The BBC has asked an author of a controversial race report to assess whether the broadcaster is impartial in its coverage of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
Samir Shah, who contributed to the government’s Sewell report on race relations, has been asked to consider whether a broad range of viewpoints on migration are being reflected in all aspects of the BBC’s immigration coverage. He will co-author the assessment with Madeleine Sumption, the director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.
Shah and Sumption will assess whether the national broadcaster is reflecting a wide range of views on the subject of immigration and to what extent coverage of migration is impartial “given audiences’ views and what is known about the history, distribution and impacts of migration”.
They will also consider “whether the effects of migration on different UK communities are fairly covered” and whether “the impact of migration on the UK economy, including public services, the labour market and the public finances, is covered accurately and fairly”.
There will be particular focus on how the BBC covers the issue of boats crossing the Channel; the admission of refugees fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion; the impact of migration on communities in the UK; the government’s policy on sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda; and coverage of public announcements about migration.
Shah is a veteran television producer who was previously head of political programming at the BBC and has served as a non-executive director of the broadcaster. He recently sat on the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, set up by Boris Johnson’s government to investigate racism in British society. It faced substantial controversy when it released its findings, with critics suggesting the report played down the role of structural racism in modern British society.
Shah has said he was taken aback by the personal abuse that was aimed at his earlier report and said that the response of the “race lobby” had obscured the report’s intention, which was to suggest that “class, poverty, family circumstance and geography” played as much of a role in life outcomes as race.
The forthcoming review was commissioned by the broadcaster’s board and will look at every aspect of the BBC’s coverage of migration, from its news output to factual programmes. It is part of a series of thematic reviews commissioned by the BBC after government criticism that it is not impartial on core topic areas.
The first review, on the broadcaster’s economic coverage, reported back earlier this year and found that even senior BBC journalists lacked an understanding of basic economics and many thought all debt was intrinsically bad.
Richard Sharp, who will step down as BBC chair next month after resigning over his failure to declare links to Boris Johnson, said: “Madeleine Sumption and Samir Shah are well-known for their expert understanding of the issues involved in delivering impartial coverage of migration, which is an important and often intensely contested subject.
“Their combination of evidence-based academic research and working knowledge of impartiality in broadcasting make them highly qualified to lead the thematic review into BBC migration output. Their findings will ensure the BBC continues to have the correct approach to producing coverage that audiences can trust.”
