Neil Hamilton, the leader of UKIP Wales, has sent a formal complaint to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Ofcom – the UK’s communications and media regulator – accusing a BBC Radio 4 show of having an “anti-Brexit bias.”
His complaint was specific to a segment of the The World at One show, which was aired on March 19 and asked children from a primary school about their views on Brexit.
“The segment was completely biased and absurd. Every child who featured on the programme was anti-Brexit and the segment lacked any form of political balance. The interviewer, Tomos Morgan, failed to question any of the patently childish answers given to him. If the BBC’s role is to educate, then all this segment did is prove how ridiculous it is to pose high-level political questions to nine-year-olds,” Mr. Hamilton’s complaint reads.
— Neil Hamilton AC/AM (@NeilUKIP) March 20, 2018
Apologetic rubbish. The BBC has been colonized for 40 years now, first by Tories and then by blairites. And that is fully reflected in their newsrooms. Overrepresentation of UKIP on #bbcqt, for instance, clearly show that they can conveniently ignore balance and impartiality
— Mauri Frankov (Раб Путина) (@MauriFranksson) March 20, 2018
He went to describe the segment as a “mawkish puff piece” which aimed to “support the Remainer narrative that the nasty Brexiteers are stopping our children from being able to play with their friends from abroad.”
“The programme demonstrates an abject failure to support the BBC’s editorial guidelines on due impartiality," Mr. Hamilton concluded.
The BBC was also accused of photoshopping Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s hat to make him look like a “commie” after he called on the UK government to “not to get ahead of the evidence” in its investigation of the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia.
READ MORE: UK Shouldn't 'Rush Ahead of Evidence' in Skripal Investigation — Jeremy Corbyn
Britons took to social media to mock the BBC’s claims of innocence, posting edited photos of Corbyn.
— Marco Berghanz (@MBerghanz) March 18, 2018
Attn: Owen Jones.
— The Core (@SocialM85897394) March 18, 2018
I am 99% certain Corbyn's hat is NOT Photoshopped in this one mate. Are you happy now? What's with you and hats anyway? I thought Korbinski wanted to be a Russian diplomat, so he will be proud of this? pic.twitter.com/Bkng4csa7R
