GREEN leader Zack Polanski has criticised “absurd” editorial decisions from the BBC – and said that the broadcaster gives Nigel Farage’s Reform much more coverage than his party.
Polanski, who leads the Green Party of England and Wales, made the comments during an interview with Iain Dale at an All Talk show at the Edinburgh Fringe on Saturday.
Dale had asked about why Polanski had been appearing in the media less in recent months, after a major spate of interest following his victory in the Green leadership election in September 2025 and the Greens’ Gorton and Denton by-election win in February 2026.
Polanski said it was not “true that I disappeared”, but added: “I feel like the media has changed their technique towards me.”
He then went on: “On Wednesday I called a press conference, an emergency press conference.
“It was a bit of a tactic that I've seen Nigel Farage do over and over again, where he says, ‘I'm having a press conference, I'm not telling you what it's about’.
“The media get very excited when Farage does it.
“An hour before, the BBC will spend an hour having lots of talking heads speculating what it might be. They'll then stream it in full, including the Q&A, and then hours afterwards, probably including Newsnight, they'll be talking about what happened.
“The BBC this week, when I held a press conference – including a firefighter, a medic, someone who used to serve in the army, and Chris Packham, so I'd say it was definitely newsworthy and interesting – the BBC completely ignored it. They didn't stream a single thing about it.”
Dale suggested that the involvement of Packham – who presents nature shows for the BBC – may have been why the broadcaster did not cover the press conference. However, Polanski said he struggled to see that could be the reason, adding: “They did do an article later on in the day, but it didn't even make the front page of their [website].”
He went on: “Now my point here is not to whine, because actually I always think as a politician, you've got to just go, ‘OK, how can we find attention differently, how can we grab people differently?’
“But my point is that much of those media organisations who a month ago or three months ago would have booked me, started to cancel on me, or not put me on their show. Then I would see these same presenters saying, ‘Oh, he has a visibility problem at the moment’, or ‘He's disappeared’.
“I was like, you were literally the person who just cancelled me today, and now you're saying I have a visibility problem.”
Later in the show, Polanski further criticised the BBC’s coverage of an incident in which he had inadvertently shared an image of a man wearing a T-shirt showing a guillotine with a message about “making plans for Nigel”.
Reform UK called the police about the Instagram post, which they alleged was “inciting murder”.
The BBC dedicated an edition of Newsnight to the story, attracting criticism after one of their journalists simply read out text messages from Reform UK figures for more than three minutes of the show’s 30-minute run-time.
Polanski told the Fringe crowd: “I talked about the climate crisis not being covered by the BBC, the fact that they went on about [the guillotine T-shirt and Nigel Farage] for three or four days, I think is pretty shocking,” he told the Fringe audience.
“At one point, wildfires were a story that was lower down [on the BBC website] than something about an Instagram [post].
“I think, as soon as anyone takes a deep breath and goes, 'what's important in the world?', that just seems like such an absurd editorial decision.”
The BBC has been approached for a response.
