Taken from the Blog 'Biased BBC' a great way to monitor bias:-
There is an absolutely crystal clear way to monitor political bias and I suggest we do it. It's a very simple, objective measure which could be called the "Interruption Coefficient". You obtain the IC by dividing the number of interruptions by the length of time of the interview. The higher the IC, the more the Interviewer is challenging the Interviewee. It is therefore a measure of bias. Imagine Andrew Marr interviews Gordon Brown on Sunday Morning and the interview lasts, say six minutes. How many times does Marr interrupt him while he is speaking? Let's say four times. That is an Interruption Coefficient of 0.7.Now let's say George Osborne appears on the Today Programme the following Tuesday and has a five minute slot. Do you imagine the BBC interviewed would interrupt him less than ten times? Nor do I. This is an IC of 2.The IC is objective proof that Osborne was given less chance to articulate his views than Brown. Now there is a small element of subjectivity in this - as in exactly what constitutes an interruption. And different combinations of interviewers and interviewees would produce slightly different scores. But maintaining regular scores of IC's over time, on this sit,e would soon show what was attributable to individuals and what was attributable to a persistent bias.
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