Subtle liberal bias on the BBC

UPDATE: and it’s gone! No sooner than this post starts getting traffic and the magic black Liberal candidates merge back into the dull greyness like the rest of the other candidates. Go BBC, that was a quick update. I had a tab still open, here’s a screenshot:

Original post:

I’ve just noticed there’s some very very subtle bias on the BBC election pages.

If you pick any constituency (for example my home constituency, Islington & South Finsbury) the Liberal Democrat candidate Bridget Fox is shown in black, all the other candidates are in grey.

This is the same for every constituency, the Liberal Democrat candidate is always in black.

Some typographers might be able to enlighten me as to what subliminal suggestion this implies when you look at the table of candidates. It’s very minor, but it’s interesting they treat the candidates differently.

Edit: No, it’s not because it’s a LD target constituency as some people have suggested, check out these others: Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East, Norfolk South, Carmarthen East & Dinefwr etc.

I’ve dug out the CSS as well, it’s definitely not a mistake:

.party-CON .party-colour { border-color:#333399; }
.party-LD .party-colour { border-color:#ff9900; color:#000; }
.party-LAB .party-colour { border-color:#CC0000; }
.party-UKIP .party-colour { border-color:#663366; }
.party-GRN .party-colour { border-color:#339900; }
.party-PC .party-colour { border-color:#006600; }
.party-SNP .party-colour { border-color:#FFB400; }
.party-DUP .party-colour { border-color:#CC3300; }
.party-SF .party-colour { border-color:#003300; }
.party-SDLP .party-colour { border-color:#669966; }
.party-BNP .party-colour { border-color:#666633; }
.party-UCU .party-colour { border-color:#0066CC; }
.party-ED .party-colour { border-color:#660000; }
.party-SSP .party-colour { border-color:#990066; }
.party-LIB .party-colour { border-color:#FF6600; }
.party-RES .party-colour { border-color:#990000; }
.party-IHC .party-colour { border-color:#CC3366; }
.party-AP .party-colour { border-color:#FFCC00; }
.party-TUV .party-colour { border-color:#66CCCC; }
.party-PV .party-colour { border-color:#6699FF; }

Footnote: I’m going to vote LD anyway (purely because they can win in Islington over Labour), this isn’t an anti-liberal post.

@2 years ago
#bbc #bias #liberal democrats #subliminal #typography #css