Bias GE24 & BBC: What does the real silent majority think?

In the campaign leading up to the next general election in the UK, right-wing populists will claim that the BBC’s media coverage is biased to the left. But the real silent majority disagrees with this, says Patrick Barwise of London Business School.

For the first time in my life (and perhaps ever), we are only a few weeks away from a general election in the United Kingdom without knowing exactly who will be Prime Minister on polling day, although, barring a miracle, we know who will be next. . Equally strange, many of the loudest complaints about the state of the country come from supporters of the party that has been in power for 14 years.

These unusual times are also creating uncertainty over how some UK media outlets will cover the election. Will Rupert Murdoch again, as in 1997, turn to supporting Labor and then, when they win, declare again: “It’s The sun What won him? How big and impactful will the heavily loss-making GB News be (without Nigel Farage, who has now declared he is standing as a candidate, which prevents him from running)?

No matter which way Rupert jumps, the Telegraph, EmailAnd Express will probably still support the Conservatives, even if the Express might be tempted to opt for Reform UK, as he once did for Ukip. But which conservative faction – the far right or the hard right – will they support? And what story will they lead on: economic “green shoots”, “stopping the boats” or saving the country from unrest and socialism? THE Guardian And Mirror will probably support the Labor Party, and it is very likely that The temperatureTHE FTand the Star this will also be the case, leaving conservatives unusually isolated in the national press. Who knows?

Amid all this exciting uncertainty, it’s reassuring to be able to make two confident predictions about the media as the election approaches:

1. Right-wing populist voices will claim that the election coverage of the UK’s most trusted news source, the BBC, is systematically biased towards Labor and anti-Conservative, and that they are saying this in the name of silent majority whose voices have been suppressed. by the left-wing cabal that controls the country.
2. In reality, the silent majority of the public will disagree with the claim, supposedly made on their behalf, that the BBC’s media coverage exhibits systemic left-wing bias.

Allegations of left-wing bias in BBC media coverage

The first point is easy to predict: this is what British right-wing populists do. There are plenty of examples in my book with Peter York The war on the BBC. The most recent include: Douglas Murray in The sun casually making “the BBC and other left-wing media”; Rod Lidddle in Sunday time saying the BBC’s “palpable” bias “shows through almost every day”; Conservative MP Scott Benton (now a former MP after a lobbying scandal forced him to resign, triggering the Blackpool South by-election which was won by Labour) said that “liberal left metropolitan bias of Channel 4 almost gives the impression that the BBC is impartial”; former Prime Minister Liz Truss sycophantically told GB News: “(You’re) not the BBC, you’re actually right”; Janet Daley writing in the Telegraph that the BBC “can never cure itself of its prejudices (because it) considers itself the voice of justice”; and the old Telegraph editor-in-chief Charles Moore, as a guest on Allison Pearson’s show Normal planet podcast, claiming that the BBC has “abandoned” its impartiality (the name of the podcast not-so-subtly suggesting that it represents the views of “normal people” like Pearson and Moore).

Even the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lucy Frazer, who claims to be a supporter of the BBC, told the DCMS select committee: ‘I think the BBC is sometimes biased, yes’, well only questioned by a fellow Conservative MP. , she couldn’t give any examples.

So it seems quite safe to predict that right-wing politicians and media will claim that the BBC’s coverage of the 2024 election has a left-wing bias and, at least implicitly, that most of the British public (“normal people” ) would agree with this. claim.

What the true silent majority thinks

Point 2 is also easy to predict because we have long-term data from YouGov’s biannual public opinion tracker, which includes the question “Is the BBC more favorable towards Labour/the left or the Conservatives/ the right ? This study consistently finds that around 20 percent of respondents agree that the BBC has a systematic left-wing bias, but around 20 percent think exactly the opposite, that it tends to favor the conservatives and the RIGHT. It’s a bit like football fans thinking the referee is biased against their team. And the real silent majority – about 60 percent in between – respond “It’s generally neutral” (about 25 percent) or “Don’t know” (about 35 percent).

We can debate the extent to which saying you don’t know whether the BBC has a left or right bias implies that you think it is UNbiased. But what is not debatable is that the vast majority of the British public either explicitly (20 percent plus 25 percent equals 45 percent) or implicitly (35 percent) disagree with the statement according to which the BBC’s media coverage reflects a systemic left. -wing, pro-Labor bias, leaving only about 20 percent who agree with it.

As you would expect, responses vary by age group, political affiliation and how the respondent voted on Brexit, with the over 50s, Tory voters and Leavers being significantly more likely to declare that the BBC’s coverage is “left-wing”. To a lesser extent, the same is true for men (across the country) and, geographically, for those living in the south of England, particularly outside London, and in the Midlands; while women and those in the north of England, Scotland and Wales are slightly more likely to say this country leans right (the YouGov survey covers Britain and therefore excludes North Ireland).

Inevitably, the numbers also fluctuate a bit. In the October 2023 survey, the most recent at the time of writing, 22 percent said the BBC leaned left and 20 percent said it leaned right. But during the previous one (May 2023), it was the opposite, with 20% saying they were on the left and 25% saying they were on the right. Overall, the numbers are remarkably stable, with no clear trend. And other independent investigations tell much the same story.

So I’m pretty confident about both of my predictions.

Beyond the elections

What about the media after the elections? One uncertainty is who will own and control the Telegraph And Spectator, although it would be surprising if their right-wing political positions changed significantly under a new owner, be it Rupert Murdoch, Sir Paul Marshall (one of GB News’ two main backers ) or one of the other names in the box. Apart from anything else, alienating their core readers would be commercial folly.

Even with a Labor victory, right-wing attacks on the BBC’s impartiality will undoubtedly continue, failing to convince most of the public.

The real threat to the BBC’s long-term viability is financial: the combination of significant funding cuts since 2010 (34 percent in real terms), rising real-terms content and distribution costs, and the need to increase investments to adapt to disruptive technologies and technological change. consumer trends.

Given the growth of online disinformation, much of it sponsored by states hostile to Britain, it is to be hoped that a Labor government will make the sustainability of the BBC and commercial public service broadcasters a high priority . The financial stakes are quite low: the cost of a TV license is equivalent to a takeaway coffee per week for the entire household, excluding those who pay nothing. The social, cultural and democratic issues are much greater: international comparisons show that having a strong public service broadcaster is an essential source of public resilience in the face of online disinformation.

This message is bbased on a chapter to be published in: John Mair, ed., General Election 2024: The Media and the Messengers, MGM Books, July 2024. This article represents the views of the author and not the position of the Media@LSE blog, nor from the London School of Economics and Political Science.