Steve's blog

The BBC news website appears to be showing a systemic bias over the AV referendum. For the last few weeks, there has been regular coverage of the referendum and it seems that there has been the usual blind adherence to "balance" - every story about AV has included some of the (incorrect, unscientific, even hate-filled) propaganda from the "no to AV" campaign without critique or analysis. It's difficult to see any justification for this except deliberate editorial bias, but I don't imagine that there's much that can be done about that.

However, right now on the BBC News front page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ I can see that there is a link "Referendum views" that points to yet another opinion piece from a "No" campaigner (Frederick Forsyth). I only see a single view here, not the plural "views" suggested. I don't see any positive view for AV promoted from the front page at all, nor any link from this puff piece to the other articles that have been written in the recent past. Looking further, I can see that there *has*, in fact, been a positive piece on the News Front Page today (from Billy Bragg) but there are no visible links to it any more. Both articles were posted/updated at the same time this morning (22nd April, 08:34 BST) yet now only the negative one remains. Very shoddy, and not at all what I would expect from the BBC.

23:24 :: # :: /misc/politics :: 11 comments

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Re: Re: Bias in the news
Chris Cunningham wrote on Sat, 23 Apr 2011 12:47

That logic would only seem to apply if voters rank every candidate on the ballot rather than only those they actually wish to get into office. If you vote Green right now and actively do not want any of the 2½ major parties' candidates to get in, you can continue to rank only the Green candidate.

However, if for some reason you would still rather that the Lib Dem candidate won than the Tory then you can give a lower rank to that candidate. You can threfore *both* vote with your conscience *and* do your part tactically.

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