The BBC's Anti-Labour Bias

You could write a book about the BBC and its coverage of the 2019 general election campaign. Whatever was left of its reputation for balance and neutrality has been totally destroyed by a number of "honest mistakes", and the cringing behaviour of its chief political correspondent, our friend Laura Kuenssberg. Would you like a recap? Recently, we have seen:

The BBC apologising after using 2016 footage of Boris Johnson laying a wreath at the Cenotaph. The actual 2019 footage had Johnson looking dishevelled, and saw him place the wreath upside down.

The BBC apologising for editing the leaders' Question Time programme for its news bulletins the following day. Here, derisive laughter greeting Johnson's responses to a question about honesty was edited out to give him a more positive gloss.

The BBC was found editing an online report about a Tory candidate suspended for anti-semitic remarks. It went from a factual reporting of the specifics of the comments to merely branding them "unacceptable".

The BBC invited Jeremy Corbyn to sit down with Andrew Neil as part of their leaders' interviews series. They later admitted that Johnson isn't booked and, as of the time of writing, appears to be doing everything to avoid it. His previous outing didn't go well.

Following Labour's press conference about how the NHS is on the table when it comes to trade negotiations with Donald Trump, Laura Kuenssberg retweeted and then un-retweeted the following from Piers Morgan: "Wow. The breathtaking arrogance of this chump [Barry Gardiner} telling journalists what questions to ask. They should all ignore him and pummel Corbyn about anti-semitism." Fair and balanced, Fox News style.

Kuenssberg later plugged Dominic Cummings's racist blog, which for good measure invokes an anti-semitic trope. No "pummelling" for Mr Cummings.

And last of all, Corbyn gets scrutiny. And Johnson gets the fawning treatment.

We've talked about BBC bias so many times it feels dull to even write about it, but this behaviour cannot be swept under the carpet. Whether it's doing piss-poor hit jobs that flagrantly disregarded inconvenient evidence, to under-reporting Tory stories, or we're looking at the questionable framing of the BBC's top journalist, to suggest the BBC is balanced when the Tories never receive the same treatment is utterly untenable.

The BBC is biased. As discussed before, the BBC has always followed the lead of the establishment. And so whoever is in charge of the government are treated within certain parameters, and especially so since the Dr David Kelly affair in the aftermath of the Iraq War. The BBC has exercised its independence from the powers that be by not exercising its independence. Its political coverage of the centre right, the centre, and the centre left have been all of a piece. And so, when the Tories were troubled by a right wing insurgency arising from its own decomposition, they were treated with a mix of novelty and horrid fascination. UKIP was simultaneously of the establishment and a reaction against it, and was indulged for precisely this reason. And then when Corbynism broke through during the 2015 leadership contest, the BBC at first was enraptured by what they regarded as a fleeting appearance of a left thought long-buried, and once Jeremy has won the party leadership Kuenssberg and friends amplified every attack from ostensible Labour MPs. As the left consolidated its power and the reliables on Labour's right squeezed out so the attacks grew, and once the party became a contender in 2017 the BBC closed ranks and its fabled impartiality became increasingly threadbare. And that's how it's been since. The BBC remain biased toward the establishment, and with centrism routed in Labour and the LibDems set to deflate yet again, protecting the status quo means protecting the Tory party.

We shouldn't at all be shocked by this, as the BBC is the establishment. Or at least an arm of it. But the paradox of its behaviour over British politics these last few years is how it has systematically dismantled the base of mass support it has in the public at large. It is weakening itself, so if the Tories win they will come for it. Getting the BBC to stump up the cash for free licences for the over-75s is one of the few pledges the Tory manifesto contains. That means more marketisation, more precarity, and a pressure on mega salaries for stars, including well remunerated chief correspondents, and less money for interesting programming and well resourced journalism. And there won't be anyone outside of parliament willing to run to its defence. If the BBC wasn't so important to this country's cultural life, it would deserve everything coming to it.