most and they see that the attempts of the two sides who were currying favour were ineffective and unhellpful, while the third was trying to do the right thing by listening to all the public concerns was ignored.
Of course the difficulty for LibDems is that it is necessary to string together a whole raft of issues in order to float our narrative in a consistent way, rather than taking the easy route by just pandering to vested interest groups.
patently said...
19 Nov 09 at 10:12 am
Oranjepan illustrates the near-impossibility of framing a truly non-partisan report of an issue, by showing that the definition of “non-partisan” is itself a partisan issue.
For example:
Either you can ask a partisan question about how they plan to fund it and create doubt in the public mind about who will suffer as a result (dog-whistle to ‘honest hard-working families who pay their taxes)…
If you find the following exchange to be partisan:
Gordon: “I’d like to buy something that I think we all need, using the money from the communal kitty.”
Dave: “Oh, right. How do you plan to replenish the kitty afterwards?”
then either you, or I, or both of us are going to consider pretty well everything to be partisan in some way.
Charles said...
19 Nov 09 at 10:18 am
Perhaps even more invidious than your suggestion, is the way the BBC uses “claims” vs. “states”.
It used to be (although I haven’t checked recently) that the government/Labour used to “state” things (hence implying factual accuracy) while the Tories were reducing to “claiming” (implying doubt).
It seems to be that is is virtually impossible to have a “politically neutral” reporting system – for me, I would far rather that you had the ability for independent (and not state funded) news/opinion channels. At least with Fox (like the Telegraph or the Guardian) you know where they are coming from and can make your own bias adjustment as needed.
Any way, why do we need state funding of news? I can see the role for a PBS style channel making the programmes that commercial stations wouldn’t, but why do we have to have a state funded organisation doing stuff that would exist anyway in a free market?
Dave H. said...
19 Nov 09 at 3:32 pm
I’ve lost count of the number of times a BBC political correspondent has made a detailed analysis of a recently announced Government policy initiative and said “the Government spin-doctors would like the public to see this as XYZ”.
And then you notice that the BBC news headline was XYZ.
Steve McIntosh said...
19 Nov 09 at 11:24 pm
I’d like just to cut all through this.
‘The BBC is supposed to remain politically neutral and balanced.’
The BBC is not.
It is utterly biased towards NuLabour and the middle class leftie point of view. End of.