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On Sunday morning’s 9 am BBC News, Radio 4 announced that, following his speech at the Conservative Conference comparing Ukraine’s fight from freedom with Brexit, “opposition was heaped on

the Prime Minister from several directions” and listed Tobias Ellwood MP, the French ambassador to the UK, Sir Ed Davey, the SNP and Lord Barwell. It’s an interesting list. What is

immediately striking is that these are not people coming “from several directions”, but are all either longstanding critics of the Prime Minister or of Brexit. In fact, opposition was heaped

on the Prime Minister from one direction, the usual suspects — but that’s not much of a headline, is it? In the opening item of Broadcasting House, a few minutes later, the presenter Paddy

O’Connell, said, “I’m looking at the newspaper coverage and he [the PM] seems to have got the headlines for the wrong reasons”. He then referred to “what’s on the front page of the paper

[sic]”. In fact, as O’Connell must have known, the Johnson story only appeared as the lead story on the front page of one newspaper, the left-leaning _Observer_. Again, entirely predictable.

Even The _Sunday Mirror_ only featured child refugees from Ukraine. Then on Thursday’s 6pm News the BBC showed a clip of the Prime Minister on his own, with voiceover from their North

America editor, Sarah Smith, saying: “Boris Johnson looks remarkably isolated.” As she, the producer and the programme editor must have known, the clip was taken out of context and there

were plenty of other clips available of Boris Johnson meeting and greeting President Macron, President Biden and other NATO leaders. So why deliberately mislead your viewers and choose a

clip which suggests that he was diplomatically isolated, when in fact he wasn’t? A number of people on social media accused the BBC of political bias and of falsifying the story. However, in

the 10pm News the BBC showed exactly the same clip but made just one change. Smith re-recorded her commentary so it said, “Boris Johnson looked a little isolated”. Again, this misled the

viewers and gave the impression that Johnson was politically isolated when the full footage gave the opposite impression. James Cleverly MP, Alastair Stewart and Simon McCoy were among those

who criticised what the BBC had done. After the 10pm News BBC1 showed Question Time. On the panel was the trade union leader, Mark Serwotka, a passionate supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. On 14

September 2018 the BBC News website ran a story: “Union leader suggests Israel ‘created’ anti-Semitism row.” It began as follows: “A trade union leader has been recorded suggesting that

Israel ‘created’ the anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party. In a recording published by the _Independent_, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka suggested the country had created the story to

hide what he called its own ‘atrocities’.” The article went on to mention that Serwotka’s remarks had been criticised by Labour Against Anti-Semitism and the Chair of the Jewish Board of

Deputies. Yet less than four years later, Question Time seems perfectly happy to invite Mark Serwotka onto the programme. Imagine if he had made equally controversial remarks about any other

ethnic minority which had been roundly condemned at the time. Would he have been invited onto Question Time? It is inconceivable. These are different news stories, all involving different

programmes. But they all have one thing in common. Two are anti-Johnson. The first misled listeners by saying that “opposition was heaped on the Prime Minister from several directions”, when

it wasn’t; the second deliberately misled viewers by choosing a clip out of context, when another clip from the same sequence would have told a completely different story; the third has

nothing to do with anti-Johnson bias, but involves the BBC welcoming onto one of its flagship programmes a left-wing trade unionist who had made inflammatory remarks about Israel and

anti-Semitism. This is how bias happens. In small and subtle ways, BBC listeners and viewers are misled by a phrase here or a piece of newsreel and commentary there or by implying that a

programme guest is a respectable and authoritative figure, when Jews in the audience (there were none on the panel) might beg to differ. I don’t want to be misled by BBC News reports and I

certainly don’t want to watch a programme which features someone who claimed that Israel was responsible for the row over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party during the Corbyn years. Judging

by the outcry on social media, I am not the only one who thinks the Sarah Smith report was “really is a new low point for @BBCNews”. Some may not think this is about bias at all. They may

think it’s just unprofessional. Alastair Stewart tweeted, “Editing is about choices. This is not a partisan point; it is about what I try to do for a living: honest journalism.” Bias or

dishonest journalism? Either way, it’s not a good look for BBC News programmes. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an

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