Tory minister accuses Art Attack presenter of 'BBC bias' in another gaffe

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Tory minister appeared to mix up a BBC journalist with a presenter from the broadcaster's children's show Art Attack. Conservative rail minister Huw Merriman said he felt there were some areas of news reporting where he felt the BBC "could do better".

When he was asked to provide examples of bias by the publicly owned broadcaster, he singled out one reporter saying he "always felt" the journalist "gave one side of the story and not the other side" when it came to the Tory Government's universal credit reforms.The frontbencher named the reporter as Neil Buchanan in what appeared to be a mix-up.

Michael Buchanan is a BBC social affairs correspondent while Neil Buchanan is a former presenter of the programme Art Attack, fronting the show between 1990 to 2007.A BBC source said: "Michael's an excellent and impartial journalist who was named RTS (Royal Television Society) specialist journalist of the year last year, not to be confused with the presenter of a children's art programme from the 1990s."Mr Merriman also suggested he found an episode he listened to on Friday of BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz programme "completely biased".

Labour branded his comments about a "satirical" programme "laughable".The comments come after Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, who has said she believes the BBC has been biased "on occasion", announced on Monday that media regulator Ofcom could gain enforcement action over BBC News website articles it does not believe meet relevant broadcast standards.Mr Merriman, describing listening to The News Quiz, said: "For 10 minutes all I heard was - and it wasn't satirical - it was just diatribe against Conservatives, not the Government.