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This article was first published on The Conversation
On air since 1979, the BBC’s Question Time is an important part of Britain’s political life, including during election campaigns. Millions are likely to tune in to the leaders’ special on 20 June, when the leaders of the country’s four largest political parties by number of MPs (Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish National Party) will be quizzed by a studio audience.
At Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture, we are conducting ongoing analysis of how guests have been chosen for the programme over the last decade.
Our findings so far – first published on The Conversation – reveal that, while Question Time producers have broadly balanced the main political parties, they have frequently relied on a small number of right-wing guests to provoke entertaining debates.
Like most public service broadcasters worldwide, the BBC believes that impartiality is a core tenet of its approach to covering political debate. Coverage should be unbiased, balanced and objective, with no favouritism towards any side. This is monitored by the UK’s broadcast media regulator, Ofcom, which can levy fines or even end a broadcaster’s licence if impartiality rules are repeatedly flouted.
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To test how this is applied to Question Time, our researchers compiled a dataset of all editions of the programme from September 2014 until July 2023 – a total of 352 episodes with 1,734 guest slots across the nine seasons, filled by 661 different people.
We found that producers go to considerable lengths to provide panels with a representative view of British political life. During the time-frame of this study, for instance, there was never an all-male panel, and rarely one that was entirely white.
Given the format of Question Time, it is not surprising to find that both Labour and Conservative politicians were well represented throughout the nine seasons.
Among the smaller parties, the SNP had a significant presence. This reflects its status as the ruling party in Scotland (though in coalition with the Scottish Greens between August 2021 and April 2024) and its position as the third-largest party in Westminster since the 2015 General Election.
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The Green Party consistently appeared each season, although its appearances declined from a peak of five in 2015-16 to just one in 2021-22. This was despite its vote share growing to 2.7% in 2019.
The Nigel Farage-led parties – UKIP, the Brexit Party, and Reform – also declined from a peak of 16 appearances in 2015-16 to just one in each of the last three seasons in the sample.
Many guests made repeat appearances, with the political parties relying on panellists who appear to shine in the combative atmosphere of Question Time.
Labour’s Shadow Cabinet members Emily Thornberry and Lisa Nandy were most often featured. Perhaps surprisingly, given some of the criticism of the show, in this time-frame, the Greens’ former Leader Caroline Lucas appeared more often than Farage.
Removing politicians from the list of most frequent guests reveals that several high-frequency panellists are being used, most of whom come from the political right.
The regularly-featured journalists are typically opinion columnists who contribute to right-wing publications such as the Mail or the Telegraph, or who make appearances on right-leaning broadcasters such as GB News and TalkTV.
The Spectator wields significant influence, with the top five most frequently-used panellists all writing for the magazine.
In contrast, there is no comparable influence from left-wing publications. The most frequently featured writers from the left were Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar (six appearances), and former Guardian columnist Giles Fraser (five appearances).