Nick Robinson has already been up for 13 hours by the time we meet for a cup of tea at the Guardian’s London office.
Since joining Radio 4’s Today programme in 2015, the veteran BBC journalist has had to set his alarm for 3.30am. But Robinson’s days aren’t normally this long – he’s spent the morning recording an episode of his weekly podcast, Political Thinking.
He may be tired this afternoon, but when Robinson discusses accusations of BBC bias – a constant source of debate, which was fired up by his defence of the BBC’s Brexit reporting last year – he is still able to fiercely articulate his employer’s, and his own, commitment to impartiality in covering controversial subjects.
“I think we live in an era in which there is an intolerance of free speech,” Robinson says. “I think for my kids’ generation ... there’s a tendency to think, ‘maybe free speech produced some of the things we don’t like’ – let me be clear, this is not me speaking – ‘maybe free speech produced Trump, or Brexit, so maybe it would have been better if that person hadn’t been heard so much’.”
He points to the criticism following an appearance of notorious climate change denier Nigel Lawson on the Today programme in August last year. The BBC was accused of being irresponsible for giving Lawson air time, but “people confused, in my view, two different things,” Robinson says. “[Lawson] said something on air that statistically wasn’t true – not as it were, a controversial claim.”
Two months after the broadcast, the BBC admitted it had breached its guidelines on impartiality, as it was ruled that it should have challenged the views of the climate sceptic. In the interview, Lawson had said “official figures” showed average world temperatures had “slightly declined”, which was shown to be incorrect by the Met Office.
Robinson didn’t conduct the interview himself, but he says: “I’m clear what we [BBC] are trying to do; we’re not trying to do the simple idea of Mrs Smith says A, Mr Smith says not A – we don’t believe in balance in that sense. We believe in balance in the sense of fairness, hearing all sides.” Although he adds that those who are sceptical about the science shouldn’t be on as much as those in the other direction, “because the weight of scientific opinion is there”.
Among the complaints were accusations that the broadcaster was giving a platform to dangerous views. To that Robinson says: “One person’s dangerous views is someone else’s sane and rational views”. However, he is clear that the exception lies in “people promoting or encouraging racial violence. We [the BBC] are not impartial about that, we are opposed to it.”
Questions over BBC impartiality have been accelerated by the rise of alternative media sites in recent years. Last September, Robinson wrote in the Guardian that attacks by alternative publications have a negative effect on perceptions of mainstream media – that they are part of a “guerrilla war” against the BBC. Should it respond to this “warfare”?
“I think we can only engage with alternative media in as much as they show any respect for the truth.” he says.
“If there’s no respect for what’s true, that’s fine. If that’s how you get more people to sign up to your cause, that’s fine – but it’s not journalism.”
Despite current concerns about fake news and a difficult media climate, Robinson says it’s striking how little trust in mainstream media has diminished. As many as 91% of under 34s went to the BBC’s 2017 election coverage in the week of the vote. “That’s an enormous number of people using the BBC … so I think the levels of trust are remarkably high actually.”
Is this perhaps helped by the public’s lowering levels of trust in social media, its reputation damaged in part by the spread of fake news? “Now there’s infinite choice, and that was liberating for people because it meant there were no barriers to entry, anybody could speak and campaigns could get going,” Robinson says. “But I think there’s now a new hunger from people to go back to some basic values: what’s true, what’s trustworthy.”
Nick Robinson will be discussing these issues and more at the Changing Media Summit 2018. See the rest of the line-up here
