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The BBC has been accused of “extraordinary” anti-Green bias, after the party say a long-promised conference interview with new leader Zack Polanski was cancelled by the Laura Kuenssberg Show just days before going to air.
Every major political party leader, aside from Polanski, was interviewed on the show in recent weeks during their party conferences.
However, Green Party sources say the BBC scrapped their interview with Polanski, which they say was pencilled in for the flagship Kuenssberg Show on Sunday, citing the need to cover last week’s Manchester synagogue terror attack.
Polanski, who is both Jewish, and from Manchester, was bumped by the show just days prior to airing, say the party.
Bemoaning the decision, Polanksi wrote on X on Sunday that “I’m Jewish. I’m also Mancunian. Every other national party leader was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg during their conference. Maybe the BBC thought as someone who also supports Palestine – I had nothing to say?”
The decision not to interview Polanski this week came after the Green Party also requested a previous interview on the show following Polanski’s election as leader on September 2.
No such interview took place, with the show, instead featuring interviews with Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the following Sunday.
Green Party sources told Byline Times that the BBC refused this interview, which normally follows the election of a new party leader, saying that they planned to interview him during the party’s conference in Bournemouth instead.
However, this interview was then cancelled last week, with Green Party sources saying that requests for Polanski to do a quick down-the-line interview with Kuenssberg instead of an extended sit-down interview, were also refused by the BBC.
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A Green party source told Byline Times that the decision to block Polanski from appearing on the show was “extraordinary” given that every other major party leader was granted a conference interview by the programme.
“We offered just to have a couple of minutes on the show, unlike the longer interviews given to Nigel Farage and Ed Davey but even that was denied,” the source said.
The Greens have experienced a surge in new membership over recent weeks, with the party this weekend revealing that they have overtaken the Liberal Democrats in terms of members.
The party were told that Polanski would be interviewed on the show at a later date in the coming weeks instead.
A BBC spokesperson told Byline Times: “Zack Polanski has been interviewed across various BBC News programmes across the course of the Green Party Conference – during which he has been asked for his thoughts relating to the horrific attack at the synagogue in Manchester. He has been offered the chance to be interviewed on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in the coming weeks – the invitation remains open.”
Allegations of Pro-Reform Bias
The decision to cancel Polanski’s appearance follows allegations of the BBC giving undue prominence to Farage’s Reform UK.
As Byline Times revealed earlier this year, the BBC’s Director General Tim Davie and other senior bosses at the corporation drew up plans to win over voters of Reform UK, due to their belief that their news and drama output is creating “low trust issues” with supporters of Nigel Farage’s party.
Minutes of a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March, seen by Byline Times, showed that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama” in order to win the trust of Reform voters.
BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to Win Over Reform Voters by Changing News and Drama Output
The Director General Tim Davie and other executives discussed altering BBC “story selection” in order to secure the “trust” of supporters of Nigel Farage’s party
BBC sources have previously reported to Byline Times that journalists at the corporation feel a much greater pressure from management to cover right-wing parties, than the left.
“I don’t remember anyone ever saying to us ‘oh I just don’t think we’re properly reflecting the Green Party view or the liberal-left view on this story”, one former BBC political journalist told this paper, of their experience at the corporation.
“It was always just slanted in one direction – which was basically the nativist, authoritarian, Conservative direction.