If this story doesn't get picked up by the MSM, it'll be the result of a cover-up.
The makeup of studio audiences (let alone the panels) in the BBC's long-running
Question Time has long raised eyebrows among those who live in the towns and cities it visits. "I never knew we had so many right-wing people living here" is a common reaction.
It turns out there may be a good reason for that.
Let me introduce you to Alison Fuller, a.k.a. Alison Fuller Pedley, whose
Twitter profile says she runs "Full House Audience Management which researches and coordinates TV audiences for programmes where the people take part in the debate".
Her Facebook account (presumably more up to date) reads:
She's done this for years. This is from a profile written in 2010:
"At the heart of the programme is the audience," states the Question Time website page; a rather bold statement that one could easily perceive as advertising. But Alison Fuller, the Audience Producer for the programme, will prove you wrong. Every week she has to select the audience, and depending on the city they are in, this might mean she has to consider over 4,000 applications a week.
This process involves checking the background of everyone against their political affiliations, campaign involvements, advertising intentions and many other factors. As the 150 people she singles out are to embody the image of a city in the eyes of the rest of the programme's audience, one could easily argue her job is probabl{y} the most important one.
https://cutoday.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/behind-the-scenes-at-bbc%E2%80%99s-question-time/
Indeed.
Rob Schofield at Medium.com reported in September:
Providing yet another chapter in the book I’m currently writing about our public service broadcaster titled 'Banging My Face Against A Table Until My Brains Leak Out', a pretty outrageous post has surfaced showing a Question Time Audience Producer seeking audience members from an EDL-supporting Facebook event page.
{Pic (copy and paste URL into browser to view):
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*xGYz2CtPAX1ZPs8c5bu69Q.png}
The event page publicises an anti-immigration march taking place on Saturday through Boston — the same town Thursday night’s Question Time broadcast from — and is organised by EDL members.
...
Some of the contributors to the page include one user who warns, “Dont let lincolnshire turn into a third world hell hole from invading middle eastern and north african migrants”, while another refers to those planning to attend a counter-march as “subhuman scum”.
Source
The
Telegraph also covered the fuss at the time:
BBC accused of encouraging racial tension by trying to get English Defence League to appear in the audience on Question Time
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/02/bbc-accused-of-encouraging-racial-tension-by-trying-to-get-engis/
Maybe Schofield and the BBC-bashing
Telegraph are reading too much into a lapse in judgement from a producer seeking balance and a little heated controversy to liven up what's become a weekly predictable travesty of debate? Well ...
Not-too-deep digging by a number of people on social media has revealed some of Fuller's personal interests. Her Twitter feed's not very active, but here's a post from 16 May this year:
https://twitter.com/Fullhouse21/status/732171630869393408
And here are a few more from Facebook:
Now,
maybe there's a reasonable explanation for all this. Maybe BBC
Question Time's Audience Producer is naive on social media, and just likes and faves striking pics and posts at random and wants to engage as broad a spread of opinion as she can get and sometimes accidentally oversteps the mark. Maybe. But she's reportedly a member of the following Facebook group:
Which in a sane country with a sane media would mean that, at the very least, the BBC and Fuller have some questions to answer here. So far, they've ignored all approaches for comment. We'll see if that continues.