The public tend to say the BBC director-general and CEO of news were right to resign
Recent days have seen the BBC come in for criticism over charges that it is not acting impartially, with a leaked internal memo alleging the broadcaster had ‘serious and systemic’ bias in its coverage.
Particular focus has fallen on footage of a Donald Trump speech ahead of the 2021 Capitol riots, which critics claim was selectively edited in order to make it look like Trump was calling for disorder. The memo also raised concerns about use of contributors with antisemitic views on the BBC Arabic service and claims of suppressed coverage around transgender issues.
As a result, Sunday saw BBC director-general Tim Davie and CEO of news Deborah Turness resign over the Trump documentary edit.
A snap YouGov poll today shows that 26% of Britons say they are following the story of the resignations closely, alongside a further 47% who are aware of the story although not following it closely.
YouGov’s separate news tracker poll – for which fieldwork began at 3pm yesterday and ended this morning – finds that 2% of Britons say the impartiality controversy was the single news story they noticed most over the preceding week, placing it joint seventh. By comparison, the first-placed ‘accidental release of prisoners’ was cited by 21%.
The public tend to think that Davie and Turness were right to resign (44%), with only 7% disagreeing – although 49% are unsure. Belief that the two chiefs were right to stand down is the primary view across voters for the four largest parties in 2024.
When it comes to the charge that the BBC are biased, half of Britons believe that it is, but they don’t agree on how.
Overall, 31% believe the BBC is biased in favour of left-wing views, but another 19% think it is biased in favour of right-wing views.
Only 19% say it is not biased at all.
Accusations of BBC bias fall along predictably partisan lines. Fully 73% of Reform voters and 52% of Tory voters think the BBC are too left wing, compared to only 16% of Labour voters.
For their part, Labour voters are twice as likely to say the BBC is biased towards the right wing (31%) than the left, while Lib Dem voters are – perhaps fittingly – about evenly split 19% left / 22% right.
See the full results here, here and here
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