The BBC, the next election and economic ignorance

An independent review of the BBC’s coverage of government financial policies has concluded that “too many” of its journalists lack an understanding of “basic economics”, leading to problematic, biased or confused reporting.

The criticisms were part of a newly published “thematic review” of the BBC’s coverage of “taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt output”. The review was commissioned by the BBC board.

Two economics experts, Michael Blastland and Sir Andrew Dilnot, were given the job of assessing the BBC’s impartiality on such matters, but found that reporters at the corporation “lack understanding of basic economics”, which could compromise their ability to cover complex economic and financial stories successfully.

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‘Vaunted impartiality is at risk’

The review “does not hold back,” said James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum, in The Guardian. Journalists were criticised for regularly relying on simplistic political narratives and reporting party intrigue and Westminster gossip to cover over their “limited understanding” of the issues.

“Some journalists” at the BBC apparently “instinctively” believe all debt to be inherently bad, the review suggested, and therefore failed to appreciate that the role of government debt is “contested and contestable”. The review singles out “household analogies” for the government debt, in particular, as “dangerous territory”.

The depth of the criticism means the broadcaster’s “vaunted impartiality is at risk”, said the Daily Telegraph. This is especially problematic given that “the reach of the BBC gives it enormous power to move the news agenda”, the paper said. “This is particularly so when it comes to financial matters, as well as spending and taxation policies.”

“This isn’t another piece of ‘BBC bashing’,” said the Telegraph, but a “serious point made by independent scrutineers”, which “Tim Davie, the director-general, and his managers should take seriously”.

‘Most important arena for next election’

There are “two consequential things we know about the next election”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times: “one of the big battlegrounds will be economic policy, and the most important arena the contest will be fought in will be the BBC.”

The two matters tie together directly because, according to Ofcom, eight in 10 UK adults use the BBC in some form every week, while 73% use the BBC for news.

This means that “the decisions it makes about how to cover British politics matter more than almost everything else”, Bush wrote. And “some of the most important and difficult decisions will concern tax and spend”.

The impact that economic reporting has on politics is immediately apparent if you look to the past decade, said Meadway in The Guardian.

“Would a public not spoon-fed mush about the supposed perils of government borrowing have been so ready to accept David Cameron and George Osborne’s austerity in the early 2010s,” he asked. “Would Labour’s then leadership have felt so compelled to support spending cuts – a position that helped lay the ground for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity leadership bid? Might the Brexit vote have gone differently?”