Can the BBC ever get it right? Just weeks after the Beeb was embroiled in an impartiality row over the rogue tweets of their star presenter Gary Lineker, another spat over bias has reared its ugly head. In September, the broadcaster hired a new political fact-checker, Oscar Bentley, to comb through political debates in the run up to the next general election. But the Daily Mail has now revealed that Bentley might not quite be the bastion of impartiality one would hope.
According to the Mail, he is a ‘lifelong Labour supporter’ who canvassed for disgraced former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the last general election and has in the past regularly taken to bashing Tories on social media. Indeed, a choice selection of Bentley’s tweets supplied by the Daily Mail, found before his account was made private (much to Mr Steerpike’s disappointment), makes for enlightening reading.
It appears the former University of York student, who proudly proclaimed himself a ‘lefty student journo’ during his time there, has taken much joy over the years from mocking those who support the Conservative party. One tweet by Bentley from 2017 when Theresa May failed to get her Brexit deal through the House of Commons read: ‘Tory government just defeated in parliament, what an early Christmas present’. In another from 2019, Bentley warned his followers to ‘never trust a Tory’, while in a third from 2018 he said ‘There are vertebrates, invertebrates, and then there are Tory MPs.’
In case there was still any doubt about Bentley’s political leanings, on election night in 2019, he tweeted ‘Please win Jeremy Corbyn, I love you so much, be my Prime Minister, please.’ Pass the sick bag. In 2019, he also expressed ‘solidarity’ with Extinction Rebellion activists when they ‘occupied’ parts of central London, including Parliament Square and Oxford Circus, causing mass disruption across the city. Some of the BBC journalist’s tweets also, reportedly, date from after he was hired by the broadcaster, with one tweet from October 2022 quoting Keir Starmer when he said ‘We’re a government in waiting and they’re an opposition in waiting.’ Uh oh.
Unsurprisingly, these spiky tweets have had Tory MPs up in arms, with one accusing Bentley of having a ‘clear and obvious bias’. Former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has also weighed in, asking ‘how can it be right’ for the broadcaster to have hired Bentley in light of this.
The BBC has defended their hire. Their spokesperson said, ‘Once people are BBC employees, they are bound by the BBC’s editorial rules of impartiality, but any opinions they’ve expressed before working for the BBC, in this case when they were at university, are completely irrelevant.’
Perhaps too little, too late, but might Mr S suggest that Bentley give his social media a spring clean before he puts himself up for any more jobs?
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