ALL ROADS LEAD TO BIAS

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Crime was the theme of this morning's Today programme, and several acts of GBH were carried out against the Conservatives during the course of it. Indeed, the whole programme seemed to be structured in such a way as to make the mugging of Chris Grayling at 8.15 its focal point.
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It began with Mark Easton telling Justin Webb that Labour were right about the crime figures, and that crime shot up under Ma Thatcher and the Conservative Gang but fell back again after Labour's Untouchables came to power. After initially sketching each party's view of whether crime is rising or falling, Justin turned to Easton and joked "I wasn't going to ask you who's right and who's wrong Mark." He might as well have done. Easton's description of what has happened to crime over the last thirty years would have been music to Alan Johnson's ears. The stats he used are those of the opinion-poll-like British Crime Survey, recommended by Easton as the best way of judging the figures.
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Justin Webb then interviewed Chris Huhne. He gave him a very easy ride, but got him to agree with Easton that crime has been falling significantly under Labour. Just one interruption in five minutes saw a very low interruption coefficient here of 0.2.
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Alan Johnson came on at 7.33. There were no audio clips from crime victims before his interview, no academics critical of Labour's record, indeed no pre-prepared ambushes whatsoever. He was simply interviewed. Evan Davis was the interviewer and he did plenty of interrupting (achieving an IC of 1.5). As to why the public remains unconvinced by the official statistics, he got Mr Johnson to concede that it wasn't just the Tories who were guilty, but when Al said it was the Conservative-supporting media (ie. 'The Daily Mail'!) as well Evan gave an 'Ah!' and let matters rest - for the time being. His next interruption was merely to say "'It's all working now' would be your perception?"
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The next phase of the interview did get a concession that not everything was rosy in the garden, though it was laced with a repetition of the good news: "Just want to clarify. Because we are saying that crime is down and violent crime is down I think it's very fair to point out, I thought you'd like to comment on this, that the drop in violent crime is primarily domestic crime, acquaintance violence. If you look at muggings or violence committed by strangers, I know you would want to clarify, that has really barely budged over the last 15 years. It just carries on more or less level, doesn't it?" When Mr Johnson said that domestic violence has gone down by 50%, Evan chipped in supportively "Very dramatic." Mr Johnson repeated "Very dramatic." Still Evan did get him to admit that muggings were "stable" and "not going down".
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He next returned to his original point and said, as well as the Conservatives and the media, maybe you have contributed to the public's fear by all those law and order bill...and promptly wasted the rest of the interview (two minutes) ploughing this minor point - a minor point which only served to reinforce the BBC narrative: Crime has fallen since the Conservatives left office. The Conservatives are lying over the crime statistics. Vote Lib-Lab. Shouldn't Evan have used those remaining minutes to interrogate Mr Johnson over some of his manifesto pledges?
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Before Chris Grayling came on we heard an audio clip from an OBE-winning woman from Bristol, Mary Smith, who said that crime has dramatically fallen in her area, then an interview with Prof Rod Martin, a crimologist at Bristol University. "Can we nail this business of violent crime first of all," said Justin Webb. "I don't want to get bogged down in statistics and want to talk about other things, but when the Conservatives say we live in a more dangerous country thanwhen Labour came to power, I mean in so far as we can say, can we say that that's true or false?" Prof Martin thinks the Conservative position is "not defensible". That, surely, is why Today invited him onto the programme!!! To reinforce the message, Justin asked "So they are simply flat wrong when they make that allegation?" "Yes", replied Mr Martin. Such were the tripwires laid in front of Mr Grayling.
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Everything in this programme seemed to lead to this interview. Mark Easton's initial 'analysis' of the crime figures, which 'refuted' the Conservatives and showed that crime has fallen significantly under Labour, the easy interview with Chris Huhne (which plugged away at the same point), the part-flattering, part-probing (but far from hostile) interview with Alan Johnson (which plugged away at the same point), Mrs Smith saying that crime has fallen on her estate, Prof Martin saying that crime has fallen significantly under Labour...all leading to 8.15, Evan Davis and Chris Grayling.
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The interruptions flew again, even more so that with Alan Johnson (I.C. of 1.8). This time, however, it was straight down to business, there were no supportive interruptions and Evan's tone (and I like Evan Davis, so I'd rather not say this) was noticably tarter than with Alan Johnson. He debated which crime figures to trust with Mr Grayling, advocating the British Crime Survey (asserting, at one stage - in echo of Easton, that they are "the best statistics") against Mr Grayling's preference for the recorded crime figures. This was a dialogue of the deaf. Evan Davis later rubbished Mr Grayling's anecdotes, heckled him ("We always have!") and did that thing I always think interviewers should NOT do - disagree with their interviewee then change the subject without granting him a right to reply ("Well, we've had gangs, we've had problems with teenagers for as long as we've recognised the existence of teenagers. Just to follow up with a quick, specific policy proposal of yours, I think on knife crime...")
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The Today programme's aim was clearly to show that the Conservatives are wrong on crime. Listeners would be forgiven for believing them. I have to admit I found myself being persuaded by the BBC line. Chris Grayling's inability to get past Evan Davis's constant interruptions didn't help. I am armour-plated against BBC bias, so if even I find myself struggling to believe the Tories on this one, either the Tories are very wrong...or the biased BBC has done a very good job indeed. I think I know which it is. The whole thing stank of a set-up.
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Like yesterday.
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