No Cover Image

Journal article 639 views 66 downloads

British Public Service Broadcasting, the EU and Brexit

Mike Berry, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Inaki Garcia-Blanco, Lucy Bennett, Joe Cable Orcid Logo

Journalism Studies, Volume: 22, Issue: 15, Pages: 2082 - 2102

Swansea University Author: Joe Cable Orcid Logo

  • 61055_VoR.pdf

    PDF | Version of Record

    © 2021 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License

    Download (1.72MB)

Check full text

DOI (Published version): 10.1080/1461670x.2021.1981154

Abstract

This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted...

Full description

Published in: Journalism Studies
ISSN: 1461-670X 1469-9699
Published: Informa UK Limited 2021
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa61055
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events – such as summits – and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain's relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism.
Keywords: BBC; Journalism; EU; Brexit; referendum; Euroscepticism
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: This work was supported by BBC Trust.
Issue: 15
Start Page: 2082
End Page: 2102

Similar Items