Constructing impartiality in a polarised news environment: An analysis of BBC Question Time contributors 2014-2024

To understand the BBC’s choices in selecting panellists for Question Time, it is necessary to consider the unusual political period of this decade. The dynamics propelling polarised political discourse in the United Kingdom from 2014 to 2024 were multiple and intersected. The 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union were single-issue votes that each presented opposing perspectives to the electorate, detached from the customary coalitions that characterise political party support. As Duffy et al. (2019) show, identification with opposing sides in the Brexit referendum became more important to the electorate than party affiliation. The consequences of the referendums reverberated through subsequent elections in 2015 and 2017, impacting voters’ choices. In 2017, Labour’s most left-wing leader in four decades denied the Conservatives a majority by securing a 40% vote share. As the weakened government endeavoured to navigate the implementation of Brexit, parliamentary gridlock ensued, culminating in another election at the close of 2019, closely preceding the global onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, the exhausted Conservative administration was replaced by Labour after 14 years in office.

Historically, the United Kingdom has grappled with pronounced ideological polarisation, marked by differing viewpoints on specific issues. Scholars have posited a correlation between this polarisation and the partisan nature of newspapers’ political reporting (Arguedas et al., 2022). Contrary to this trend, though, several studies indicate that, in the period preceding the EU referendum, long-term polarisation among party supporters was declining (Grechyna, 2022; Wheatley, 2018). However, this nuanced landscape becomes more complex when considering studies that assert an increase in affective polarisation - negative sentiments towards political opponents - during the debates surrounding Brexit (Hobolt et al., 2020).

The BBC’s style of impartial public service journalism has been credited with holding back the tide of increasing polarisation seen in other nations, such as the United States (Mitchell et al., 2014). While there has been significant scholarly criticism of the BBC’s application of impartiality (Cushion and Lewis, 2017; Lewis and Cushion, 2019; Wahl-Jorgensen et al., 2017), BBC1’s news bulletins remain the UK’s most-used news source, and the corporation’s website is the most used online news source (Ofcom, 2023a). Previous empirical studies, such as Bos et al. (2016), have found that exposure to impartial public service broadcasting can play a unifying and nation-binding role, even in a high-choice, fragmented media landscape. This, in turn, can help prevent polarisation by ensuring a single public sphere, avoiding the US situation in which polarised news consumption has created distinct public spheres.

Like most public service broadcasters worldwide, the BBC holds that impartiality is a core tenet of its approach to covering political debate. That is, coverage should be unbiased, balanced, and objective, and one side should not be favoured over another (Cushion, 2012). This duty is set out in the BBC’s Royal Charter, which guarantees its independence from the state (BBC, 2022), and in the regulator Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code (Ofcom, 2023b). Its journalists also consider it a core professional responsibility (Marsh, 2012). However, the duty to be impartial is caveated. The requirement was changed to due impartiality in 2003 to allow greater flexibility for journalists and programme-makers and to ensure that impartiality might be achieved across a schedule or series of programmes rather than within a single broadcast (Sambrook and Cushion, 2023).

The concept of journalistic impartiality as an ideal, and the BBC’s operationalisation of it, are contested. It has been decried as the “view from nowhere”, sometimes called bothsidesism, and a failure in truth-seeking (Rosen, 2010, 2014). These ideas critique the notion that impartiality operates in alignment with truth, something that the BBC has also faced with criticism of “false balance” in its climate change reporting (BBC, 2015). Writers, particularly, but not limited to those on the political left, have accused it of interpreting impartiality as recourse to a view of the world that promotes consensus (Mason, 2017) or being too slow to challenge the “conventional wisdom of the day” (Robinson, 2017). Freedman (2019) argues that this interpretation of impartiality, and the structural and institutional factors created by its closeness to the political establishment, constrain the BBC’s journalism and undermine its ability to act as a reliable and independent check on power.

With regard to the concept of impartiality for Question Time, the BBC seeks to create panels that represent the national party-political balance of the electorate, while also considering a variety of viewpoints outside the traditional party system (BBC, 2014). Usually, the programme’s panel of five (on occasion, four or six) will feature a guest from the government party – often, but not always, a minister or Secretary of State. The programme-makers also give themselves room to feature backbench or dissenting views from the administration in power. The main opposition party will also be represented, usually, but not always, by a shadow minister. The third political seat is shared among the other parties in the United Kingdom based on their level of national support (BBC, 2014). In practice, this tends to mean that programmes recorded in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will feature a range of political parties from the nations alongside the party of government in each devolved administration. The fourth and fifth positions on the panel will be taken by journalists, businesspeople, and civil society figures who represent a range of viewpoints. Guests’ positions on Brexit became increasingly important in the immediate run-up to and aftermath of the EU referendum. The programme’s presenter regularly described whether a contributor supported Leave or Remain. Leavers pointed to what they viewed as a lack of balance in the programme’s guests as evidence of bias by the BBC against them (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2018), but as Brandenburg and Boyle (2021) have shown, the picture is more nuanced than this, as the vast majority of parliamentarians supported Remain. Hence, the programme’s producers often had to source Leave views from guests not allocated to the politicians’ seats.

The BBC says the audience’s questions are chosen to represent the most popular topics raised, yet there are editorial processes in the selections that reflect news values (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017). As (Ferreira Seridorio and Rothberg, 2022) show, the initial questions from the audience, the editorial selection decisions, and the follow-up points made by audience members can all be considered forms of participatory journalism.

As Anstead and O’Loughlin (2011) make clear, the modern media environment means Question Time is under pressure to treat the audience contributing via social media as part of the debate. The programme has had an active social media presence on Twitter (X.com) throughout the study period, and the social media team engages with commentators during the programme’s transmission, highlighting relevant stories and reports. The programme’s content gets significant traction on social media (Williams et al., 2011), as users engage with clips that support their views or expose political opponents (Ford et al., 2021). As Mills (2016) has shown, the BBC is under significant pressure from campaigners to reflect their views. This is magnified by social media. This then risks programme producers’ guest choices being pulled toward one political view or another. But there also exists a competing pressure to be entertaining. While the BBC has a duty to produce programming that explores political debates, the audience has no such duty to watch it. Question Time, scheduled on the BBC’s largest channel, which mixes entertainment, news, and current affairs programmes, must be entertaining to attract a mass-market audience.

Playlists were created in Box of Broadcasts, the library tool for broadcast television provided by the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council, for each season of Question Time from September 2014 until July 2024. The series starts its seasons in the autumn and runs until the following summer. Using content analysis, the panellists were then categorised using inductive coding based on the programme presenters’ descriptions of the guests and their political views (see Table 1). Where a party affiliation was known, this was made clear in the coding. This allowed categorisation into several groups and subgroups. No attempt was made to code guests based on factors such as voting intention or political position taking beyond the presenters’ description. This was in part because the analysis seeks to understand how the BBC applied due impartiality in its own terms, and in part because, with non-party guests, it is not possible to be certain of their party-political views.

The decision to code guests based on the presenter’s description was made because it was important to consider how the BBC described the panel. An example of the presenter’s introduction is reproduced here from 27^th September 2018 to demonstrate the information presented for the coding:

“With me here tonight, the Conservative backbench MP Jacob Rees Mogg, leader of a group of Tory MPs who oppose Theresa May’s plans for Brexit. The chair of the Labour Party, former President of the National Union of Mineworkers, Ian Lavery. Polly Mackenzie, director of the centre-ground thinktank Demos and Nick Clegg’s Head of Policy during the coalition government. The comedian, journalist and former Labour Party advisor Ayesha Harazika. And the columnist for The Sun, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator, Rod Liddle.” (Question Time, 2018)

Most editions of the programme had a journalist guest who was coded according to publication rather than individual political affiliation. Appendix 1 contains a coding table of newspaper or news magazine political party support during the 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2024 elections Table 8. It also shows the broad political leanings of other publications established through expert coding Table 9.

On occasion, a guest had multiple affiliations; for example, the Conservative peer, chair of Britain Stronger in Europe - the official Remain campaign body - and former boss of Marks and Spencer, Stuart Rose, appeared three times. He was coded as described by the programme’s presenter, usually Business (Conservative supporter). This produced a set of 1,885 guest slots across the 391 editions, filled by 699 people.

A second coder examined a 10% sample of the programmes and, using a coding scheme, produced a sufficiently strong match to be confident in the variables’ reliability, as demonstrated in Table 2. The area where there was most disagreement was on journalists who worked for multiple publications – the first coder and the second coder sometimes disagreed on which was the primary one for coding purposes.

This led to three research questions:

The programme’s producers go to considerable lengths to give panels a representative view of British political life. During the timeframe, there was never an all-male panel, and rarely an all-white one. As Table 3 makes clear, slightly more than 60% of panellists were politicians representing the UK’s political parties. The remaining panel positions were split between civil society actors (21.01%) and journalists (18.25%).

Given the format of Question Time, it is not surprising to find that both Conservative (34.94%) and Labour Party (33.28%) politicians are well represented throughout the ten seasons, as shown in Table 4. A representative from both parties appears in almost all editions of the programme, the exception being shows recorded in Northern Ireland, where a different mix of parties contests elections.

Conservative representation was larger than Labour’s, which was a result of some programmes featuring dissenting voices from within the party as well as a government representative. Among the smaller parties, the Scottish National Party had a large presence (9.08%) throughout the period examined, reflecting both its status as the ruling party in Scotland, although in coalition with the Green Party after August 2021, and its position as the third largest party in Westminster after the 2015 General Election until July 2024. The Green Party consistently appeared each season (in total, 2.62%), but appearances declined from a peak of five in 2015/16 to just one in 21/22, then bounced back in 23/24. This was despite the party’s vote share growth to 6.7% in the 2024 General Election (Stewart, 2024). The UK’s first-past-the-post election system penalises the Green Party; this imbalance is also reflected in the number of Question Time appearances.

The UK’s voting system also penalises the Nigel Farage-led parties, UKIP, the Brexit Party and Reform UK. UKIP was at its most influential during the run-up to the 2015 General Election when the promise to hold a referendum on membership of the European Union became a Conservative manifesto commitment. Although it recorded a 12.6% vote share in 2015, it was only rewarded with a single MP. However, the party leader and other elected representatives, such as MEPs, made frequent appearances on Question Time (12.4% in 2015/16). These declined after the Brexit referendum. The results presented in Table 4 show that the BBC mainly relied on the first-past-the-post political system in Westminster as the basis of its approach to impartiality, rather than on vote share alone. There were, though, apparent exceptions; UKIP’s appearances do reflect its vote share. This approach mainly favoured parties with a larger representation in Westminster and disadvantaged those with fewer MPs, with the exception of UKIP.

The study’s timeframe was marked by two seismic events in British life: the decision to leave the European Union in 2016, and the resulting parliamentary tussles, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. These were both topics of significant public debate beyond the usual party-political confrontations in Parliament and are reflected in the types of non-politician guests booked to appear on Question Time, as shown in Table 5.

In the run-up to the Brexit referendum and during its immediate aftermath, the impact of leaving the EU was frequently discussed in economic terms. This led to a substantial increase in panellists with a business background (in total, 29.04% of civil society panellists), who were usually introduced in terms of their views on Leave or Remain rather than their party-political outlook. To balance the views of the Treasury, the programme invited several prominent Leave-supporting businesspeople, including the founder of the pub chain Wetherspoons, Tim Martin and the venture capitalist and later backer of the right-wing news channel GB News, Paul Marshall. The increased use of panellists with business experience continued through the COVID-19 outbreak as the country debated the economic impact of lockdown and the costs of furlough. There was also an uptick in trade unionist representation. The pandemic also led to a considerable increase in the number of academics invited onto the panel, especially those with experience in public health. It is worth noting that there is a heavy emphasis on business guests in the sample. Considered as a single cohort, businesspeople are the largest group, outstripping panellists from trade unions, academia or the arts.

Notably, panellists representing think tanks, who naturally have overt political leanings, were overrepresented by those on the political right (3.79%), especially those with Thatcherite political leanings, such as the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies. Left-wing (2.02%) or centrist think tanks (1.01%) had more limited representation, which aligns with Lewis and Cushion’s 2019 study on the use of think tanks in news reporting.

Question Time has a duty to be entertaining and informative, reflected in the use of celebrity panellists. Some of these had clear political views on the world, such as the left-wing singer-songwriter Billy Bragg or the self-styled right-wing working-class comedian Geoff Norcott, who appeared six times during the examined timeframe. The programme booked comedians less frequently after the 2018/19 season, perhaps in response to an increasingly serious news agenda dominated by the pandemic and rising global tensions.

Journalists are also regularly featured on Question Time, as shown in Table 6.

Journalist panellists tended to be newspaper opinion columnists, although, as the timeframe examined in the study progressed, there was increasing use of those from new opinionated TV or radio channels, such as GB News (2.91%) and TalkTV (4.07%), and digital publications, such as Spiked (1.74%). These are all from the political right, although the left-wing Novara Media was also represented (1.74%). As well as journalists with named publications, there were also several appearances from broadcasters or journalists who had no named publication but were pundits known for their robust political views, for example, the radio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer (13 appearances) or the writer Isabel Oakeshott (14 appearances). Over the course of the study, as their careers changed, these pundits moved between different organisations. As outlined in the methodology above, they were assigned to a category based on their introduction in each edition (Table 6).

The combined appearances of publications that tend to support right-wing political parties and politicians at elections or offer broadly right-wing perspectives of current affairs (The Times, The Telegraph, The Mail, The Sun, The Spectator, The Economist, Talk TV, Guido Fawkes, GB News, The Standard, The Express, Conservative Woman, Spiked, and right-wing pundits) was 59.59%. Appearance for publications on the left or broadly left-wing views of current affairs (The Guardian/Observer, The Mirror, The Canary, Novara Media, New Statesman, The Huffington Post, and left-wing pundits) was just 16.86%.

Despite the large number of guest spots across the ten seasons of Question Time, a group of people made repeated appearances. Table 7 considers the frequency of non-politician guests. Several high-frequency panellists were used, almost all of whom came from the political right. Writers for the right-wing magazine The Spectator had an outsized influence. Despite its relatively small circulation of just under 65,000 per edition in 2023 (Maher, 2023), many of the most frequently used panellists write for the magazine. There was no equivalent influence from left-wing publications. The most commonly used journalists from the left were Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar (6 appearances) and the podcaster and writer Alastair Campbell (6 appearances).

The results of the analysis of Question Time panellists support some of the claims of bias made against the BBC but undermine others. While there is a systematic approach to political guest booking, some parties with similar vote shares have greater access to the panel than others, a process that notably favours the SNP. The party’s dominance of Scottish politics during the study’s timeframe meant that its appearances were far more frequent than those of, say, the Green Party, which had a not dissimilar number of voters. While the SNP contests only Scottish seats, if each vote is treated equally, there seems to be a difference in approach to the parties.

The BBC has also been frequently criticised for providing a platform for the radical right in the form of UKIP, the Brexit Party, and Reform UK, which is out of proportion to their electoral support. If one considers these parties’ vote share, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Aside from UKIP’s peak of support during the 2015 General Election, their treatment appears more in line with that of the Green Party. There have also been claims that the parties’ driving force, Nigel Farage, has had an outsized share of appearances. That is not true of the timeframe analysed in this study. Indeed, during this period, he was a less frequent guest than the Green Party’s former leader, Caroline Lucas. The BBC makes clear that political panellists for Question Time are selected on the basis of electoral support. The UK’s first-past-the-post system for Westminster penalises smaller parties, which may perform better in other polls, such as the European Parliament Elections or those for the devolved administrations. The Green Party and UKIP/Brexit/Reform have a broader appeal than the few parliamentary seats they won during this timeframe, and it may be that an over-reliance on this measure is unnecessarily limiting their appearances on Question Time.

It is clear that when panels are constructed, the programme’s producers consider both the show’s public service nature - holding senior politicians to account - and the requirement to make the programme entertaining to a mass audience. Panellists who are not required by their political parties to repeat their “lines-to-take” are likely to say things that are provocative and make better television. However, this has led to a tendency to use panellists who write or broadcast for right-wing media outlets or who work for right-wing think tanks and pressure groups. While political columnists do not have to stick rigidly to their publication’s editorial positions, a relatively small group of journalists are being repeatedly booked to generate heated debate rather than shed light on the political issues of the day (Bond, 2019; Hudson, 2019; Hunter, 2022; O’Neill, 2019; Robinson, 2018). This can be useful. Such guests can cut through the cant and expose politicians’ hypocrisies. But it also poses dangers for the BBC as an over-reliance on them might support claims of a lack of impartiality. This is likely to be exacerbated by the frequent use of guests from right-wing think tanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs. Previous studies (e.g., Brandenburg et al., 2024) have demonstrated that sources on Question Time are dominated by the privately schooled and Oxbridge-educated. They find that, with regard to the education of the panellists, the show is even more skewed than either elites or the public. Along with the findings of this study, it raises questions about how panellists are selected in terms of due impartiality.

There is no question that the BBC remains institutionally committed to impartiality, but, in line with McNair et al. (2003), the pressures to provide infotainment have created an imbalance in source selection for panel programmes. Numerous studies (De Jonge, 2019; Mendes and Dennison, 2021; Neiwert, 2017; Thesen, 2018) have shown that radical right politicians and their media proxies have used the platform afforded by current affairs programming to broadcast their messages to broader audiences in the UK and globally.

It is worth pointing out that there is nothing inherently biased about the BBC inviting guests from these organisations, nor is there anything wrong with political writers from The Spectator discussing the political issues of the day. However, the lack of counterbalancing narratives from left-wing publications is notable. This can lead to panels comprising a Conservative politician, a politician from a smaller right-wing party, and a writer from the right-wing press, sparking social media complaints about a lack of impartiality (Hutton, 2024). This study also raises concerns about how panellists are selected and whether they represent the “breadth of viewpoints” the BBC seeks to reflect.

This study, of course, has many limitations. A more detailed content or linguistic analysis of the programme’s construction using the audience’s questions, the panellists’ answers, and the presenter’s interventions might reveal a different approach to constructing impartiality. The political positions of civil society actors might also be analysed to provide a greater insight into the balance of the panels in the programme. A detailed analysis might also reveal further insights into the balance of guests’ positions on some of the key events of the decade, such as the Scottish and EU referendums. It may well be that the explosion in AI technologies will provide new ways to examine broadcast political discourse at scale in the coming years. This might also provide insight into the programme’s presenter’s fact-checking and assertion-challenging. Nor does the study consider the representativeness of the programme panels with respect to gender or ethnicity. Future research might also consider the class background of sources.

Nonetheless, this study provides insight into the panel construction of BBC Question Time during a decade when political life in the UK became increasingly polarised and demonstrates that a group of right-wing writers associated with a small-circulation political magazine are having an outsized impact on one of the most important political discussion programmes on the UK’s public service broadcaster.