And as @stephencushion.bsky.social has written ‘The Prescott memo falls well short of the standards of impartiality it demands’

For more thorough and rigorous research into the impartiality of news, do follow our @cujournmedcul.bsky.social project with @mattwalshjourno.bsky.social @perkinskeighley.bsky.social @maxwellmodell.bsky.social and myself for our latest studies. Thread Ends: www.enhancingimpartiality.com/blog

The Prescott memo that sparked the BBC’s current crisis has not been transparent or robust in design or approach. Ultimately, the analysis itself falls well short of the standards of impartiality it demands. 7/8

While the memo is not a peer-reviewed research paper, to allege “systemic issues” you need to adopt a more systematic approach to analysing news output across a broad range of issues. 6/8

Leaving aside its narrow focus, , there were no research questions or objectives, method, sample, time frame or, crucially, analytical framework for examining output. When the BBC has published its thematic reviews of news these details have been included 5/8: www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/...

As David Aaronovitch has pointed out, the memo did not include “a single word … about the BBC’s political, business, education, health, royalty, home affairs, climate change or crime coverage, or even Ukraine” 4/8: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

The memo included occasional references to studies (not publicly available to read) produced by David Grossman. He prepared the reports in his role as a senior editorial adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, but it wasn’t clear why which topics were selected. 3/8

While there has been widespread debate about the BBC over the last week, there has been limited scrutiny of the Prescott Memo alleging the BBC is not impartial on a range of issues 2/8: art-services.co.uk/filechute/bb...

I’d love to see any editorial guidelines you can send on where the importance of number of MPs is considered to be important as opposed to opinion polls

Thanks Carl. But what do you mean by saying the result was “inaccurate”? We’ve not argued that the bbc was inaccurate.