The Sun has complained this week that "lefty BBC bosses" order more copies of the traditional broadsheet newspapers than red tops and mid-market tabloids.
Most alarming to The Sun is the fact The Guardian tops the list, despite its relatively low circulation.
Between 1 April 2010 and 28 February 2011 the BBC bought 59,829 copies of The Guardian. Second was The Times (51,384), third was The Telegraph (48,968) and fourth was the Daily Mail (45,553). Fifth on the list is The Independent (43,709), sixth is The Sun (42,905), followed by The Mirror (35,756).
That's an average of 249 copies of The Guardian per day (Monday to Friday) across the BBC, versus 214 copies of The Times, 204 copies of The Telegraph and 190 copies of The Daily Mail and 178 copies of The Sun.
The numbers are being presented as proof of the BBC's left-wing bias and The Sun has wheeled out Tory MP Philip Davies to complain.
"It seems that the BBC is almost keeping The Guardian afloat," said Davies, who has subtracted the BBC's 249 copies from The Guardian's circulation of 210,000 and managed to come up with the idea The Guardian would sell "hardly any copies at all" without the BBC.
"It goes to show that the BBC does have an inherent left-wing bias in its attitude," he added.
Left wing media
But if this exercise is about proving BBC staff are exposed to a disproportionate volume of left-wing media in the workplace then the numbers are hardly supportive.
The BBC bought 227,614 copies of right-leaning newspapers, versus 140,780 left-leaning newspapers. So there were 60 per cent more right-leaning papers being passed around the BBC's corridors of power than left-leaning papers. What's more, the number of copies of the right-wing Sun bought by the BBC outnumber copies of its direct left-wing competitor The Mirror by more than 7,000 copies.
The Sun's argument is that the number of papers the BBC buys should reflect each paper's market share. But the BBC knows better than anybody that the value of the media lies in more than pure numbers. Strictly Come Dancing may draw a bigger audience than the BBC News, but the BBC invests more in news than celebrity dancing competitions.
Content and relevance are important.
For example, it is easy to believe The Guardian on a Monday, which for the duration of the period stated had a standalone media section (subsequently rolled into the main paper) is more relevant to more departments within the BBC than The Sun.
Leveson Inquiry
To pick a random example, when Andy Coulson resigned as David Cameron's communications chief in early 2011 it would have been a story of considerable internal interest right across the BBC and all other media companies, from news desks to legal teams and board rooms.
The Guardian's coverage of phone hacking and the subsequent Leveson Inquiry has arguably been more in-depth than The Sun's.
Looking just at the total numbers gives us no idea as to whether they fluctuated over the course of a week, month or year or which departments the papers went to or what the reasoning was behind that allocation. So some important context is almost certainly lost.
We don't know for example whether the BBC took a bulk delivery of The Guardian during the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2010. It would make sense if they had given the subject matter and the fact the Corporation's Director General Mark Thompson delivered the prestigious MacTaggart lecture that year.
To be fair, The Sun did cover the MacTaggart lecture in 2009 when James Murdoch was laying into the BBC, but I've struggled to find any mention of Thompson's 2010 speech.
Given The Guardian's greater focus on the television industry, the media and the arts, it seems natural a major broadcaster would invest in more copies of the paper year round.
The fact the BBC still bought more than 160,000 copies of the UK's tabloid papers during this period, suggests any departments where they would be relevant are more than amply catered for.
So all these stats really tell us about the BBC is that it buys a lot of newspapers, which you'd think even The Sun would agree is a good thing for all concerned.
Surely that nice Mr Murdoch wouldn't go after the Guardian for uncovering the alleged illegal practices of his reporters?
Posted by: Bobinchiclana | Aug 16, 2012 at 13:50
I see Porky Staines, over at his Guido Fawkes blog is deparately trying to spin this story in his own way. Doesn't mention if the Beeb bought any copies of the Daily Star, which he writes for.
Posted by: D | Aug 16, 2012 at 14:59
Pretty clear, surely, that Davies thought the 59k figure was daily? How proud we should be to have such intelligent MPs!
Not the first time he's "mis-spoken" in the Sun either, is it? http://www.septicisle.info/2007/01/phil-davies-mp-retracts-his-fuck-off.html
Posted by: james | Aug 17, 2012 at 19:56