There’s no such thing as objectivity, just degrees of subjectivity. Interviewers and judges should declare any potential bias

It’s unsurprising that there are invariably questions asked of those who say they are unbiased. These are frequently people whose work requires a high degree of disinterest, particularly those who work in BBC news or those in the higher echelons of the legal profession.

The BBC is a British public service broadcaster, funded primarily by the taxpayer and is the world’s largest broadcaster, employing over 20,000 full-time – with many more part-time – staff. It’s one of those rather contradictory British institutions referred to as a Quango, a semi-public administrative body outside of the civil service but receiving financial support from the government, where the government makes senior appointments to it at board level. The BBC also acts under its agreement with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which is a strange title consisting, as it does, of an adjective and three nouns.  The BBC is regulated by Ofcom, itself a Quango, so the de facto relationship between the BBC and government can be rather complex.

In the early days, telecommunications were brought wholly under the control of the Government, fearing that privately-financed radio broadcasts could interfere with important military communications.  As a hangover from these days when everything to do with telecommunications was under government control via the BBC, the range of services offered by today’s BBC is unusually large and many are in competition with the private sector, giving the BBC agenda-setting power in, for example, culture and sport. Worryingly, this could also be true for politics if there were any bias.

For a publically-funded body and one seen as the voice of the British Government abroad, it would be expected that the BBC’s reporters and broadcasters would be unbiased, and indeed the BBC insists this is the case. However, strong rumours of a two-day party at the BBC when Tony Blair was first elected and analysis of the clear majority of EU ‘remainer’ guests and headlines, not to mention the argumentative style adopted against some ‘brexiteers’ since the Brexit referendum, would suggest otherwise. And there’s also the record number of complaints and the army of people the BBC summoned to deal with them. But so what? It was the largest turnout for any election so it would be expected that just about everyone would have a view. And anyway, the BBC’s recruitment policies likely attracted those of a demography and background who would have voted for remaining in the EU.

The problem is not people’s views, opinions or bias, whether it’s a BBC interviewer or a high court judge. The problem is not declaring those views if they’re in any way relevant, or pretending there is no bias. As far as I know there’s no part of the human brain that can act as a repository for biased thoughts such that the conscious part of the brain can act without them.  So before any BBC interview, it should be compulsory that interviewers declare any potential conflict of interest. This is already the case with LBC where the interviewers make their views known. The fact that interviewers like Nick Ferrari and Ian Dale can still give their guests of whatever persuasion an equally torrid time shows that good interviewers don’t need to be unbiased or pretend to be unbiased.

On a related subject, at the beginning and end of the speech explaining the Supreme Court’s verdict against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament, it was emphasised that it was the unanimous verdict of all eleven judges. It was intended to reinforce the conclusions, but how much different would our perceptions have been if all eleven judges had declared they were ardent remainers?