Data journalism review: Media Guido and the BBC's left wing bias

Not a good indicator of left leaning bias

A recent post on the Media Guido blog compares the proportion with which the BBC buys newspapers with the proportion with which the public consumes them.


It is quite an interesting idea to compare how our state-funded news organisation is consuming news compared to the public, and it appears the BBC reads the Guardian and Independent significantly more than the public does.

However, it should be pointed out that this method of comparison has some limitations.

For example, even if the BBC purchased exactly the same number of each newspaper, the low circulation rate of the Independent in comparison to the Daily Mail for example would still imply that the organisation was disproportionately favouring the Independent, if you compared the proportionate consumption.

This proportion comparison is therefore not a good indicator of a left-wing bias, as claimed by the blog post.

However that does not mean that the BBC is consuming news objectively, it just means that this is not a good indicator, and the blogger might be able to make a better argument by just looking at the numbers of let-leaning papers the BBC consumes, like this news report does:

A simple comparison of numbers makes a more solid case

I pointed this out on Twitter. Not sure the point is getting through though...