There are also fascinating insights into Goodall's unpleasant experiences at the hands of Robbie Gibb & David Grossman, but Goodall is remarkably generous to them in assessing their intent

Goodall makes this important point:

"... the tendency to move right is always stronger than left, because there is terror of the right in a way the BBC does not possess of liberalism or the left."

Is this simply a consequence of a billionaire-dominated news media?

Of the Trump 6 January speech edit fiasco:

"Scripts were sometimes written with a view not solely to their impartiality or truth, but the management of perception of impartiality from one side of the spectrum."

As the aphorism says, if one person says it's raining and another says it's not, the job of a journalist isn't simply to publicise both views equally.

You have to look out the bloody window.

The BBC is only seen as biased towards the left by hard right journalists such as Andrew Neil.

Total gaslighting.

The BBC's pandering to climate-denying, transphobic, xenophobic, genocide supporters shows undeniable right-wing bias.

Good point

Mockery in lieu of serious analysis.

The authors warn that the facts immigration attitudes move around, reacting to both reality and politicians' rhetoric.

Moreover, myth-busting isn't a magic bullet:

Surprisingly, only two types of immigrants are viewed negatively by a majority of the public: people in small boats and people coming illegally looking for work.

A majority say they would rather legal immigration go up than have the economy get worse (52%) or have the NHS understaffed (67%).

The average guess among the public is that 34% of the prison population is foreign-born.

The real figure is 13%, exactly in line with their share of the population as a whole.

Farage has effectively used the small boats to trigger emotions, distorting debate:

The public thinks that people arriving by small boats make up the largest share of immigrants (real figure: 4%).

The vast majority of immigrants enter legally with a visa, most commonly to work or study.

Research suggests that when asked about "immigrants", half the public are only thinking about asylum seekers (ignoring 90% of immigrants).

And half the public think that there are more immigrants staying in the country illegally than legally. (real figure likely under 7%).

Health warning: Prof Murphy readily bans commenters permanently for being "trolls" if you post good-faith questions about aspects of his ideas and he suspects you're not entirely on board with him.

It's happened to me and many others!

Credit, for once, to Streeting for calling this out.

OTOH, Labour has helped to enable the rightward bigoted shifting of political discourse with its "legitimate concerns" and "island of strangers" shite, and a general failure (until recently) to challenge Farage's rhetoric.

Scrapping the two-child benefit cap would lift about 330,000 children out of poverty overnight.

But Labour believes that its contentious fiscal rules will do more to help these children than punishing them for existing.

Rachel Reeves should justify this claim.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

The two-child benefit cap drives 100 more children into poverty every day.

cpag.org.uk/109-children...