NPR: British newspapers flaunt their bias, labelled “comment-papers”
The first part of an NPR investigative series looks at the blatant bias showing up in many British newspapers. Reporter David Folkenflik interviewed several editors and politicians in London to probe the newspaper industry’s long-standing view of telling readers what political party they support.
As the articles states, “….Britain’s big daily newspapers are pretty clear about what they favor. And that inversion offers some insight into the debate over media bias here in the U.S.”
Nick Boles, a Conservative member of Parliament from England’s East Midlands, goes on to cite examples from the country’s big-name newspapers: “If a Guardian journalist were to interview me, I would definitely assume that they would be trying to penetrate into areas of weakness in what the government is doing … or particular policies that they are very worried about. Whereas with The Telegraph, they’d probably be more likely to be … looking for ways in which the government was betraying the Conservative cause.”
Anne Begg, a Labor member of Parliament, says she’s not happy with British journalism. “One of the concerns I have with some of the print media is that it’s almost all comment, which is always partial and is always partisan,” she says in the NPR article. “In that respect, I don’t know if you could call them newspapers anymore — they’re perhaps comment papers.”
The article concludes by stating BBC is well known for being balanced and fair compared to its newspaper counterparts.