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BBC to probe its news impartiality

The impartiality of the BBC’s news and factual coverage across the UK is to be reviewed in the light of feedback and complaints from audiences.

A verdict on the network’s coverage given to events in England compared with those in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will be made public by the summer next year.

It will be reached thanks to research provided by Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, with input from Mike Robinson, a former BBC news editor, who will direct the review.

They will analyse the amount of coverage allotted to English local authority elections against national polls in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales next spring.

The review will also scrutinise four weeks of coverage this autumn 2007, with the focus on devolution, which has passed greater powers to politicians in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff.

It will be the first review the BBC Trust has undertaken since it was set up in January this year, and will probe the impartiality of the coverage licence payers have funded. The BBC said the subject of the review was chosen after feedback from viewers.

“This review will consider whether the nations' differing policies – with regard to both devolved policies and other matters – are properly reflected in the BBC's network output”, the BBC Trust said in statement.

“The substantial devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over the past decade has led to new challenges for the BBC in providing appropriate and relevant network coverage for each of the four nations.”

Review author Anthony King, professor of government at the University of Essex, and contributor to the Daily Telegraph, will determine whether the BBC has suitably covered each administration’s actions, polices and reactions to them.

The announcement of the review comes just five months after an internal BBC report claimed that the organisation was Left-leaning and out of touch with large swathes of the public.

Evidencing the claim, a reported survey by media regulator Ofcom recently found that almost half of viewers consider BBC1's news coverage biased – a complaint that has become the raison d’ être of an internet blog .

Nov 20, 2007
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