7/21/2009

Why did the BBC allow the Norwich North debate be hijacked by Tory Councillors ?

Watching the BBC East debate on the Norwich North by-election last night I was amazed that the BBC allowed so many Tory Councillors not only to be in the audience (an audience they claimed of ordinary electors from Norwich North, but allow them to ask questions (even the first question) when many of them were not even councillors or residents of Norwich North. Indeed one was a senior cabinet member on Broadland Council and Norfolk County Council. Who does the BBC's research in to these things ?

Hopeless Tory bias from the BBC again !

You can watch the debate HERE

8 comments:

Augustus Eldridge said...

Rupert Read made an error picking on the Conservatives it seemed.

Anonymous said...

I've been unnerved for some time by what seems like a definite BBC editing out of the Lib Dems inpolitical debate and a very obvious pro-Tory edit by the increasingly celeb "opinioncasters" who tell us what to think about the news every night, rather than the news as news. The BBC have gone tabloid to be more like ITV!

Anonymous said...

Do you have a different BBC in Norfolk then? In the rest of the world this political mouthpiece is a self-confessed left leaning government rent a crowd - and you accuse them of Bias towards the Tories.

What you mean I expect, is that they didn't weren't all over your LibDeb like a rash. Crass dummy spit

Fausty said...

Why no UKIP candidate?

Complain!

Anonymous said...

Very strange. Since the bbc is Gordon Brown orientated it begs the question of if Reading had any NuLabor members, or were they all in hiding.
Stating the bbc is Tory biased is an oxymoron.

Nich Starling said...

Whatever your political views, it is clear the BBC never gives proper coverage to the Lib Dems. I would ask you to watch the introductions of the conadidates on the BBC clip just to see the level of bias in the report.

Redpath for Union Overlord said...

I attend programmes like this quite frequently and have occasionally be asked by my political party to allocate the places we are alloted by the BBC.

I would be surprised if it didnt work similarly in Norfolk. So you can expect that each party was given an allocated number of seats(usually a small percentage of the total audience) and allowed to give them out freely. If the conservatives dominated the debate as you say then I can only suggest that one of the following happened.

1. Conservatives phoned up and pestered the BBC for tickets on an individual basis.
2. Members of the Conservative party were there representing different groups who also get a ticket allocation.
3. The Labour delegates didnt show and their seats were reallocated
4. The Labour delegates didnt speak whilst the conservatives did and appeared to dominate the programme.

As for the issue of Liberal Democrats recieving poorer coverage all I can say is that I sympathise. In a recent by election my own party was glossed over by the media. Thankfully we won the by-election and gave everyone a bit of a shock but it didnt stop our underrepresentation in the media. I have been of the opinion for a long time that television media is not interested in detail it wants a simple two horse race to present to the public.

Not a lot to be done about I am afraid.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the LibDem speakers were so dull they were forced to find other speakers who had a spark of enthusiasm...

...who just happened to be tories!

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