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Facebook petition to sack BBC’s Nick Robinson
Facebook members call for BBC to fire political editor for ‘Tory bias’
A campaign to persuade the BBC to fire its political editor Nick Robinson is gathering steam on Facebook. The group claims the election coverage by Robinson was "too biased" towards the Conservatives and in four days it has attracted almost 1,600 members. One member writes that Robinson was "unable to hide his glee when Cameron finally walked into Number 10".
The group, which is called 'Nick Robinson should not be the BBC's political editor', claims that Robinson is "consistently unable to disguise his bias in favour of the Conservative Party". Led by its creator Peter Tennant, it insists that this is not a personal attack on Robinson but wants to "addresses a specific concern regarding BBC objectivity".
Tennant plans to take a dossier of complaints to the BBC in order to get Robinson, 46, removed as its political editor, a post he has held for five years. On Facebook Tennant lists examples of "clear bias", including:
a) Comparing Cameron to Disraeli before he's even taken office;
b) Talking about Downing Street as a 'Labour free zone';
c) Talking about Gordon Brown as the 'unelected prime minister';
d) Talking about the Conservatives as having 'won' the election;
e) Talking about a rainbow coalition as a 'coalition of losers’;
f) The clear pleasure on his face when the Tories returned to power.
One of the group's main beefs is the fact that, as a student, Robinson was president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. In 1986 he spent a year as the National Chairman of the Young Conservatives.
Before taking over from Andrew Marr at the BBC in 2005, Robinson insisted that his Tory past was not an issue. "Just think what you were doing 20 years ago," he told Wired magazine. "I was still, sadly, going to Genesis concerts and listening to the Human League."
One former member of the BBC political staff, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The First Post today: "There are two things to bear in mind. One, it's true Nick was a Tory, but he never a 'nasty Tory'. He was against Thatcher. Secondly, his history as a Conservative means he has more insight into the subject. It makes him a better political correspondent."
However, during the early Blair years, when Robinson was still ITV's political editor, before succeeding Marr at the Beeb, he developed a reputation for hectoring the Labour government. In 2005 he confronted Labour over a controversial election poster and challenged the party over the all-white audience who gathered to hear Blair make a high-profile anti-immigration speech. Such antics earned him the sobriquet "fucking pillock" from John Prescott.
It remains to be seen whether Robinson will challenge the new Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in the same way.
In the meantime, there is an even bigger Facebook campaign to oust Robinson’s opposite number at Sky News, Adam Boulton. A Facebook group opposed to Boulton for using his job to "present his own ideologies" has almost 1,800 members and was motivated, in part, by Boulton's astonishing on-air tirade with Labour spin-doctor Alastair Campbell earlier this week. ·
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Robbo's OK.
I'm not surprised there's an uproar. Expressing anything other tha NuLabour views on the BBC really goes against the grain. Are there enought stones of the right size for the rest of the 23,499 BBC employees to crawl under now Labour are out for then foreseeable future?
Can't say I noticed any bias one way or the other - and I'm always on the look-out, instinctively. However, what is worth stressing (and this may be partly what upsets some) is than
Nick Robinson belongs to a small group of journalists, whether in the print or broadcast media, who spots the real changes in a political story. He is also sharp enough to cut through tribal loyalties of politics and to escape from conventional ways of 'seeing' in Westminster. Unlike the Andrew Neils, Dimblebys and Paxmans, most politicians of the commentariat, who are experienced but irritatingly self-regarding and worse, stuck in the tramlines of their set thinking, he is neither ponderous nor pompous. Alas, Robinson's reporting is all too unusual for this reason, which leads some of us to despair at the sheer unoriginality of most political reporting. Nick Robinson rises above this low standard ... which is perhaps one reason why he is being pilloried. There is nothing more terrifying to tribes of any kind than someone who dares to be different. I for one say: raise your glasses, everyone, to one of the rare political commentators who often does see the wood for the trees! One cannot say that very often - and that's a sad admission to make.
The BBC is institutionally left wing. BBC news reader Huw Edwards can say the word Tory without his lips curling in disgust (what him try on the news). There are plenty of other examples from the ex-Communist Marr to Kirsty Walk ( who was filmed egging leftwing commentators on on Newsnight this week ).
This is the revenge of the nasty Labour party and their activists who can't stand any betrayal of the left wing consensus.
If only there was a real Thatcherite among them. Or among the Conservative party. Let's face it, the BBC prates on about it charter and the 'neutral and objective' stance, when we all know that they are about as neutral as battery acid. The Guardianista tendency have held sway there since the 1930s, when the BBC kept Winston Churchill off the air - Lord Reith being in cahoots with the cabinet of the day. And why was Churchill persona non grata? Because he kept offending the Germans by saying the Herr Hitler was a no-good warmonger, and the only way he could get his message out was by writing in the Evening Standard. With the BBC as friends, who needs enemies?
What utter garbage - these armchair socialists are so used to the bias for labour by the BBc that they can't see objectivity when presented to them....
But there again, after 13 painful years of labour, maybe Nick was expressing what most of us felt.
This is funny because if you read the responses to Nick Robinson's BBC blog, they consistently accuse him of LABOUR bias - saying that he was in the pocket of Gordon Brown. The fact of the matter is that the BBC has ALWAYS appeared to be left-biased to Conservatives, and right-biased to Labour. Which suggests very strongly that it is, surprisingly enough, neutral.
Please don't be silly. He works for the BBC. All their staff have to sign the pledge to support Labour as clearly proved during the latest election.
Does Nick Robinson seriously expect us to believe he no longer listens to Genesis?
I would have thought he was reporting the truth - somewhat rare these days