[tomtoise]

This happened in the past, a lot of people bought the track 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' from the Wizard of Oz movie in the week Margaret Thatcher died, BBC refused to play it despite it hitting number one.

It does raise interesting discussion points about the role of places like the Beeb in censoring what is essentially a list of the 'most popular' tracks in a given week.

Luckily this specific case is a little more clear-cut, stations can just invoke impartiality rules due to the General Election being so close and get around having to play the track.

[yrro]

IIRC they played a sample of it but not the entire thing. And they didn't conceal that it was number one in the charts, so I think describing the incident as "censorship" is going a bit far.

IME the BBC always goes easy on whoever is in power (or, near the time of an election, the presumptive winner)... this is quite natural since ultimately the government is in control of the organization.

[jwdunne]

To extend your last point, David Cameron has been down on record as saying "I can't wait to privatise it".

It was said tongue in cheek as a response to unfavourable coverage. Job security obviously isn't a joke to BBC employees so there is always going to be a "don't bite the hand that feeds" rationale to reporting.

That said, I think some of Laura Kuennsberg's reporting has been so blatantly biased I'm surprised she's got away with it. In fact, she has had at least one ruling against her regarding impartiality, with a slap on the wrist outcome:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/18/bbc-trust-says...

They say there's no evidence of bias or intent but it means as much as KFC saying "we uphold the highest standards of hygiene and all our staff are heavily trained as such" in response to an employee pissing in the milkshake.

[DarkKomunalec]

"The Big Top 40 show on Capital FM and Heart opted not to play the song"

But in this case it's not the BBC refusing to play it... is it? I'm not too familiar with British radio stations, so those might well be BBC's subsidiaries.

Anyway, "this is quite natural" - I don't think the criticism was that it's unnatural, just ethically suspect.

[tomtoise]

Capital and Heart are privately owned and operated stations. The BBC Charts usually air on Radio 1 I think on Friday, so we will have to see if they opt to play it then, though I strongly suspect they will not.

[kennydude]

More than likely it's trying to keep politics out of music