Why are the BBC incapable of portraying rural Britain in their output?

A letter to the next BBC Director General from the Regional Moorland Groups has called for urgent reform of the Corporation's rural media output. This comes after the release of  new polling which reveals a huge loss of faith in the broadcaster from people living and working in the countryside.

A survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Regional Moorland Groups found that 38pc of people living in the countryside felt the BBC’s coverage of rural life was “inaccurate”– with only 2pc saying it was “very accurate” and 29pc saying it was “fairly accurate”. Another 30pc said they didn’t know.

This shows that the BBC has comprehensively failed rural communities. The figures paint a damning picture of a broadcaster that has lost touch with the countryside.

Only 2% of all UK adults believe the BBC represents rural areas "very accurately" – a staggeringly low figure that should alarm anyone concerned about public service broadcasting. More than half (53%) of people living in rural Britain believe the BBC continues to rely on a narrow group of individuals and organisations when covering rural issues, echoing concerns first raised in a 2014 BBC Trust review.

Perhaps most troubling, fewer than one in four Britons (24%) think the BBC is unbiased in its reporting on rural issues. Among rural residents themselves, 37% believe the BBC represents rural areas inaccurately, whilst 38% feel they themselves are misrepresented by the Corporation.

In the letter to the incoming BBC director-general and Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary which highlights these findings, the Regional Moorland Groups wrote that:

“When the BBC covers moorland management, grouse shooting, predator control or upland farming, the voices of those who actually work the land ... are marginalised or absent entirely.”

“Instead, airtime is given to urban-based campaigning organisations whose staff have little direct experience of rural livelihoods or the complexities of moorland ecology and management.

“This is not balance. This is not impartiality. This is ideological framing masquerading as environmental journalism.”

A decade ago, the BBC Trust's Impartiality Review into rural coverage identified systemic problems, finding clear metropolitan bias, noting that rural stories were ‘too often viewed through the lens of environmentalism’, and highlighting the BBC's over-reliance on a small number of NGOs to set the rural affairs agenda.

Ten years later, little has changed. Chris Packham remains the face of BBC nature programming, despite being a leader of the anti-field sports campaign group Wild Justice.

In 2015, he referred to farmers, hunters and gamekeepers as ‘the nasty brigade’ in BBC Wildlife magazine. BBC regular Mark Carwadine wrote this year that grouse shooting involves ‘wildlife slaughter and habitat desecration’ on an ‘industrial scale’.

Neither has been properly reprimanded, nor has the contrasting viewpoint ever received this level of support on BBC programming.

When the BBC covers moorland management, grouse shooting, or upland farming, the voices of those who actually work the land – gamekeepers, farmers, land managers and rural workers whose families have lived in these areas for generations – tend to be marginalised or absent. Instead, airtime is given to urban-based campaigning organisations with little direct experience of either living or working in rural or upland areas.

An example of this rural bias can be displayed in a recent BBC documentary about the badger cull presented by Brian May.  After it was broadcast, many farmers who had been affected by bTB argued that the programme – and May – downplayed the role of badgers in spreading bovine tuberculosis, instead placing the blame on farm hygiene.

The Regional Moorland Groups believe that the incoming Director General has inherited a crisis – but there is also an opportunity to be found. The group has called for urgent reforms: genuinely independent rural correspondents with direct experience of farming and land management; clear editorial guidelines ensuring balance with rural workers' voices; proper weight given to economic, social and ecological perspectives of those who work the land; and a dedicated Rural Affairs department with genuine autonomy.

Rural Britain is watching, and waiting. The question is whether the BBC can genuinely reform itself and serve all communities without fear or favour.

The full letter can be read by clicking here.