Impartiality takes a beating as Tory contest dominates TV schedules

The much-loved concept of ­impartiality, which sits at the heart of public service broadcasting, and is a byword for BBC internal discipline, has taken a monumental doing this week, exposing deep fault-lines within how our media covers elected politics.

The Tory’s internal selection process, and the marginal characters who have made up the numbers in this race, have been given far too much airtime, and been allowed to set the political agenda by virtue of over-exposure.

Notwithstanding the farce that permits the winner of the internal party battle to automatically become prime minister, the process itself has led almost every news ­bulletin for a week, taking a wrecking ball to fairness.

They have swerved British political ­discourse to the right, daring the Labour Party under the supine Sir Keir Starmer to follow them into a new free-market consensus.

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The Tories have been given free rein, even in those parts of the UK where ­Conservative candidates struggle to get noticed at the bus stop, let alone elected.

The haste with which seasoned ­broadcasters rushed to the same withered patch of grass on College Green speaks to the indentured cliches of mainstream broadcasting rather than to its range and impartiality.

For the first week of this farrago, the focus was on the runners and riders. Democracy came to resemble a ­bookies shop taking bets on politicians who would struggle to be recognised in their own kitchen. The next few days will be about airbrushing the front runners and giving them leadership status.

The race to replace Boris Johnson has dominated the news agenda

Faced with a huge and unwieldy field of candidates, many editors ­immediately checked in their ­analytical jacket at ­reception, and settled for a ­paper-thin perception of impartiality, one that ­mentioned a couple of favoured ­candidates and then listed the rest.

The outcome was that the news ­became a nightly recital of the battlefield issues of the right-wing of a single political party: namely tax reductions, a refusal to budge on Brexit, the war on woke, the ­privatisation of the NHS, acting tough on Scottish independence, and an all-out war on “red-tape” which was code for the rights and regulations that protect us at work, and in the wider society.

By allowing this ideological parade near unfettered access to the headlines, the evening news has become a place where free-market values have not only been normalised, but proclaimed.

The idea of a second referendum on Scottish independence has been ­predictably traduced by almost every Tory candidate. Impartiality has come to mean people with slightly different views on ­Boris Johnson’s personal flaws rather than a fair reflection of the many different characteristics of the United Kingdom.

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Two of Scotland’s six Conservative MPs have revealed who they will be backing in the race to replace Boris Johnson. West Aberdeenshire MP Andrew Bowie ­confirmed he would support former chancellor Rishi Sunak whilst Borders MP John Lamont said he would vote for Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt.

The heartbeat of impartiality might have told a different story – that these men are minority figures within ­Scottish ­politics who have been given undue prominence in what is a highly skewed story.

Their opinions were sought and ­given as part of a sweepstake, not a wider ­debate about Scottish democracy – or even a ­debate about the “eating versus heating” dilemma of those struggling to survive the cost of living crisis.

When Mordaunt (pictured) said that she would break through the SNP “yellow wall”, her views were seen only as context within the race itself, and those that support Scottish independence or indeed an even stronger “yellow wall” were excluded from commenting entirely.

I accept that in the world of news ­construction, there is a tendency to favour the domestic over the international but none of the personality issues that have so far come out of the Tory party ­jamboree have come close to the stories that have emerged abroad.

By any reasonable measure, the ­assassination of Shinzo Abe – the former Japanese prime minister, the sacking of the Sri Lankan president’s luxury home, and the investigation into the SAS ­military murder squad who ­repeatedly killed civilians in Afghanistan. All seem worthier of attention than Nadine ­Dorries’s wandering logic.

Impartiality is a tricky concept at the best of times and under the leadership of the one-time Tory party branch chairman Tim Davie (above), it hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of BBC staff. For that reason alone, it needs to be better delivered than we have witnessed during the Conservative leadership campaign.

Impartiality is much more ­complicated and difficult to deliver than say, the ­binary concept of “balance” where two points of view are given equal ­prominence. It ­contains within its ranks the idea that a story, a report, or an entire media ­enterprise, stand back from bias to reflect a suitable range of relevant and ­contestable opinions.

That is a bold and aspirational ­ambition which is rarely delivered in the real world of British media and broadcasting. For the people of Scotland, their stated ­electoral preferences have been utterly overlooked.

Many have pointed to the ­freshness of diversity reflected in the final ­candidates like front runner Sunak, Kemi ­Badenoch the so-called anti-woke ­warrior, and Nadhim Zahawi, the tax-averse ­chancellor.

Impartiality would seek to highlight that welcome phenomenon in British ­public life but only if it also stressed that all candidates are from a single ­nation England, and that diversity does not stretch into the small Celtic nations.

Channel 4 news has taken its own idiosyncratic approach to the Tory leadership campaign, prodding candidates by deploying social media content often designed to embarrass a front runner, but even that alternative approach can fall far short of the strictest interpretation of impartiality.

On Tuesday last, Channel 4 news was immediately followed by the Political Slot, a short two minute detour into the political hinterlands, featuring in this particular episode the opinions of two Plaid Cymru politicians from Wrexham.

What was remarkable is how rarely you hear from Plaid Cymru in our supposedly impartial media, especially at a time when the ERG, a group with ­considerably ­smaller membership, who never ­transparently stand for election, are allowed near unfettered access to our ­television screens.

At times this has reached a point of sheer disbelief, that the arcane practices of the Conservative 1922 Committee and its chairman Sir Graham Brady have attracted significantly more network airtime that the deliberations of the Welsh Assembly.

Impartiality is breached when a single party’s internal affairs are allowed to dominate not only their opponents but ­almost every other issue across the UK.

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The suspension of Alba MPs Neale ­Hanvey and Kenny MacAskill for breaking the protocols of the House of ­Commons has attracted mixed emotions. Some see it as a stunt or an empty gesture – and others as an attempt to shake the tree.

By shouting down the Prime Minister Boris Johnson and demanding a fairer route to Scottish independence, their ­interruptions at least reflected a mood of frustration that many Scots feel not only about a referendum but a Westminster ­political theatre that either ignores or ridicules Scotland’s national representatives.

It was unseemly maybe, but not ­irrelevant. In a media culture that has ­elevated impartiality to a heightened ­value, without truly delivering on its heightened aspirations maybe a bit of noise in the system is worth more than patronising condemnation it has received.