The BBC 6 O'Clock News Regional Bias report: Month 2

Salford - City of Light!

Last month I reactivated my project to determine, entirely to my own satisfaction, whether the rest of the UK (but mostly the North and Scotland) were ignored by an excessively London-centric news media.

 Another month(1) has gone by and while I think it is far too early to make conclusions there is little sign of a London-centric bias so far. On the contrary Scotland, Wales and North-West have dominated. 

Starting with the raw figures in minutes of coverage per region/nation.

	September	October	Total
North West	42.66	18.76	61.42
Wales	14.55	24.46	39.01
London	18.31	18.99	37.30
Scotland	13.59	21.35	34.94
South-East	24.07	9.91	33.98
Yorkshire +	19.76	11.08	30.84
South-West	5.60	22.88	28.48
East	3.43	13.81	17.24
West Midlands	0.92	10.57	11.49
Northern Ireland	7.37	2.88	10.25
North East	6.55	-	6.55
East Midlands	1.97	1.72	3.69

London comes in 3rd behind the North-West and Wales, which has had a particularly news worthy month what with mad hit and run drivers etc. If we then adjust for population size we find London dropping down the chart to 7th place behind the South-West.

	September	October	Total
Wales	4.75	7.98	12.73
North West	6.05	2.66	8.71
Scotland	2.59	4.06	6.65
Yorkshire +	3.74	2.10	5.84
Northern Ireland	4.07	1.59	5.66
South-West	1.06	4.33	5.38
London	2.24	2.32	4.56
South-East	2.79	1.15	3.94
East	0.59	2.36	2.95
North East	2.52	-	2.52
West Midlands	0.16	1.89	2.05
East Midlands	0.43	0.38	0.81

 One thing is indisputable though there are regions of the UK that seem oddly neglected by the news media it just so happens it's neither Scotland, Wales, the North-West or Yorkshire.

Still, given the difference one good solid sex scandal or murder can make to a region, it's far too early to draw any conclusions from this data.

(1) I'm doing this, for my convenience, in 4 week blocks. At some point it will get horribly out of sync but I'll worry about that  when I get there.