Dear John,

Last week, we brought up Nigel Farage’s unprecedented airtime in the British media, and questioned why he was being platformed so close to an election on a show like BBC Question Time. To get to the bottom of it, we asked our supporters to write into BBC Newswatch’s production office.

8,558 of you wrote in to the BBC that weekend – a massive thanks to all who participated! We were shocked to see the level of support we got in questioning why a public service broadcaster is platforming a charlatan like Farage – especially at a time when his Clacton campaign had yet to be announced.

Rick Bailey, BBC’s Chief Political Advisor, addressed the influx of complaints earlier this week by defending the decision to invite Farage.

Bailey argued that the network makes decisions about platforming political candidates on the basis of “past and current electoral support”.

"Past support means voting, the last election and other subsequent different sorts of election. Reform UK used to be the Brexit party, they did well in 2019, don’t forget they actually won a European election in 2019.”

“Although that may not get as much weight as it did last time, it’s still real votes. Ofcom say you need to think about this over at least two electoral cycles.” He also brought up Reform’s surge in the opinion polls, and argued that platforming Farage is a good way to “hold him to account.”

We’ll let you decide whether that argument is convincing or not. Either way, it’s beyond clear that the BBC has severe institutional problems, reflective of the British media environment as a whole. We illustrated the particular problems with the BBC in-depth in our Functional Democracy Goals Report ([link removed]) (see goal #9).

A fair and balanced media environment is integral to democracy. While it’s one component of the UK’s much more widespread democratic deficit, it’s yet another pressing issue we desperately need the next government to address.

As we move closer to election day, we appreciate anything you can chip in to help us make the case to the next government that media reform – and so much else – needs to be enacted before it’s too late.

All the best,

The Open Britain Team
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