Balance, Bias and the BBC
We are all biased.
Every one of us has our prejudices and our preconceptions. We are socialized from birth in a society that feeds and waters those prejudices and helps them grow up big and strong. I certainly have my own. I have a left-wing and liberal take on the world. I see the world through this filter and many others (some of which others would find considerably at odds with my assertion to be both liberal and left-wing. people – myself as much if not more than most – are a mess of contradictions).
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When I write, talk and think about politics, I know that I am doing so through the frame these prejudices have given me. I am aware that I am more likely to ascribe nefarious motives to my opponents and benign ones to my allies. Where possible, I try to examine this and mitigate it, but it isn’t always possible. In the heat of the moment, the heat of passion will escape. Where the Tories are being particularly Tory, it is hard not to just get very angry.
So yes, I think everyone is biased, and this includes Nick Robinson, Political Editor of the BBC. I also think he’s an extremely good journalist. I expect him – far more than me and far more than most – to examine his biases and try to think about how they might be affecting his work and the way he reports.
That Nick Robinson was once a Tory is a matter of public record. But many journalists have a political background and are perfectly capable of even-handed and balanced reporting. Left or right, it’s examining the facts, and doing so while being aware of your prejudices that make for good journalism. Robinson can be just as challenging to senior Tories as he is to Labour members, and both Labour and Tory activists feel he is biased against them, which probably means he’s getting it about right.
However, yesterday, Robinson make a slight misjudgment in his reporting around the way Labour is approaching the tax avoidance of Lord Fink. His use of the phrase “Milly Dowler moment” (a phrase which did not appear in quote marks in his blog post, but did in the preview box at the bottom ) has led to a media furor with the right-wing press accusing Labour of crass language around a young girl’s death. Labour activists have responded in kind by once again accusing both the BBC and Robinson in particular of pro-Tory/anti-Labour bias.
I don’t believe that is what happened. I think Robinson wrote up a story quickly and used the journalistic shorthand that was possibly sloppy but had no bias or poor intention. I believe he was later frustrated by the reaction and instead of clarifying immediately, went into defensive mode. Perfectly natural, again we all do it.
Robinson was clearly aware his words were being used to attack Ed Miliband’s team in this way. He issued a tweet that sought to clarify but didn’t write a second blog post, nor edit the first one until the next day. He has seen many a stupid politics row blow up this way, and so he knows how these things work. All the best advice experienced journalists like him would give a politician in the same boat would be to get ahead of the story, apologize or at least clarify as soon as possible. That it took until long after the story had been published in today’s papers for him to do so made this a two-day story.
The other problem is no matter what Robinson did or didn’t do it wouldn’t be enough for his detractors. He is daily – hourly even – rounded on by both lefts and right on Twitter. So I suspect it took a little longer than it should have for this one to burst through what is usually a fog of partisan point-scoring to understand that this was genuinely an issue that deserved clarifying.
The left has cried wolf over BBC bias so often that inadvertently, it may well have become harder for us to make the case when such bias – intentional or otherwise – actually exists.
Ian Dunt has written a superb piece today about the misguided nature of the attack on the BBC over their coverage of the Chapel Hill shootings. I think this illustrates well the problems the BBC has both of reflecting both factual truth and society. We all believe we know the truth because we all believe we are always right. And these days it is very easy to fall into a pattern of only reinforcing your own views. So often on Twitter or Facebook, I hear the phrase “everyone thinks…” about issues that are divisive (and thus by their nature not agreed upon by “everyone”). This positive reinforcement can be why neutral media sources can feel challenging and also protective of the status quo.
The BBC is a bit too establishment at times. Its news agenda is still to driven by the press which is not a neutral source. It cares far too much what the Daily Mail thinks about its content and is far too defensive under the conditions of a mass media market to take the risks it once did. But it is still a source of powerful flagship journalism.
We can and should call out powerful journalists when they get it wrong, just as we do with politicians. But we should do so well and wisely. It should not have taken Nick Robinson so long to clarify what happened here. But equally, it should not be his job to respond to endless unfounded accusations of bias. Perhaps just as Nick should have chosen his words more wisely, so we too should learn when to pick our battles.