BBC News Media - Evidence of Continuing Bias?

Alston Labour Party Branch at the #OurNHS March London
Sat 4th March 2017 © Alice Bondi

Following on from yesterday's #OurNHS March where over 250,000 people from all over the UK marched through London, a fact the BBC and some other mainstream British media seems to have ignored or referred to in passing, I felt a formal complaint to the BBC was in order. I do not have a TV so never see the BBC's TV output, but have been told by friends who do that there was scant mention of the march in the TV news. I listened to the R4 News where the same was the case, whilst looking at the BBC News online pages you would not even be aware that there had been a march if that was your only source of news as it did not feature in their top UK news stories, and only shows up if you really dig for it.

This is yet another instance of the sort of media bias we have seen over the last couple of years - Media Lens did a big exposé of this last November under the title BBC Propaganda Watch: Tell-Tale Signs That Slip Through The Cracks. 

My complaint is as follows:

Yesterday there was one of the biggest marches in London in support of the NHS & against the cutbacks in its funding & services. Over 250,000 people (police estimate) marched through London over a 4-5 hour period. The only coverage on the BBC R4 News was scant mentions of "thousands marched through London today", whilst the BBC News website seems to have no coverage or photos of the March, nor any journalistic coverage, nor interviews with those concerned, who ranged from the Labour Party leader and Shadow Chancellor, trades union general secretaries, health service workers of all grades, NHS service consumers, and a whole raft of concerned citizens who had travelled from every part of the UK to support this march. Contrast this with the more than 2 minutes of video broadcast yesterday evening by a German broadcaster, highlighting not only the march in London but also the dire state of the NHS in the UK under the current government. This is blatant bias on the part of the BBC, who have a duty to provide impartial and comprehensive news to the people of this country. Those who make the decisions not to cover such big events are sanitising the news and colluding with an increasingly fascist and intolerant government attempting to further subdue the population through the reduction in public services and the stripping of dignity from the most needy and vulnerable citizens. As the BBC is publicly funded via the licence fee my complaint is that the biased coverage against the march and against the Labour Party's current leadership is against its own constitution and against the principles of fairness and natural justice. I request a full and detailed investigation into the lack of 4th March coverage and the bias that underpins the scant coverage of both popular mass actions and the current Labour leadership.

The BBC website Complaints pages say they will respond within 2 weeks, so I shall wait and see the outcome.

Meanwhile if, like me, you were unable to go to the march, you may like to see the video on YouTube which recorded all 3½ hours plus of it!



Contingents certainly went from Cumbria were I live, leaving home around 4am to make the journey down to London by coach to be there in time for the march start at noon. After walking through the capital, and listening to various speakers as well they set off on the journey back in the late afternoon and many will not have reached home until around midnight. Such a long day, but that so many people did make those sorts of journeys to take part shows the strength of feeling in the country in support of #OurNHS and the people who work within it.