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Friday 18 July 2008

Nick Robinson symbolises the BBC's mainstream approach to politics (apparently)

Frank Fisher in The Guardian is not too happy. He reckons the BBC, and in particular Nick Robinson, upholds the established mainstream order by framing the political questions of the day.
"Just as there is a disconnect between public and politicians, there is a disconnect between the media and public, and now the media and reality. We are not as dumb as they suppose. We do see that the binary, purely party political options presented to us do not reflect the full range of options. There are paths which do not go through Westminster, roads less well travelled, or never travelled at all – the BBC simply chooses to excise them from its roadmap."
Hardly a new accusation - check out the literature on the BBC's coverage of the General Strike 1926 for example - but one which I would have thought might be diminishing given the BBC's attempts to throw more of the agenda over to the audience in recent times.

Maybe Nick should spend some more time reading the comments on his blog or Guido's blog. He can write off ever having time to sleep but at least in Frank Fisher's eyes he might be able to ask some better questions.

But then maybe Frank Fisher should consider the BBC's coverage of politics more wholistically and in a less 'mainstream fashion'. After all, by only considering the role of Nick Robinson he misses many other ways in which politics is reported at the BBC. In some programmes, for example, they ask the audience what sort of questions they'd like to ask.

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