BBC forced to apologies after 'bias' in Covid coverage: 'It was not proportionate'
The BBC has apologised after admitting that it showed “bias” towards an MP over his comments regarding Covid vaccines.
Andrew Bridgen, a Reclaim Party MP, raised his concerns over the impact of vaccines during an adjournment debate that was broadcast by BBC Parliament.
Alongside his comments were captions provided by the BBC which “corrected” the figures Bridgen was using as part of his argument.
The BBC is not making a great success of its fact-checking pretensions.
Biased coverage of Mr Bridgen's claims was what the government, most MPs and the permanent administration favoured so strongly that he had to join another party. Faced with that, BBC fact-checking seems to have gone AWOL yet again.
4 comments:
To go AWOL it had to be present in the first place.
A few posts ago I said that I used to read ray guns and spaceships science fiction. In those days a common trope was that each spaceship of the enemy fleet had a political commissar standing beside the Captain ensuring loyalty to regime.
It would appear that those political commissars are alive and well and working for various media outlets as 'fact checkers'.
But it used to be science fiction.
I think the BBC would love to have a side-bar running on all their news coverage, providing near-instant corrections and criticism of politicians as they speak. With AI, there is a very real chance of this being a possibility, and I would be surprised if their technical staff aren't working on it.
They should play to their strengths, though. They are much better at innuendo, omission, and suggestive juxtaposition.
I remember Peter Hitchens noting some years ago that you could tell when the establishment had taken against a politician, because suddenly you would only see unflattering pictures of them looking gormless or scary or displaying some other negative characteristic.
"a politician . . . . looking gormless or scary or displaying some other negative characteristic"
Nothing to see here, move long . . .
DJ - yes, political commissars are alive and well. They don't even need to physically present or even real, merely a background threat of unspecified downgrading from present comfort zones.
Sam - Hitchens was right, the unflattering pictures are a giveaway. It is worth taking note of current pictures because there is an underlying narrative there. Starmer tends to look harassed and anxious for example, although maybe he always looks like that.
Jannie - not many look scary these days but they do gormless quite well.
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