BBC broadcaster David Dimbleby has said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has not had a “fair deal at the hands of the press” who he said were generally “right-wing”.
The Question Time host is set to interview Corbyn and Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday and will head up the BBC’s election results coverage for the tenth time on 8 June.
He made the comments about the Opposition leader’s press coverage in an interview with the Radio Times, the Daily Mirror has reported.
Dimbleby, 78, said: “A lot of Labour supporters really like and believe in the messages that Jeremy Corbyn is bringing across. It’s not his MPs in the House of Commons necessarily, but there is a lot of support in the country.
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“And I don’t think anyone could say that Corbyn has had a fair deal at the hands of the press, in a way that the Labour party did when it was more to the centre, but then we generally have a right-wing press.”
The UK’s national newspaper titles are generally seen as right-wing, with some having already come out in support of May’s government during the election campaign.
Press Gazette research in March found that of the 8.7m UK dailies, audited by ABC as ‘nationals’, some 5.5m of that total belongs to right-wing newspapers and only 1m belongs to titles representing a left of centre point of view (based on endorsements at the 2015 general election).
Picture: BBC
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