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I began my survey following the June 2009 elections, provoked by the bias I heard in many BBC interviews leading up to election day. Browsing the Today programme's archive for the first days of June reminds me why I started doing it - and provides a warning for the general election to come.
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On June 1st Evan Davis conducted a long (18 minute plus) interview with Gordon Brown - a very gentle affair (that did not even mention Brown's own expenses claims) which yielded a paltry interruption coefficient of 0.4. On the following day came David Cameron. Unfortunately for him he was up against James Naughtie. This was a hostile (11 minute) interview, full of personal attacks (on Cameron's expenses) and lots and lots of sighs, abortive interruptions and miscellaneous weird noises from Naughtie. The I.C. here was 1.2. If that suggests that the Cameron-Naughtie interview was three times tougher than the Brown-Davis interview, well that's about right!That's Beeb bias for you!
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Take a festive trip down memory lane, & have a listen to both interviews & you'll see why I'm worried about fairness at the Today programme & also why I'm interested to know who will be interviewing who come the general election. Brown was given an easy ride by Evan, whereas Cameron was picked at with a vengeance by Naughtie (who gave Labour's Keith Vaz a free-ride on the same edition of the programme).
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Here are the links:
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For Gord & Ev:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8076000/8076456.stm
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For Dave & Jim:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8078000/8078343.stm
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