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.