Why election bias accusations put the BBC under threat

All political parties think the broadcaster is against them, writes Sean O'Grady

The broadcaster’s exit poll results are projected on the outside of its building in London (Reuters)

The BBC is used to being attacked by politicians. It comes with the territory. Ever since, in its very first years, it survived its first run-in with a politician on the make by the name of Winston Churchill (that was over the General Strike of 1926), it has had to deal routinely with politically motivated claims of political bias. As well as Churchill, politicians as diverse as Tony Benn, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, Norman Tebbit, Tony Blair and George Osborne have either loathed it, threatened it, sought to undermine it – or, sometimes, all three.

Still, the range and ferocity of the fire being directed at the broadcaster and its journalists in recent times is of an unprecedented degree.

In our fractured political culture, our leaders can agree on one thing at least: the BBC is institutionally biased against them. All of them. Logically it cannot be true, but that has not stopped the run of complaints. Nigel Farage has attacked the BBC for its audience selection (and was memorably rebuked and his claims rebutted by David Dimbleby). Remainers by contrast, protest that Farage is never off their screens. Jo Swinson, before her downfall, also accused the BBC of audience bias, and for not inviting her on to the stage with Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn for the leaders’ debates. Labour now see the BBC as part of a “mainstream media” with its own anti-Labour, anti-Corbyn agenda. A shadow cabinet mister, Andy McDonald, goes so far as to say that the broadcaster had been “consciously” biased during the campaign and suggested that its executives should “have a look in the mirror”. The BBC, according to McDonald, had “played a part” in Labour losing and claimed that Corbyn had been “vilified” and “much-maligned”.