Too much ‘balance’ can undermine fair debate and democracy

The BBC has never undertaken to give equal weight and space to reason and madness, sense and nonsense, respect and hatred

BBC (Getty Images)

Imagine a great debate conducted by the BBC (British Broadside Corporation) on the burning issue of 1792: “Slavery: Abolish or Retain?” The corporation tries its best to field two teams evenly matched in heft and lustre. Afterwards, however, an avalanche of complaints descends. How dare the BBC pretend that a pair of frothing extremists merits equal billing with statesmen and business leaders of proven judgement and distinction? Only a perverse and skewed notion of “impartiality” would pretend that fringe campaigners such as (what were their names?) Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce justify respect and attention on the same level as those pillars of society, the Duke of Portland and the Hon Henry Dundas. The public can judge a notable against a nobody.

That’s the problem with “balance”, and the organisations tasked to maintain it in a storm. The agreed centre of political, and ethical, gravity moves from decade to decade. The location of consensus twists and drifts. Normality progresses – or regresses. Wild eccentricity morphs into common sense. Back to slavery: in 1792, even the great philosopher-politician Edmund Burke thought the practice “an incurable evil”, and so proposed a sort of gradual shrinkage to make it “as small an evil as possible”. That was the sensible way forward.

Establishment orthodoxy has been wrong before. It will be wrong again. However, that does not mean – frivolous or mischievous Brexiters take note – the great and good back a dud horse every time. Neither camp in our EU referendum quarrel deserves a whisper of comparison with the abolitionists. All the same, both Inners and Outers have to operate not on solid rock but shifting sands. Reality has changed. Brexit has gone mainstream and legit. Five cabinet ministers support departure. Polls hint at a rough parity between In and Out. And so our state broadcaster, committed by charter to “due impartiality” in vital questions of the day, must resurvey and returf its level playing field.

Every day, in news bulletins and website stories, you may detect the sweaty, anxious managerial hands of New Broadcasting House as they strive to balance Leave against Remain. The BBC’s new internal guidelines warn programme-makers that, during the campaign, “scrutiny will be intense and high profile”. Given the vicious bias of the press, much will be (and is) kneejerk hostile too.

The corporation insists on “broad balance” between the arguments, and “across the campaign as a whole”. It does not demand a qualifying caveat in each sentence or an instant rebuttal of each statement. Tell that to the hapless reporters who now tie logic and syntax into bizarre knots in order to compromise or even contradict almost every clause they speak. “Balance” has dwindled into shorthand for fudge. If Leave proposes that the sun will still rise on the day after a Brexit vote, then Remain must be able to cite an astronomer prepared to say that past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Don’t (entirely) blame Auntie. A public-service broadcaster which carries that precious millstone of “due impartiality” round its neck will always stumble as its tries to catch up with the new normal. “Balance” is a perpetual work in progress. On the EU front, the BBC last mounted a large-scale independent survey of its output in 2005. Then, Lord Wilson’s report found not deliberate prejudice but “unintentional bias” fuelled by incuriosity and ignorance. In 2013, in a study with its focus on immigration coverage, a BBC Trust report noted that the BBC had been “slow” to recognise the rising of an anti-EU tide.

It has certainly tasted the rough salt and felt the chilly waters now. Harried by Europhobic print media mostly owned by offshored billionaires, the BBC in its approach to Leave currently hovers between courtesy and deference. It’s like watching a cat‑loving veggie having to feed a pen full of famished Dobermans with bleeding chunks of steak. You sense, with some journalists, that the heart isn’t really in it. But a potentially fatal mauling awaits if they fail to do the job.

That statutory duty of impartiality hides the devil in the detail. In this case, the devil lurks in the three little letters that spell “due”. The BBC has never undertaken to give equal weight and space to reason and madness, sense and nonsense, respect and hatred. With the referendum, its hunt for the elusive butterfly of “balance” means having to decide – on the hoof – where the edges of reason or the boundaries of civility lie. A traditional contest between two or even three strong parties means that balance more or less defines itself. With the referendum, the lines can wobble and blur from day to day.

I consulted Jean Seaton, official historian of the BBC and professor of media history at the University of Westminster, who has studied Auntie’s ever-churning entrails with a depth and rigour that would defeat the most zealous Kremlinologist. She affirms that “impartiality doesn’t mean having balance between views when those views can’t be balanced”. The Flat‑Earthers cannot expect an equal voice against 2,000 years of science.

For Professor Seaton, the EU campaign – like Northern Ireland spats before it – counts as a textbook example of those messy non-party or inter-party contests where no neat recipe for impartiality exists. The BBC, she says, always takes flak “when the nation is divided but not along conventional party-political lines”. This referendum “is a particular class of that general category of event”.

So the lines of credibility and authority must be redrawn by the day. A telling example arose on Thursday. High up in the main BBC news bulletin came the usual ding-dong claim and counterclaim between the Prime Minister and his opponents over the danger of post-Brexit job losses. No one really knows. No economist has a working crystal ball. Opinions can be squared, sliced and balanced in an almost fact-free void. No sweat for the “due impartiality” crew.

Much further down the running order, we heard about the 150 leading scientists – all Fellows of the Royal Society – who had warned of the likely damage to research funding and to the stature of UK universities in the event of EU withdrawal. This story’s relegation was itself a sop to Leave.

On the one hand spoke Stephen Hawking, astronomer royal Martin Rees, Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse, and scores of other eminent figures. On the other, a group of anti-EU activists known as Scientists for Britain lauded the strength of research beyond Europe, in countries such as Korea. Both views had more or less equal time.

Could this be an instance of Flat-Earthers vs Galileo, where the reflex pursuit of “balance” flatters wacky outliers and distorts the map of informed opinion? As its intellectual figurehead, Scientists for Britain can boast Professor Angus Dalgleish: a distinguished cancer immunologist and consultant oncologist who co-founded a biotech company called Onyvax. Last year, however, he also stood as a Ukip candidate (Sutton and Cheam; 10.7 per cent). Onyvax transferred the intellectual property in its vaccines in 2009 to a company called KAEL-GemVax (formerly VaxOnco Inc) “of Seoul, Korea”.

Brexit does have some supporters in science, although Scientists for Britain can offer no more champions to equal Dalgleish. Its other “leaders” are a Leicestershire GP and a “strategic projects co-ordinator” in astrophysics at John Moores University in Liverpool. Here we have a test case: the overwhelming bulk of credible professional opinion in a sector vital to the nation’s future lies on one side of the scales. Yet the state broadcaster must – through no fault of its own – give matching prominence to foes that would strike a neutral as (at best) lightweight. Thus the duty to “balance” tips away from fairness and equity into what John Birt and Peter Jay once called “a bias against understanding”. At least for the duration of the referendum battle, I suspect that the enforced fetish of balance has put a brake on investigation and a curb on curiosity inside the BBC.

Auntie has more spiky obstacles to dodge. Culture Secretary John Whittingdale not only backs Brexit. He employs as his senior policy adviser (not a mere “spad”, but something grander and more strategic) Ray Gallagher, the former head of public affairs at Sky plc. So Sky, the BBC’s principal competitor, has a long-standing friend at court – although, as a civil servant now, Gallagher has his own duty of impartiality. Whatever happens on 23 June, Whittingdale will then begin to renegotiate the BBC’s charter and – possibly – adjudicate another Murdoch family bid to take control of all of Sky, beyond the present major stake of 39 per cent. The EU-averse Murdochs want not so much to clip the BBC’s wings as to slit its windpipe. As thunderclouds mass, the quest for balance between Leave and Remain amounts to a lot more than a brain-stretching exercise over insipid coffee in the meeting-rooms of W1A.

Every tiny step the corporation takes – or fails to take – in the EU debate will now become a move in the battle over its destiny with rivals and government. On Thursday, Stephen Hawking and his colleagues called the prospect of Brexit “a disaster for UK science”. The toxic fusion of referendum “balance” rows with the future of the BBC may prove a disaster for our democracy as well.