The BBC has been slammed for the lack of Jeremy Corbyn party coverage as the corporation has been accused by the Lib Dems of giving too much coverage to Reform UK.
The public broadcaster of giving favourable time to Nigel Farage’s party on air and on breaking news alerts. However, Jeremy Corbyn’s new outfit hasn’t had much attention despite having over half a million members, according to social media.
One X user wrote: “Imagine if the Refuks had gained 400,000 supporters in 48 hours. The media would be jumping. Our new Left party does it and the silence is deafening.”
“We will be expecting a LOT of positive coverage for Jeremy Corbyn or it’s proof positive that the BBC supports the worst of the right-wing,” another added.
“If you think the BBC is left-wing then perhaps you should check the coverage Jeremy Corbyn received when he was Labour leader.”
“As well as coverage of the current genocide it also ran full-throatedly against Jeremy Corbyn (as other media research projects showed at the time) largely on the back of antisemitism smears,” one social media user claimed.
It comes after Ed Davey has met with BBC boss Tim Davie to complain about the amount of coverage Reform gets.
The Liberal Democrat leader met with the BBC Director-General in Parliament just weeks ago in June to express the party’s “frustration” regarding its media coverage to Nigel Farage’s outfit, according to PoliticsHome, which broke the story.
Despite now holding 72 seats in the Commons, the Lib Dems have been allocated 13 appearances on the BBC’s flagship political programme Question Time, an increase from four in previous years.
The party argues that the exposure it receives is disproportionate when compared with Reform UK, which has just four MPs – 18 times fewer than the Liberal Democrats.
“Previously, the BBC had always said: ‘We will cover you more if you get more MPs, but right now, you’ve only got 11,” a Liberal Democrat source told outlet.
“Now it really feels like they’ve moved the goal posts and they’re just giving Reform massive amounts of coverage based on their poll rating, whereas we were always told it’s number of MPs, not poll rating.”
Davey also raised concerns with Davie about the BBC’s use of breaking news alerts, which the party is now monitoring in order to gauge its coverage.
“That’s another area where it feels like Reform are getting a lot of mentions,” the source said.
“Something else we’re picking up the BBC is: how do they ensure political balance when it comes to things like breaking news alerts – that we know are really, really influential – in the same way that they would be really careful about balance when it comes to news criticism?”