Researchers at Cardiff University have produced a detailed analysis of every episode of the BBC’s flagship Question Time programme broadcast between September 2014 and July 2023 to see if the broadcaster was balancing political viewpoints.
An analysis of 352 programmes, featuring 1734 guest slots filled by 661 different people, found that while the BBC had ‘broadly balanced’ appearances from representatives of the UK’s main political parties, when it came to members of the media, a right-wing bias became evident.
Disproportionate representation
Matt Walsh, head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, wrote: “Removing politicians from the list of most frequent guests, shows that several high-frequency panelists are being used, most of whom come from the political right.
“The regularly featured journalists are typically opinion columnists who contribute to right-wing press outlets such as the Mail or the Telegraph, or who make appearances on right-leaning broadcasters like GB News and TalkTV.”
The five most regular non-political guests have all written for the right-wing Spectator magazine. These include Isabel Oakeshott, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Kate Andrews, Tim Stanley and Camilla Tominey, with no such similar frequency of guests from left-wing media.
Oakeshott appeared 13 times across the period studied, whilst the most frequent guest from a left-wing publication – Ash Sarkar from Novara Media – appeared just six times.
Walsh added that the BBC’s over reliance on guests from right-wing media suggests a failure to achieve balance.
Farage’s domination of the airtime
The report comes at a time when Reform Party leader Nigel Farage (with just five MPs) appeared for the 38th time on Question Time.
Only the late Charles Kennedy of the Lib Dems appeared on the BBC show more times.
Although Farage was demolished by Tony Blair’s former Chief of Staff Alastair Campbell at his last QT outing, his mounting appearances are causing grave concern about the BBC’s motives in allowing him so much airtime. Is he an audience puller or, as many people on the left believe, a vacuous and divisive populist who the right-wing media would like to see as the PM?
The ‘sofa shows’ have been fixated since the July 2024 general election with right wing pundits and former Tory MPs with nothing new to say except spinning stories the right-wing media run no matter how ridiculous – which the BBC then turn into ‘news’.
Maybe Labour’s communications team are fearful of actually having people around who are adept at getting their punches in first, as Campbell, Charlie Whelan and David Hill were!
Article first published in Media North: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North). For more from Media North, and to subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website.
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