This is not likely to shock people to the core, but the Guardian has retained its place as the BBC’s in-house newspaper of choice.
New details disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act confirm that during the last calendar year the Corporation bought 75,114 copies of the Left-leaning organ – comfortably more than any other paper paid for with BBC licence fee money.
In April 2015 the Guardian cover price was raised from £1.60 to £1.80, with the Saturday edition jumping from £2.50 to £2.70.
Assuming the BBC took advantage of the paper’s subscription service, which would allow it a discount of about one third, the BBC must have spent in the region of £100,000 during the year on the Guardian – about £2,000 per week.
The daily paper bought most often by the BBC last year after the Guardian was the Times, followed by the Daily Telegraph.
Below these came the Daily Mail and then the Sun.
The now-defunct Independent managed to secure sixth place out of 10 in the league table of daily papers bought by the BBC.
On Sundays, the Guardian’s sister title, the Observer, was the second most popular paper for the BBC behind the Sunday Times.
In total, the BBC bought 552,620 daily papers in 2015 via a centrally-managed contract serving the entire corporation.
It also bought a total of 54,084 Sunday papers.
The only outstanding question: who, at the BBC, ordered 54 copies of the (politically neutral) Sunday Sport last year? And why?
A BBC spokesman said: “As an impartial international news broadcaster with 3 rolling TV news channels, 28 foreign language services, daily paper reviews as well as various radio and TV current affairs programmes our viewers rightly expect our presenters, journalists and expert contributors to be across all the day’s stories in all the UK newspapers. The BBC has secured a discount through its service contract ensuring value for money.”