Monitoring the widely-watched BBC One News at Six since the official start of the EU referendum campaign last Friday, one of the things I've been looking out for it see whether the BBC's debunking Reality Check feature is being used fairly.
So far, it's only been used once - to debunk a Leave claim about the UK losing £350 million a week to the EU. None of the other four bulletins has used it.
That means, of course, that George Osborne's bogus 'families will be £4,300 poorer if we leave the EU' claim a couple of days ago wasn't debunked during the BBC One News at Six, despite being cited five times during the course of the bulletin. In fact, it wasn't even questioned (not even by the BBC's economics editor Kamal Ahmed).
As for Reality Check, the nearest we got to that was:
And the BBC's Reality Check team has been going through the claims and today's document in more detail on our Reality Check pages. That's at bbc.co.uk/realitycheck.
I have to say I that's pretty inexcusable.
The BBC's Anthony Reuben did, sort of, debunk Osborne's claim.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36073201
Sort of. The final 'verdict' wasn't a verdict at all, really.
Reality Check verdict: The precise figure is questionable and probably not particularly helpful. If you want to be influenced by economic modelling, the useful thing to take away is that the Treasury thinks leaving the EU would be bad for the economy, by an amount that would dwarf the savings from not having to contribute to the EU Budget.
I guess this is why the rest of the BBC can go on quoting Osborne's opinion as gospel. Meanwhile, the latest 'reality checks' have been pretty wishy-washy, not definitive at all either way. Now that the low-hanging fruit has been exhausted, the Beeboids aren't so hard core after all.
On balance the BBC are indeed bias against Brexit.
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