Impartiality, statistical tit-for-tats and the construction of balance: UK television news reporting of the 2016 EU referendum campaign

Abstract

There has been greater news industry recognition in recent years that impartiality should not be translated into simply balancing the competing sides of a debate or issue. The binary nature of a referendum campaign represents a unique moment to consider whether broadcasters have put this into practice beyond routine political reporting. This study examines how impartiality was editorially interpreted in television news coverage during the United Kingdom’s 2016 European Union referendum. We carried out a systematic content analysis of the United Kingdom’s main evening bulletins over the 10-week campaign, examining the issues and sources shaping coverage, as well as all the statistical claims made by campaign actors. Our aim was to critically examine how notions of impartiality were constructed and interpreted, exploring any operational limits and political consequences. Overall, we found that news bulletins maintained a fairly strict adherence to a central binary balance between issues and actors during the campaign. But this binary was politically inflected, with a significant imbalance in party political perspectives, presenting us with a right-wing rather than a left-wing case for European Union membership. We also found that independent expert analysis and testimony was sucked into the partisan binary between leave and remain campaigners, while journalists were reluctant to challenge or contextualise claims and counter-claims. Journalists were, in this sense, constrained by the operational definition of impartiality adopted by broadcasters. We argue for a more evidence-driven approach to impartiality, where journalists independently explore the veracity of campaign claims and have the editorial freedom to challenge them. We also suggest that the reliance on claims and counter-claims by leading Conservative politicians did little to advance public understanding of the European Union, and helped perpetuate a series of long-standing negative associations the British media have been reporting for many decades.

Data Journalism, Impartiality And Statistical Claims

“…Our research on the broadcast coverage of the referendum campaign (Cushion and Lewis 2016) suggests that the reporting of the campaign was an exemplar of precisely the problems addressed by the review. Rather than seizing the opportunity to address the United Kingdom's considerable democratic deficit in understanding the European Union and establishing a knowledge base for assessing arguments for and against membership, broadcasters tended to reproduce what was widely regarded as an unhelpful series of claims and counter-claims.…”

“…While most of the statistical evidence tended to support claims on the "Remain" side of the argument, claims and counter-claims were routinely balanced without any clear sense that one had greater validity (Cushion and Lewis 2016). Given the closeness of the result and its weighty consequences, the lack of prominent independent scrutiny of claims made by the "Leave" campaign (many of which rapidly unravelled after the vote) might be seen to have been a significant part of its success.…”

The Role of Personality, Authoritarianism and Cognition in the United Kingdom’s 2016 Referendum on European Union Membership

“…Furthermore, considering the often rancorous nature of referendum arguments, in which many of the statistical claims were selectively reported (Nakatudde, 2017) and presented in tit-for-tat exchanges between rival referendum camps (Cushion & Lewis, 2017), it is additionally important to explore the roles of cognitive biases such as ideologically motivated reasoning, ideologically motivated numeracy, framing, and the DunningKruger effect. In particular, it would be useful to understand if one set of voters were more susceptible to these biases than the other.…”

“…That is, given the quantity of numerical and non-numerical data published about the EU and associated topics, the ability to accurately evaluate the data is of high importance in making informed decisions. Referendum campaigns and accompanying analysis not only featured numerical data, but a high velocity of numerical data covering a range of topics over a number of months, often in the form of tit-for-tat exchanges (Cushion & Lewis, 2017). It could be argued that voters were bombarded with an overwhelming and bewildering amount of numerical information.…”

Think Tanks, Television News and Impartiality

“…Research on the broadcast coverage of the EU campaign, for example, found broadcasters often reported the tit-for-tat exchanges between THINK TANKS, TELEVISION NEWS AND IMPARTIALITY 481 politicians, with statistics traded back and forth, with little evidentiary commentary or mediation. This made it hard for audiences to assess where the weight of evidence lay (Cushion and Lewis 2017). The study also found that while broadcasters were successful in balancing Leave and Remain points of view, they did not feel compelled to underscore this with a sense of party political balance.…”