5 May 2016

Is there a Guardian bias on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme?

Call me paranoid, but I've long had my suspicions – and this line-up cast all doubts aside.

I’ve long wondered, on and off, whether I was just being paranoid about the flurries of bias on the Sunday-morning magazine programme Broadcasting House in favour of the Guardian Media Group, but in recent weeks I have not been sure I am. Take the edition of 17 April, when the newspaper reviewers were the actor Tom Conti, Gareth McLean (the Guardian journalist) and Katharine Whitehorn (the veteran Guardian journalist and Observer columnist).

Conti, talking amusedly about Brexit (“It’s like walking through a forest with a wilderness of tigers”), kicked off the discussion with a tremendous rustling, as though spreading the article across the whole studio. “Well, in the Observer on page five . . .” He was immediately followed by Whitehorn: “That isn’t the only thing in the Observer about this, because my own column in the magazine makes the point that . . .” Changing the subject to the return of Game of Thrones, McLean then said, “There’s a nice piece in the Observer . . . loads of facts and figures, and some nice reporting done.”

I’m sure there was, but if the BBC’s radar remains broadly Guardian-esque in its political direction (and was ever thus), it doesn’t half sound snug.

The following week, the press reviewers were the conservatoire principal Julian Lloyd Webber, the former rear admiral Chris Parry and the journalist Sali Hughes – of the Guardian. Lloyd Webber began the newspaper review, talking down the line from Birmingham about the frustrations of everything being centred around London. “Well, the Observer has three pages on how people living outside London view our capital city . . .” He was followed directly by Hughes, commenting on a story about immunisation: “In the Observer there’s a story about how pro-vaccination campaigns in America . . .” After which Parry recommended: “There’s a very good article by Will Hutton in the Observer.” None of what was discussed was objectionable – but the comfiness was. A creeping insularity being presented as a nice, interesting chat, as even-handedness, when actually it’s what can start to feel like a rock-hard centre-left world-view. An eye must be kept on it, is all I’m saying.