Is PinkNews biased against UKIP?
A poll has found that a growing number of people believe that media coverage is “biased” against UKIP.
UKIPs Deputy Chair Suzanne Evans this week accused PinkNews of “scraping the deepest depths of the barrel” to discredit the party, after PinkNews reported that a number of UKIP officials were fooled into following a hoax UKIP Twitter account which espoused openly homophobic views.
She also accused PinkNews of being a “left-wing” organisation – though PinkNews holds no particular political affiliation.
A recent YouGov poll tried to measure the extent to which people agreed that the media as a whole held an anti-UKIP – and found a surprisingly high number of people do.
The survey found that 47 percent of people believe the media as a whole are biased against UKIP, while just 20 percent thought coverage was fair and balanced. 17 percent believing the media was biased in favour of UKIP.
People across the political spectrum agreed there was a media ‘anti-UKIP bias’ – with 77 percent of UKIP members, 53 percent of Tories, 40 percent of Labour supporters, and 31 percent in Lib Dems agreeing.
Meanwhile, the stats showed far less believed in bias against other parties – with just 23 percent saying the media was biased against Lib Dems, 17 percent for Labour and 14 percent for the Conservatives.
In a separate question, people were asked whether they agreed with Nigel Farage’s claim that there is “a political class, clubbing together using their mates in the media and doing anything they can to stop the UKIP charge”.
54 percent agreed with the statement – and just 26 percent disagreed.
The PinkNews editorial policy states: “PinkNews.co.uk is non-political although we are, unsurprisingly, pro-LGBT. This is reflected the tone that we use to describe homophobic politicians.
“PinkNews.co.uk will not endorse any political party at elections. However, we may endorse individual candidates regardless of party based on their stance on LGBT issues. Importantly, articles that express these endorsements will be separated from our main news area, and will be pre-fixed with “comment” clearly defining it as commentary and not pure facts.”
