The BBC is on a war footing. As soon as the referendum on Europe was confirmed, an email pinged into journalists’ in-boxes from James Harding, the director of news, outlining the scale of the challenge in what he called “the heated months to come” – and telling them that they would be given training to get it right. Harding trumpeted the need for impartiality and promised to withstand political pressure. The campaigns have already been to New Broadcasting House to talk about how they will operate and, in the case of those in the Leave contingent, to urge the BBC to refer to “the EU” rather than “Europe”, to make it clearer what they don’t like and what they do. Such is the ability of politicians to find bias even in innocuous things.
The BBC deployed its multitude of platforms to launch its coverage, scheduling news specials on Radio 4 and BBC2 alongside the live streams. The only blip was when it was scooped by the defector Robert Peston on ITV. He got Boris Johnson’s decision to opt for Leave ahead of the papers and 16 hours before his BBC rivals.
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