Monday, August 04, 2025
Looking for balance in broadcasting
The Mirror reports that thousands of people have complained to Sky News about “excessive” coverage of Nigel Farage ’s Reform UK after the party set up its own broadcast studio to pump out slick, TV-style videos online.
The paper says that twice last week, Sky News broadcast the live feed from Reform’s studio, prompting campaigners to accuse them of “outsourcing editorial control” to Farage’s far right party:
Cal Roscow, director of campaigns at Best for Britain, said: “To outsource editorial control wholesale like this is unprecedented, misleading for viewers, and probably doesn’t meet Ofcom’s impartiality rules. It should never happen again, and over 5,000 Best for Britain supporters have written to say just that.”
In one case Sky News broadcast a feed of Mr Farage “interviewing” party chairman Zia Yusuf about the Online Safety act.
In the same broadcast, Reform played Sky News’ interview of Tech Secretary Peter Kyle on their feed - meaning Sky was broadcasting its own interview, but through Reform’s live feed.
Now more than 5,000 supporters of campaign group Best for Britain have complained to Sky about the coverage.
Mr Roscow added: “Reform UK have built a TV studio of their own - which is fine in principle - but resulted in a bizarre situation where Sky News’s own footage of a Minister was being broadcast back to the TV channel - independently of the producers - and overlaid with commentary from a political party’s Chair interviewing that same party’s Leader. “
And it isn't just Sky that needs to answer for this bias. Politics Home reports that Ed Davey has met with BBC boss Tim Davie to complain about the broadcaster’s coverage, which the Liberal Democrats claim is weighted too heavily in Reform UK’s favour.
They say that the Liberal Democrat leader met Davie in Parliament in June to convey the party’s “frustration” over its allotted coverage:
With 72 MPs in Westminster, the party has now been given 13 slots on the BBC’s political debate programme Question Time, where it used to get four. As Westminster's third party, Davey and his deputy Daisy Cooper are given slots on the six o’clock news on significant days in Parliament – when budgets are announced, for instance.
However, the party feels the coverage is out of proportion with that given to Reform UK, who have just four MPs – 18 times fewer than the Liberal Democrats.
“Previously, the BBC had always said: ‘We will cover you more if you get more MPs, but right now, you’ve only got 11,” a Liberal Democrat source told PoliticsHome.
“Now it really feels like they've moved the goal posts and they're just giving Reform massive amounts of coverage based on their poll rating, whereas we were always told it’s number of MPs, not poll rating.”
Davey also spoke to Davie about the BBC’s use of breaking news alerts – which the party is now tracking to understand how much coverage it is receiving.
“That's another area where it feels like Reform are getting a lot of mentions,” the source said. “Something else we're picking up the BBC is: how do they ensure political balance when it comes to things like breaking news alerts – that we know are really, really influential – in the same way that they would be really careful about balance when it comes to news criticism?”
The meeting preempted an outburst by Davey live on the BBC last month, in which he berated the broadcaster for its coverage of Reform UK.
“You cover the tittle tattle around Reform – you don’t look at their policies,” said the Lib Dem leader. “When I look at the broad BBC coverage, he gets such an easy ride, and he gets covered when he says horrible things that aren’t producing solutions for people’s problems.”
“I have to say the BBC has got to raise its game to expose Nigel Farage,” he added.
With major elections, including the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament, next year, it is important that balance in political coverage is restored. Reform have no members in the Scottish Parliament and only one in the Senedd. Surely, that needs to be taken account in the coverage.
I would certainly not expect them to get greater coverage than the Liberal Demcrats in either country, who are better represented than them.
