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Biased BBC

Friday, December 26, 2008 Natalie # "Pontificating Mr Peston, self-indulgent bloggers, and why the BBC should stop putting opinion before facts" - An article by Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. (Hat tip: Jason.) Comments: 1 (unread) - Biased BBC Home

It is about time someone said this. I have frequently returned to
the theme of the BBC's blatant disregard of its own charter, any idea
of impartiality and its jettisoning of cultural standards. It is
using the poll tax [erroneously known as the licence fee] to indulge
in blatant commercial activity in which it uses its protected
position as a quasi monopoly to attack the commercial activities of
independent companies - such as local newspapers.

Its ethos is unremittingly left-wing but this is not surprising when
its recruitment advertising is channelled through one left-wing medium.

On this particular issue detailed here Peston who most see as
somewhat of a weirdo is built up as some sort of genius. But this
assessment made by the BBC itself doesn't bear examination. His
reputation is built on a few scoops which mostly originate in the
period before his elevation to sainthood by Panorama. The
government which screams blue murder (or even "Terrorism !!"] when
unfavourable leaks are concerned, nevertheless sees nothing remiss
in its own leaks under the heading of "unattributable news
briefings". Mr Peston has been the recipient of these leaks which
account for many of his 'scoops'.

As his Wikipedia entry discloses - - "Brown's Britain was described
by Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, as
"a book of unusual political significance". The fly cover of the book
describes how "Peston was given unprecedented access to Gordon Brown
and his friends and colleagues". Telling Brown's side of the Blair/
Brown power struggle, it is believed that Peston has used the
relationship then built up with Brown for many of his later financial
news story "scoops" at the BBC."

His reputation as an economic guru doesn't stand up to much
scrutiny. His opinions, delivered in such a medium , are not subject
to the critical examination that recognised economic analysts have to
face and are accepted by the BBC hierarchy as facts . The real
experts in this field are to be found in the print media and amongst
them I include people such as Edmund Conway, Roger Bootle. Liam
Halligan, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - to name just a few.

This unsavoury episode merely reinforces my view of some months ago
that in its present form the BBC is an unaccountable and out of
control monster which, in its present form should be abolished.


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DAILY MAIL 26.12.08
Pontificating Mr Peston, self-indulgent bloggers, and why the BBC
should stop putting opinion before facts
Stephen Glover

Peston: The most recent episode of Panorama, rather than conduct a
serious investigation, lauded BBC business editor Robert Peston

The BBC's Panorama was once the most respected current affairs
programme in Britain, if not the world. It provided in-depth analysis
of all manner of subjects. In recent years it has been cut back to
half an hour, and somewhat sensationalised.

The programme is, nonetheless, sometimes still interesting. This
week, however, it disgraced itself with an introspective piece of BBC
self-promotion. The question the programme asked was: does Robert
Peston, the BBC's tireless and ubiquitous business editor, have too
much power? It is a good question. The trouble is that, having asked
it, Panorama did not attempt an answer.

What was billed as an objective investigation turned into a
celebration of Mr Peston and the BBC, with pictures of the young
genius at school and university. We were even shown his audition tape
before he joined the Corporation nearly three years ago, and invited
to cluck and coo as he demonstrated his peculiar staccato delivery.

He interviewed the deputy governor of the Bank of England, who seemed
remarkably friendly, possibly having been a valued source. The
message was that Mr Peston has come up with one scoop after another
during the credit crunch, and reported our financial tribulations
with remarkable prescience.

If any of us worried that Mr Peston had stopped merely reporting the
story, and had become the story itself, here was all the evidence we
needed. There was no attempt to inquire as to whether he or the BBC
has exercised potentially destructive power throughout the crisis.

Nor did Panorama ask the most important question of all: should BBC
reporters be as free as they are with their opinions? Should they be
expressing their opinions at all?

Mr Peston is undoubtedly a very fine reporter, and has come up with
some cracking scoops over the past year or so, the most notorious
being his revelation that Northern Rock was on the skids. I am not
one of those who chide him - or any other journalist - for coming up
with news that may be inconvenient to the powers that be. That is
their job.

My problem is with Mr Peston, and other BBC reporters, increasingly
presenting themselves as pundits and opinion formers. This
increasingly takes place on the blogs which he and a bevy of other
reporters write on the BBC's website. The point about these blogs is
that they are not simply opinionated. The opinions they offer are
often Leftist or bien pensant.

In recent years BBC reporters have been giving us the news on screen
or on the radio, and then regularly providing their own 'take'. When
they come to writing their own blogs, which generally are subjected
to the most cursory editing, if any at all, they become freer still
in disclosing what they believe.

A couple of months ago, for example, Mr Peston announced in his blog
that Thatcherism was dead. He may he right, or he may be wrong, but
in either event the BBC business editor should not be making
contentious judgments of this sort. It is the type of opinion one
expects from a newspaper columnist, which Mr Peston quite recently
was, not a reporter on the BBC. In a recent blog, he handed out bossy
advice to Lord Mandelson about Land Rover and Jaguar.

The old distinction between reporters and pundits has widely broken
down. Nowhere is this more regrettable than at the BBC, which is
enjoined by its charter to provide objective and neutral coverage.
The danger of blogs is that they encourage reporters to let down
their hair. Indeed, it is impossible to write a half-readable blog
without peppering it with opinions.

Repeatedly over recent months Mr Peston has given his verdict on the
financial crisis, and it has often been an apocalyptic one. My
objection is not only that it is not his proper role as a BBC
business editor to stray so far into punditry. I also cannot help
reflecting that, brilliant scoop merchant though he may be, there are
other financial analysts whose views of the British economy are just
as expert - dare one say sometimes more so? - as his.

And yet, such is the power of the BBC, and its fondness for its
newfound star, that these other voices (some of which might be
inclined to paint a less dark picture of the economy) are scarcely
heard on our airwaves, while Mr Peston is invited to pontificate
morning, noon and night. The virtual demise of ITV News as a serious
alternative to the BBC makes his dominance all the greater.

Mr Peston is only the most prominent of many BBC bloggers who tend to
take a predictably progressive line on all manner of subjects. When,
three weeks ago, the Lancet magazine published some dubious research
about child abuse, the BBC's home editor Mark Easton accepted the
report's findings without subjecting it to much critical examination.

'Politicians should be reacting with vigour to the findings contained
in today's Lancet report,' he intoned. 'These figures paint a
thoroughly depressing picture of the way we routinely treat children
in our society.' He did not question the report's extraordinary
contention that at least 15 per cent of girls are subjected to some
sort of sexual abuse by the age of 16. Nor did the BBC point out that
its much quoted figure of one in ten children in high-income
countries being maltreated was not actually mentioned in the Lancet
report.

Justin Webb has been an excellent U.S. editor for the BBC, sharing
none of the anti-Americanism of some of his colleagues and
predecessors. Yet even he loses his sense of even-handedness when
writing his blog, displaying a devotion to President-Elect Barack
Obama. 'The Obama years will stretch America,' he enthused in one
recent blog. 'The nation will think differently about itself.'

Maybe he's right. But I question the wisdom of BBC reporters giving
any opinion in their blogs even when I agree with it. Even if it is
not tinged with political correctness, even if it does not reflect
fashionable opinion, it is still an affront to the values of the BBC
for reporters to proffer their opinions in public.

The crucial point is that a reporter who indulges a passion for
punditry will forfeit our trust as a reporter, and undermine his
calling. We will think we know where he or she is coming from.

Moreover, hard-pressed journalists are not using their time well if
they spend hours penning blogs when they could be talking to sources,
and getting out and about. The BBC's man in Australia may be
blamelessly employed in writing a blog since there are few other
outlets available to him, but I wonder how busy reporters can find
the time.

Are BBC bosses aware of what is going on? In allowing the
proliferation of blogs they are disregarding the Corporation's duty
to be impartial. Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, might
care to wile away some hours over the Christmas holiday by taking a
critical look over its ever burgeoning blogosphere.

Blogs are further corrupting the distinction between news and views
which is supposed to be sacrosanct at the BBC. They pander to the
egos of reporters who are no longer content to report what is going
on, but want their opinions to be part of the debate.

No one has succumbed to this temptation more than Robert Peston, who
was cast by Monday's Panorama as virtually the central figure in the
credit crunch. The BBC has encouraged him to become the figure around
whom the action moves rather than the person who simply reports the
action