I’ve long wondered, on and off, whether I was just being paranoid about the flurries of bias on the Sunday-morning magazine programme Broadcasting House in favour of the Guardian Media Group, but in recent weeks I have not been sure I am. Take the edition of 17 April, when the newspaper reviewers were the actor Tom Conti, Gareth McLean (the Guardian journalist) and Katharine Whitehorn (the veteran Guardian journalist and Observer columnist).
Conti, talking amusedly about Brexit (“It’s like walking through a forest with a wilderness of tigers”), kicked off the discussion with a tremendous rustling, as though spreading the article across the whole studio. “Well, in the Observer on page five . . .” He was immediately followed by Whitehorn: “That isn’t the only thing in the Observer about this, because my own column in the magazine makes the point that . . .” Changing the subject to the return of Game of Thrones, McLean then said, “There’s a nice piece in the Observer . . . loads of facts and figures, and some nice reporting done.”
Content from our partners
