THE BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama has just dedicated an episode to protests against asylum hotels. ‘A summer of protest’, it begins. But it was broadcast on September 29. The belatedness indicates Panorama’s intent to ignore politically inconvenient issues.
The political bias doesn’t end there.
The programme starts out declaring a mission to hear why some residents feel that asylum hotels are ‘unfair’. But it skips through the words of just two protesters, unnamed and largely off-camera.
We’re only 90 seconds into a 29-minute programme and Panorama has finished broadcasting why some residents feel that asylum hotels are ‘unfair’.
The presenter/interviewer moves on to a Conservative local councillor who gets to complain about lack of consultation.
‘But they’re not illegal immigrants,’ the presenter interjects, ‘they’re asylum-seekers.’
They’re claimants, the councillor responds, and of course they’re going to claim, given the benefits . . . The editor cuts off that important point.
The editor cuts to the councillor denying racism, because asking someone to deny racism is a surefire way to suggest racism.
Note that the villain of the piece is a Conservative councillor, even though – the voiceover later and briefly admits – the council in question, Trafford, Greater Manchester, is run by Labour, which also opposes the accommodation of asylum-claimants in the Cresta Court Hotel.
Meanwhile, Panorama goes nudge, nudge, wink, wink: ‘Conservatives are racists . . .’
The programme immediately cuts to a claim by the presenter/interviewer Rahil Sheikh that he experienced racism outside the Cresta Court Hotel.
A protester says to Sheikh, in effect, ‘You’re not from around here.’ This is not a welcoming attitude. Still, it’s a fair complaint, if confronted by a bolshy Londoner trailing a camera crew but no identification.
Sheikh doesn’t admit he’s from London, he jumps to saying he’s ‘English’. He’s setting a trap, because later he is going to make much of the fact that he’s not white, that he expects to be identified with the asylum claimants, and that he expects to find racism.
You’re not English, says the protester, you’re British. The protester is making a common distinction between an ethnicity and a nationality. Another protester can be heard faintly clarifying the national meaning of Britishness.
The first protester clarifies the ethnic meaning of Englishness: ‘white’ and ‘Anglo’, he says. Again, the protester is hardly welcoming. He’s hardly inclusive. But still, his clarification is semantically and contextually justified.
At the time, the presenter seems to ponder all this. He seems genuinely ignorant of the difference. He says nothing. But his voiceover claims racism, and the editor moves on.
We’re still only 150 seconds into a 29-minute programme.
Almost all interviewees are helping illegal immigrants, with food, legal advice, private accommodation, procedural advice, and linguistics.
The producers do not admit the self-selection bias, or their own selection bias, for choosing these interviewees, giving them most of the airtime, and not challenging any of their assumptions, such as ‘all asylum claimants are fleeing persecution’. The presenter later repeats this assumption as justification for his claim that the government is obliged to house them.
True, those who work with migrants have direct observation of them. Even so, their observations are as local and biased as the protesters that the presenter has just condemned.
The first we hear from an interviewee of this ilk is: ‘I have heard so many stories about the journey . . .’ The presenter does not challenge whether these stories can be believed, when their indefinite leave to remain depends on such stories. But endlessly, tediously, the bulk of the programme consists of such stories.
The way to escape local bias is to survey larger populations. The BBC went to the left-wing Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. But the only data broadcast is the proportion of asylum claimants who arrive on visas to those on boats. The proportion is the same. How does this help to understand why locals think asylum hotels are unfair? It doesn’t!
But nudge, nudge, wink, wink: ‘People who oppose asylum hotels are ignorant.’
Panorama did not broadcast any data from Migration Watch, which is more competent statistically and more objective politically. It has calculated the costs of asylum claimants, for instance – exactly the data relevant to Panorama’s avowed mission to understand why locals think asylum hotels are ‘unfair’.
The government gets only a few seconds of airtime, in the form of edited denials, to accusatory questions. The victim is the minister for border security and asylum, Alex Norris.
Oh, you know Alex! We’ve all heard of him.
Panorama gives no indication that it tried the Home Secretary, or the Shadow Home Secretary, or the equivalent from any party.
The party that features most is Reform UK. Nigel Farage is quoted as admitting that bad apples joined the protests. And then he’s not heard again. Sarah Pochin, who won the by-election at Runcorn and Helsby in May for Reform, gets minutes of airtime. She repeatedly represents constituency complaints about lack of consultation, anti-social behaviour, and gangs of young men approaching girls. The presenter’s response is that these are not crimes. Then he accuses her of being responsible for the racist abuse he claims to have suffered locally. Don’t ask me how he got there: I have no idea.
Panorama should have put local complaints to local asylum claimants. Instead, it badgered their Member of Parliament.
Panorama interviewed a whopping two asylum claimants! One interviewee has his name and face disguised. The editor allows him to complain about boredom in the hotel, being denied the right to work, and being regarded as a freeloader.
The presenter adds that ‘the government gives him just £10 a week to live on’. But why does ‘Ali’ need any money if, as the presenter just admitted, he gets everything he needs to live for nothing? The presenter does not point this out.
The interviewer speaks with a ‘Syrian’. What Panorama should have said is that ‘Nate’ claims he’s a Syrian.
‘Syrian’ is the go-to claim for illegal immigrants, since Angela Merkel said Germany was open to Syrians during the civil war there in 2015. The EU’s border agency (Frontex) admitted that most migrants are economic migrants from elsewhere.
Panorama’s ‘journalists’ should have referenced this history as reason to express scepticism of any self-described Syrian. Did Panorama ask ‘Nate’ for identification? Not that we can tell.
‘Nate’ complains that kids in a park accused him and his peers of being child molesters. But the presenter doesn’t ask how ‘Nate’ could have known, given that he doesn’t speak English?
‘Nate’ says he is married, with children. But the interviewer doesn’t ask why he abandoned his family.
The presenter can’t stop making this programme about himself, despite its bare 29 minutes. He claims a second time to have been racially abused. But apart from a shout off-camera which the presenter claims is a bleeped-out word, he has no evidence.
But nudge, nudge, wink, wink, ‘opposition to asylum hotels is racist’.
Panorama’s latest episode is as strong a proof of the BBC’s bias and unprofessionalism as Newsnight’s attack on Douglas Murray by a panel of haters after Murray had left the building.
At the time, the Spectator asked, ‘When will the BBC ever learn?’
The BBC seems incapable of learning.
Defund the BBC.
