*Co-leader Jonathan Bartley: “This is getting beyond a joke. The BBC’s love affair with UKIP is getting embarrassing”
The Green Party has reacted with anger to an announcement today (May 8) that the BBC will feature the leader of UKIP in two dedicated election programmes but will not extend the same invitation to the Green Party.
Today’s announcement came just days after the BBC breached its own guidelines [1] by giving disproportionate coverage to UKIP when reporting the results of local elections last Thursday. The Green Party has already lodged a formal complaint over the BBC’s failure to give the Green Party coverage “proportionate to the larger parties” and “more than those parties with less evidence of past or current electoral support or fewer candidates”.
Today the BBC announced [3] that Paul Nuttall will be interviewed by Andrew Neil in one of a series of prime time programmes each evening at 7pm throughout the week of 22 May. In addition Mr Nuttall will also be the subject of an ‘Election Questions’ programme on BBC1 on 4 June.
Jonathan Bartley, Green Party co-leader, said:
“This is getting beyond a joke. The BBC’s love affair with UKIP is getting embarrassing” and it is time it recognised that the Green Party is entitled to a fair hearing in its election programming.”
“As the local election results, in which 150,000 people voted Green compared with less than 100,000 for UKIP [3], demonstrated, when people see what we stand for, they support the Green Party. It’s time the BBC recognised the strength of the Green movement and the widespread support for our positive vision for Britain as a confident and caring country. It is time to stop giving so much air time to UKIP.”
Notes:
1. http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/pdfs/2017localelectionguidelines.pdf