REPORTING THE NEWSPAPERS: EVIDENCE OF BIAS SKEW IN THE BBC’S SELECTION OF TITLES, STORIES AND GUEST DISCUSSANTS OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE, 18TH APRIL TO 21ST MAY 2017 Professor Adrian Renton, University of East London Dr Justin Schlosberg, Birkbeck, University of London SUMMARY BACKGROUND We are in a General Election Period. The BBC is required by its Charter and Ofcom’s amended Broadcasting Code, to provide high quality and distinctive material to support all audiences in participating in the democratic process as informed citizens. It is also required to treat politics with due accuracy and due impartiality, and during elections to balance coverage against past and current evidence of electoral support. This guidance applies to all of the BBC’s election coverage, including its regular citation and reviews of national newspaper headlines. METHODS The broadcast versions of “The Papers” and web versions of the “Papers Blog” for every day from the General Election Announcement on 18 April to 21st May 2017 were obtained and analysed to assess the number of days on which different newspapers outputs were mentioned, and discussed, and the time given for discussion of each newspaper, on a daily basis. The primary party endorsement which each newspaper gave to Parties at the May 2015 General Election was obtained. Papers were then categorized as Conservative, Labour, Other Party or No Party endorsing. Information provided by the presenter of Guests (name, job, and organisation) invited as discussants on the Broadcast version “the Papers” was recorded. These guests were classified as affiliated with the same categories of Party as above using evidenced methods. The proportional distribution across Party affiliated organisations was calculated and compared across Party categories and the extent to which they were balanced with respect to published voter proportions for each Party in the 2015 General Election was estimated. Confidence estimates were placed on all estimates using standard statistical techniques. RESULTS Across both its daily Broadcast programme “The Papers” and in the “Papers Blog” the BBC is giving between sixty nine and ninety five percent more coverage and discussion to papers supporting the Conservative Party than is balanced, using 2015 election voting as a reference. It is doing this at the expense of other parties who polled similar numbers at that election. Further, in its selection of Guests to discuss the newspaper outputs in its broadcasts, it is giving almost twice as much airtime to Guests affiliated as individuals of from organisations linked with the Conservative Party. No trade unionists or charity representatives were featured in the sample, and no politicians except from the Conservative party. The statistical probability that this could occur by chance if the BBC were 1 genuinely fulfilling its criteria to achieve balance on 2015 voting is across our measures less than one in ten thousand (P<0.0001). CONCLUSION The findings of this study provide strong evidence suggesting that the BBC, during the course of a General Election, is violating its Charter and sections 5 and 6 of the amended Broadcasting Code1, by the way it re-disseminates selected facts, events and opinions published by an already imbalanced spectrum of national newspapers. It is failing to give due weight to the coverage of parties during the election period by not taking account of evidence of past and current electoral support, as proscribed by Ofcom’s amended guidelines. Finally, through the selection of Guest discussants of newspaper coverage the BBC is failing to represent proportionate and diverse political perspectives, taking due account of the particular funding sources and editorial stance of organisations represented. 2 BACKGROUND The BBC’s mission and purposes under its Royal Charter2 include acting in the public interest in delivering news which is duly impartial, high-quality and distinctive and which builds people’s understanding. It should offer analysis and content not widely available from other UK news providers, so that all audiences can engage fully with major issues and participate in the democratic process, as active and informed citizens. The BBC is also required by Ofcom to treat all matters of politics with due accuracy and due impartiality in news and other output and to give due weight to the coverage of parties during elections, based on evidence of past and current electoral support. Further, The BBC’s Election Guidelines for the June 2017 General Election3 state that the Corporation needs to take all reasonable steps to be sure and that they have taken account of how organisations are funded. They also state that in reporting on press coverage of the campaign and in newspaper reviews, they should also take account of any relevant subjective editorial stance. Ofcom Data suggest that newspapers remain (just below the internet (40% vs 41%)) as an important source of news and information to the voting age population in the UK, with greater use by older age groups and among those not in employment4. There is also good evidence that the party people vote for is strongly associated with the political endorsements of the papers that they read, although it is not clear which direction (if any) the causality might operate5. Research on coverage of the 2015 General Election demonstrated the sensitivity of broadcasters to an issue agenda shaped largely by a Conservative-leaning national press.6 There has also been a considerable amount of concern about the impartiality of the BBC news coverage in relation to the Labour Party, since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.7 Studies of the EU referendum have also demonstrated over representation of the Conservative Party in broadcasting coverage.8 . The credibility of these findings is significantly enhanced by the astonishing broadcast of comments made by Sir Michael Lyons, previously Chairman of the BBC’s highest body, the BBC Trust. On 12th May 2016 he said on the World at One: “I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that the BBC has sought to hedge its bets of late. There have been some quite extraordinary attacks on the elected leader of the Labour Party. I mean quite extraordinary. I can understand why people are worried about whether some of the most senior editorial voices at the BBC have lost their impartiality in this”. The Democratic process relies on a legitimate election system. But it also relies on those voting having a balanced view of the issues at stake, and on the position of the Parties on those issues. By any measure the British national press remains highly concentrated, both in terms of ownership and partisan editorial stance. Clearly the BBC as a public services broadcaster has a role to play in balancing the potential disinformation, at both the narrative and factual level, which may be communicated to the voting public by this lack of plurality. Aside from the influence newspapers are said to wield on the BBC’s overall news agenda, fixed slot airtime is devoted to reviewing national newspapers on a number of its flagship and peak time news programmes. These include the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One, the Today Programme on Radio 4, and Radio 5 Live. In addition, the BBC presents a daily blog (The Papers Blog) on its website devoted to re-disseminating headlines from national newspapers. This study aims to provide reliable quantitative empirical evidence of the coverage of “The Papers” daily broadcasts as well as the “Papers Blog” since the announcement of the current General Election as well as the affiliations of the individuals invited onto the “The Papers Programme” and to consider whether these findings are consistent with the BBC’s Royal Charter, its current election guidelines, and the requirements of the Broadcasting Code. 3 METHODS OVERVIEW The broadcast versions of “The Papers” and the Papers Blog” were downloaded from the BBC Iplayer website9 and the BBC Blog site10 on a daily basis between the 18 April and 21 May 2017. The primary endorsements to Political Parties provided by each paper at the May 2015 General Election was obtained from the Wikipedia website11. References provided in support of endorsements were checked in the references cited on the page to confirm validity. Papers were then categorized as Conservative, Labour, Other Party, or No-Party endorsing. DATA COLLECTION “THE PAPERS” BROADCAST For each day the broadcast episode(s) were carefully reviewed and the following information was recorded: a) whether each paper was mentioned (Paper Mentioned); b) whether each paper was discussed (Paper Discussed); c) for how long each paper was discussed (Time Discussed); and d) the name of each guest and the presenter’s description of the guest’s role and organisational affiliation. For each episode the procedure for collecting these data was as follows. At the beginning (introduction) of the programme there is a screening of images of the front page of several papers, with the Presenter stating (usually rereading) the paper’s name and restating or rereading the main headline for 10 seconds or so. For each paper image screened, named and headline read or restated, a binary number (0,1) (variable Paper Mentioned) was recorded against the paper name. Generally the next occurrence is the Presenter introducing Guests by their names and their organisational affiliations; or as a commentator or freelancer with no organisational affiliation stated. Next, the Presenter chooses a headlines from one of the papers for discussion; and a discussion commences. The time this occurred was recorded as Discussion Start Time and allocated to the paper, At some point the presenter draws the discussion of this headline/paper to a close. This time was recorded as Discussion End Time and allocated to the paper). The Presenter then moves on to raise a new discussion. This point is again recorded as Discussion Start Time and allocated.