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Annwyl Mr Davies / Dear Mr Davies,
I am writing to you as General Secretary/Chair of Wales Green Party. I wish to raise a complaint about the treatment of the Wales Green Party in your reporting and articles.
A glance at any of the recent articles on the BBC website will illustrate the institutional bias demonstrated by the BBC. For example a piece on income tax proposals for Wales (dated 17 April) reported all the national parties positions on tax except the Green Party. There are many other examples of such bias on the BBC website.
Last night’s coverage on BBC Wales from Machynlleth, featured cut-out images of five of the party leaders and just a cursory, rather sarcastic, mention of the Greens. This is unacceptable and unfair.
I note that we wrote to you in January this year about our disappointment and anger at not being included in the leaders debate. Your response was the expected characterisation of "you are too small". I think it is difficult to defend the rational basis for such a decision which is at best arbitrary and subjective and at worst discriminatory. The Wales Green Party is, by any common sense definition, a national party (look at the number of candidates that are being fielded) and should therefore be treated as any other national party and expect a fair hearing. It is not the business of the BBC to decide which national party gets a hearing, but to report in a factual manner what they are saying. You will have noted the public disquiet about your initial decision on including the Wales Green Party in the scheduled leader debate and your subsequent change of mind following the campaign.
I am therefore asking you as a matter of urgency to instruct your reporters and journalists to adopt a fair and balanced approach to the Wales National Assembly election and seek the Wales Green Party view when making comparisons.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
John Morgan