A TORY minister offered a bizarre response to a question about BBC bias during his morning media round on Tuesday.
Transport minister Huw Merriman appeared on Sky News, where he was asked about BBC bias following Monday’s news that Ofcom could gain enforcement action over BBC News articles it does not believe meet relevant standards as part of a bid to improve “impartiality”.
Asked by host Kay Burley if the BBC is “biased”, Merriman said he’s “always been a friend” of the corporation.
However, he added: “I was listening to The News Quiz, which is on Radio 4, 6.30 on Friday, driving to my constituency office.
#KayBurley: Is the BBC biased?
— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) January 23, 2024
Huw Merriman: I was listening to the news quiz on Radio 4... & for 10 minutes there was a diatribe against Conservatives
KB: You understand that a news quiz is comedy & nothing to do with actual news? pic.twitter.com/CGH8iNyKPu
“For 10 minutes all I heard, and it wasn’t satirical, it was just diatribe against Conservatives, not the Government, and I did listen to that and think where is the balance in that.
“So, yes I’m afraid to say despite the fact I’ve always been a big supporter of the BBC, that struck me as completely biased.”
However, the host hit back that The News Quiz is “comedy” and “nothing to do with actual news”.
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Merriman added: “I love it when politicians get lampooned but there wasn’t anything in it which struck me as being amusing.”
When asked specifically if BBC News is biased, Merriman said he thought there were times the broadcaster “could do better” and was pressed to give examples.
“I think some of its content when it comes to social affairs, and I felt this when I used to work for the Department for Work and Pensions, didn’t necessarily give two sides of the story,” he said.
He added: “When I worked at the Department for Work and Pensions and I was working on Universal Credit, there was an individual there who would report on it, Neil Buchanan, who I always felt gave one side of the story and not the other side which was the Government’s side.”
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Merriman’s comments come after the Tory Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer failed to provide any evidence of BBC bias despite asserting it is an issue in what was described as a “car crash” interview on Monday.
Many took to Twitter/X to comment on Merriman’s interview with one user saying “the real comedy is this interview” while another compared it to Frazer’s interview by describing it as a “car crash”.
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