British Public Service Broadcasting, the EU and Brexit

This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journalism studies (London, England) England), 2021-11, Vol.22 (15), p.2082-2102
Main Authors:	Berry, Mike, Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin, Garcia-Blanco, Inaki, Bennett, Lucy, Cable, Joe
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	BBC Brexit Broadcasting Content analysis EU membership Euroscepticism Journalism Journalists News referendum Referendums
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events - such as summits - and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain's relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism.
ISSN:	1461-670X 1469-9699