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Now, let's kick off with Reform UK, shall we
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Because Reform are accusing the BBC of targeting its councillors since May's local election
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ysis by the party claims the broadcaster covered 95% of Reform councillors who lost the whip
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compared to just 15% of Labour and Conservative councillors. It comes amid turmoil at the BBC, which we know about, ad nauseum
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and we've covered it at length on this channel, after both the Director General and the head of BBC News quit
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after accusations of institutional bias in many, many areas. Well, Reform UK's head of policy, Zia Youssef, is in the studio with me
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And as you know, on a Sunday afternoon, I'm grateful to have anyone in the studio because it's very lonely. They don't let me have friends
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So, Zia, thank you so much for coming in and joining us today. Tell us a bit more about this research that you've done and how you've done it
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How did you quantify this? Well, look, it was a few weeks ago that me and Nigel did a press conference
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And we said look there appears to be an insane amount of scrutiny over what reform are doing at local levels unlike anything we seen in our lifetimes And now we actually have empirical proof of this Right So this isn just subjective or me or Nigel or Richard saying it These are hard numbers And what the ysis shows and by the way this is all just from open source data you can find online
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the BBC seems to be absolutely obsessed with reporting negative news about reform councils
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So they are six times more likely to report when a reform councillor loses the whip relative to Labour or Tories
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And here's what's really interesting. That is despite four times as many Tory councillors
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having lost the whip, and five times more from Labour, having lost the whip since May 1st
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And, by the way, this is empirical evidence since May 1st. It follows a very long pattern of hostility, by the way
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of the BBC against Nigel Farage. Those, some people might remember, all the way back in 2013
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all of the insane, overzealous scrutiny about Nigel's party. But then also..
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They had to apologise twice officially, haven't they, to Nigel Farage? At least. I mean, remember Krishnan Guru Murthy
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during the general election campaign, saying that Nigel was using his quote
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I still remember watching this. He said his customary inflammatory language. Do you remember that
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For example, the debanking scandal. And then they claimed you know all of the lies that they told about him And by the way they had to apologise about those two things And so one of the things the media can do in order to shape a narrative is to selectively report on things
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And it is not like we are sitting here. As we said at the time of the press conference, of course reform politicians should be scrutinised
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Of course reform councillors should be scrutinised. But when four times as many Labour councillors
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Tory councillors have lost the whip since May 1st than reform, and five times as many Labour ones have
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you would not get that impression by following the BBC's news coverage
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And one of the reasons this really matters is because the licence fee is obligatory to pay
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if you happen to have a television. So this is really, really serious, and we haven't had anything..
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I mean, the spokesperson for the BBC just basically hand-waved the whole thing away
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which, of course, is exactly what they tried to do with the whole Trump affair, and it doesn't do them any favours
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So why do you think they're doing it? Well, why do you think? I think it's because, sadly, the BBC newsroom, at least, at least the newsroom, but there's obviously figures
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You can talk about Gary Lineker and all sorts of things before that. I think the newsroom is extremely hostile to reform is very concerned about reform getting in And what the BBC seem to have forgotten what they seem to have forgotten is that they are not there to lecture the British public about what they should believe They are there to report the news
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And I'm sorry, that is why this methodology... I mean, the BBC spokesperson also said
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oh, well, it's not clear what the methodology... Well, all of this is public data, so you can go and see it for yourself
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Number two, no, it's exactly fair, because if you are peppering your news website
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and your news bulletins on the radio and television about negative news coming from reformed councils
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in a vastly disproportionate manner, then you are, of course, going to give viewers and readers
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the impression that reform councillors are incredibly chaotic relative to the odds, when actually the opposite is true
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In fact, £1.3 million is a total bill to the taxpayer of all of those Labour and Tory councillors losing the whip
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Why? Because they had a shambolic selection process. I was chairman at the time, very proud of the work that we did
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in fielding more candidates than they did. And again, look, we are not perfect
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No-one at reform will ever claim we're perfect. But the BBC must hold itself to higher standards moving forward
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And I'm afraid what we are seeing time and time and time again is an incredibly hostile posture towards reform
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and they are simply not accurately reflecting what is happening
