A couple of years ago, I watched Nick Griffin of the British National Party on Question Time. To my mind it was an affront as well as a distortion of the television programme’s format.

It was as if the BBC said, let's get him on this programme and we will just expose him. So they asked him to justify various previous statements and had a round-robin of criticism.

There were minimal questions from the public, but few if any related to the week’s news or discussion points. All were slanted against the BNP politician. It was a total change of format.

Although I believe Britain was and should remain as the home of British culture, which immigrants etc should have to sign up to, I do not embrace the BNP or their policies. But I did think there was a total lack of impartiality in that programme, and I was not alone, judging by the reaction of even left-wing commentators.

I am quite sure that if the programme invited a Tory minister or, during their government, a Labour minister, and spent half-an-hour or so getting him or her to defend things said or policies implemented, there would have been a switchboard-jamming avalanche of complaints and quite rightly so. That is not the format of the programme which was altered to ambush Griffin.

Despite that saga, I feel we have a fairly even-handed debate on political issues on television, even if the BBC tends to lean somewhat to the left. In fact, I think we are particularly fortunate in the relative balance provided by broadcasters.

I was reminded of that fact watching US television.

On a visit some five years ago, a US programme of debate assailed my ears. I forget the reason for the debate but a Democrat had made a much-publicised point about something, which in itself, demonstrates it was not what the lady had said but her right to say it. So she was invited to this debate to defend and expand her remarks and she walked into a trap. Republican opponents comprised the rest of the panel, and they sat round in a circle. Each of them rubbished the Democrat’s viewpoint and when she attempted to answer, the anchor-man duly interrupted her and called upon another member of the panel, as he too had a point to make on the subject.

I sat there fuming at the way the debate was handled. It seemed more in keeping with a party political broadcast on behalf of the Republican Party. Every time the Democrat started to reply, her first sentence was scoffed at. The Christians in a Roman arena had a better chance of survival.

During this recent visit to the USA, I have seen far more of this broadcasting bias. There is a climate for it. The Internet has been blitzed and swamped this past year or two with anti-Obama jokes, parodies and attacks. They are now switching their attention to Hilary Clinton even down to comparing the size of hers and Michele Obama’s backsides, as if that had anything to do with political thinking, even though I think many politicians use that part of the anatomy when speaking.

I watched the American news quite often. I kept up to date on current affairs through my laptop, but the US TV networks fascinated me because of their outrageous bias. Fair debate is something they do not seem to embrace and I am not talking about local stations but the big national networks.

You hear such things on bulletins as “Lame-duck President Barrack Obama . . . “ I even saw one nationally syndicated television poll asking viewers how long they reckoned it would take “to undo the damage of the Obama presidency? One year, five years, ten years or never?”

When Obama flew in to commiserate with the parents of the victims in the Oregon school shootings, the critics of the gesture, who labelled it politically-motivated, were given the headlines. So the story was not that Obama flew in to commiserate, but the fact: “President Obama was accused of making a politically-motivated gesture.” It was shades of the BBC, who when the Government announces a new policy, tend towards releasing the news with: “The Government came under fire for their new policy.”

It is subtle, drip-drip-dripping of negative propaganda.

Of course there are subtleties of bias, some even unintentional, in the reporting of the news and it could be argued the weight of our national newspapers is to the right and minority to the left. However, the coverage of the recent Republican candidates’ debate on network television was so patently unfair, it was later revealed one of the ten candidates had less than a minute of air time during the two-hour broadcast.

The entry into the race of the thrice-bankrupted Donald Trump, as leading Republican candidate for President, is almost laughable. Even my Republican-voting friend Malcolm observed: “He winds up the audience with all these things to ‘make America great again’ and claims ‘you will remember when you voted to change the tide and make America great again’. But he never actually explains how he is going to do this. It is all this emotive stuff: a bit like listening to Hitler’s speeches.”

Our other friends, Pete and Marilyn are, like me, far from enamoured with politicians per se, so I enjoyed her remark about Trump: “His judgement is questionable. How can someone with all that money, have such a cheap, ridiculous hair-piece?”

The televised Republican debate seemed to revolve round the fact each rival candidate had been rubbished by the loud-mouthed Trump. So each candidate was asked to comment about things Trump had said. They responded and then the host explained, as Trump had been criticised, he had a right of reply. So it was a case of listen to Trump, listening to another candidate, listening to Trump reply and so on.

One candidate complained Trump had attacked him over his facial appearance. Trump denied it but countered that if he had wanted to, there was plenty of scope. Cheap, nasty politics but then we have long been amazed at whom the Americans vote for on certain occasions.

Apparently the pundits reckoned Trump came out of it rather well from the debate which really was Trump-orama. So the campaign for Trump, aided by a very biased television debate, is on the road. One day perhaps he will inform the voters how he will achieve making America great.

After watching one Republican candidate being all but banished from the televised debate, on reflection I think Nick Griffin got a relatively good deal. America trumpets about being the land of the free but it is lined with wall-to-wall hypocrisy in some aspects.

Of course we all have our idea as to what constitutes a free press and what is acceptable censorship. Me? I would just like to open a popular newspaper without reading about the Kardashians. But I suppose that is too much to ask.