Sophi Raworth on #Marr: her Interruption Rates analysed

The BBC gets criticised from both sides. The Right accuse it of being a nest of leftists, and the Left accuse it of being a coterie of Tory political appointments. 

The BBC reasons that it must be doing all right then.

This is not good enough. We need an objective assessment of the situation. One way of doing this is by examining major interviews and counting the Interruption Rate - the rate at which the interviewee is interrupted. Any decent university Politics department would be able to do this without too much effort and expense.

I have chosen to do an Interruption Rate on the interviews that Sophie Raworth conducted on the Marr Show yesterday, 16/1/2022. She interviewed Oliver Dowden, Chairman of the Conservative Party, and Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013mkw/sunday-morning-16012022

There are different grades of interruption. 

Grade 1 can be called the "Blurt", when the interviewer puts out a few words while the other is speaking, often the first words of the next question. The effect is to distract the interviewee and the listener in a minor way.

Grade 2 can be called the "Minimal", where the next question begins while the interviewee is finishing their point. Its effect is just slightly to prevent the listener hearing the totality of the point being made, and suggests that really the point they are making is not really that important.

Grade 3 is a full interruption, where another question is interjected while the speaker is still halfway through a response. It suggests that the speaker is totally off the point.

Dowden got 13:93 minutes. 

He received 

4 Grade I (Blurts)

3 Grade 2 (Minimal)

5 Grade 3 (Full Interruptions)

 

Starmer got 13:28 minutes

He received 

7 Grade 1 (Blurts)

3 Grade 2 (Minimal)

12 Grade 3 (Full Interruptions)

It is very clear then that on this occasion the Labour speaker was disrupted significantly more than the Conservative speaker. 

If this simple process (that has taken me about an hour) were to be repeated on more Marr programmes, and on more of Sophie Raworth's work, we will have a body of objective evidence about the impartiality (or not) of the BBC and other broadcasters.

Tthis is the third Interruption Rate that I have carried out. the others are here and here.

All of them show that the interviewer is more easy on the Tory speaker.