THE BBC and BREXIT The ‘Today’ Programme’s Coverage of the UK General Election 6 November – 11 December 2019 1 Contents SUMMARY .....................................................................................................................................................3 PART ONE: MONITORING STATISTICS..................................................................................................6 1.1 OVERVIEW – THE BBC, THE ROYAL CHARTER AND OFCOM ......................................................6 1.2 THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND ....................................................................................................... 13 1.3 MAIN UK PARTIES IN THE 2019 GENERAL ELECTION ................................................................ 15 1.4 TODAY’S EU COVERAGE .................................................................................................................. 24 1.5 SPEAKERS AND CODING ................................................................................................................. 24 1.6 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 31 PART TWO: CONTENT ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................ 35 SUMMARY OF ISSUES RAISED BY PRO-BREXIT COVERAGE ............................................................ 35 SECTION 1: WITHDRAWAL CONTRIBUTIONS .................................................................................... 35 SECTION 2: THE BORIS JOHNSON ‘DEAL’: PRO-BREXIT AGREEMENT SPEAKERS ....................... 46 SECTION 3: REALITY CHECK EU-RELATED CONTENT ......................................................................... 66 SECTION 3: BUSINESS NEWS ................................................................................................................. 72 APPENDIX I: ‘REALITY CHECK’ ............................................................................................................. 75 1. CRITICISMS OF ‘REALITY CHECK’ ....................................................................................................... 75 2. SUMMARY OF EU-RELATED ‘REALITY CHECK’ CONTENT IN 2019 ELECTION SURVEY ......... 77 3. ‘REALITY CHECK’ TRANSCRIPTS ......................................................................................................... 79 APPENDIX II: ‘BUSINESS NEWS’ TRANSCRIPTS................................................................................ 92 APPENDIX III: RUNNING LOG ........................................................................................................... 114 2 SUMMARY This News-watch survey confirms major breaches of impartiality in the coverage of the 2019 General Election by the BBC’s flagship news programme Today. The Corporation must answer five central questions: Why were there more Remainers than Leavers in the coverage of what was widely dubbed as ‘The Brexit election’? Why did the clean-break Brexit perspective merit only 9 per cent of airtime when in 2016 the British people voted to Leave the EU and, according to surveys, 38 percent of the electorate want ‘no deal’? Why did the BBC ‘Reality Check’ unit and Today business news focus so heavily on Brexit negativity? Why does the BBC never explore properly the potential benefits of Brexit and instead focuses relentlessly on perceived pitfalls? Why do both Ofcom and the BBC resist being more rigorous and transparent in their assessment of impartiality when public confidence is in steep decline? The report establishes that between November 6 and December 11, 2019, in its EU-related General Election coverage, the flagship BBC Radio 4 Today programme did not meet requirements of due impartiality laid down by Ofcom and the BBC Charter. The survey - conducted using rigorous academic methodology - is based on word-by-word analysis of almost 350 programme items involving 332 contributors and 169 interviews. The coverage totalled more than 71,000 words amounting to 12 hours and 23 minutes - 21.6 percent of Today’s available airtime. This was widely dubbed ‘the Brexit election’ because the central choice was between the Conservative party manifesto pledge to ‘get Brexit done’ and a range of parties, including Labour, who were in favour of a second referendum or Remain. In this context - because a binary choice was on offer - it would be expected that Today would achieve a broadly equal balance between the two perspectives. The most striking manifestation of bias was that coverage was heavily weighted to those advocating Remain. 3 178 speakers - 53.6 percent of the total who appeared were broadly pro-EU, anti- Brexit, in favour of a second referendum or the revoking of Article 50. They spoke 36,384 words, 51% of the total words on the EU/Brexit 112 speakers - 33.7 per cent of the total - were broadly anti-EU, pro-Brexit (including the Boris Johnson deal), or opposed to a second EU referendum or the revoking of Article 50. They spoke 26,445 Words, 37% of the total words on the EU/Brexit Ahead of the campaign, polls indicated that 38 percent of voters supported a ‘no deal’ Brexit amid widespread concerns that Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement did not facilitate a clean- break from the EU. Both the Brexit Party and the DUP also expressed grave reservations about the terms. Yet this perspective was held by only 31 of the 332 (9.3 percent) programme contributors who together spoke only 6,494 words (9.1 percent of the total) and they were rarely given the space to make a clear, pro-Brexit case against the Withdrawal Agreement. This major imbalance was compounded by that more than 50 percent of the words spoken by supporters of ‘no deal’ were delivered by Nigel Farage across four strongly adversarial interviews in which the main intent was to accuse him of being unprincipled; scared to stand personally; the head of merely a pressure group; incoherent in his strategies; and of framing immigration policies which would stifle the economy and hobble social and health services. The negativity towards Brexit was buttressed and worsened by so-called ‘reality check’ comment which disproportionately focused on that the projected timetable was insufficient, along with the imagined risks of ‘no deal’. The BBC set itself up as an adjudicator of ‘truth’ but instead used the slot to project anti-Brexit pessimism. In addition, coverage in the programme’s dedicated business news sections featured only six contributors who saw possible benefits of Brexit, ranged against 26 who were deeply cautious or still preferred Remain, with predictions of economic demise and whole sections of manufacturing industry and financial services being severely hit. A further aspect of the coverage was bias by omission. The Today programme made extensive efforts to show why Brexit would not work, but mounted very little effort to explore the potential benefits. The only glimpses of these were confined to the interviews with Nigel Farage, a series of short soundbites with firm withdrawalists and claims from government ministers that the Johnson deal would lead to free trade and more beneficial trading terms. An overarching concern, detailed in the opening section of this report, is that public confidence in the BBC’s ability to deliver impartial news and current affairs is waning, with audiences rating the BBC fifth out of six major broadcasters. And yet, the methods used by both the BBC and 4 Ofcom to investigate this major concern are demonstrably inadequate, relying on focus groups that deliberately exclude those with strong opinions on Brexit or the BBC, and supported by content analysis which studiously avoids confronting the fundamental question of impartiality. 5 PART ONE: MONITORING STATISTICS 1.1 OVERVIEW – THE BBC, THE ROYAL CHARTER AND OFCOM The BBC is the UK’s national public service broadcaster, established under a Royal Charter1 and operating under an Agreement with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.2 The BBC has a significant audience both in the UK and globally3, and its funding primarily derives from an annual licence fee charged to UK households, supplemented by revenue from the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries. This generates an annual income of approximately £3.7 billion.4 The 2017 Charter replaced the BBC Trust with the BBC Board, and charged the new body with ensuring that the BBC delivers its Mission and Public Purposes, while regulatory responsibility passed to Ofcom, the ‘first external, independent regulator’ in the Corporation’s history, responsible for 'holding the BBC’s performance and editorial standards to account.’5 The Royal Charter sets out that the BBC’s Mission is, ‘to act in the public interest, servicing all audience through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output’6 and defines the first of the BBC’s five Public Purposes as: To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world.7 The BBC also has additional obligations during the periods of elections and referendums. The guidelines for the December 2019 General Election stated: To achieve due impartiality, each bulletin, programme or programme strand, as well as online and social media channels, must ensure that the parties are covered proportionately