Daily Archives: 20th April 2016

Referendum Blog: April 20

Referendum Blog: April 20

OSBORNE BIAS?  News-watch has already noted that the marathon BBC coverage of George Osborne’s remain ‘Exocet‘ on Monday led the senior political reporting team  to make claims that the ‘leave’ side did not have satisfactory documents to produce in response, and also that the weight of establishment opinion was strongly against exit. Political editor Laura Kuenssberg and her deputy Norman Smith thus entered the controversial domain of offering strong opinions about key matters relating to the EU referendum. No doubt BBC more senior news executives would defend their comments on the ground that such correspondents are entitled to exercise, and indeed are paid to do so, their professional opinions in the area of their specific expertise. However, that raises further important issues.  If the claims of one side of the referendum debate are to be subjected to such examination, is the same happening with the other? Relevant is that it was reported as part of the Osborne ‘Exocet’ that the Conservative high command is still insisting that they can talk with confidence about how Britain will perform in a ‘reformed EU’, and predict the economic future on that basis.  But are the EU ‘reforms’ secured by David Cameron actually binding? The BBC has said from the beginning that they are, but there are numerous claims that they are not, most recently from the Vice-President of the European Parliament. It seems that there is a tougher level of scrutiny from Kuenssberg for the ‘out’ camp and another for ‘remain’.  Another point here is that the ‘in’ side are being judged to be the more credible – there has been no obvious effort to look at what is likely to happen to the EU, if, after UK exit, there is a scramble by other countries also to leave.

LABOUR ‘HANDS OFF THE BBC’:  What is it about so-called social ‘progressives’ that they think that any change in the BBC – as the debate continues about Charter renewal – is going to result in a slide into deteriorating standards and even collapse? Angela Eagle, the Labour party’s shadow secretary for culture, has made a keynote speech in which she has laid out in detail for the first time the Corbyn regime’s thinking about media policy. Her principal message to the government, despite the huge changes and challenges facing media companies is ‘lay off the BBC – any intervention is bullying’.  Her core points were:

  • Culture secretary John Whittingdale should not interfere at all in the BBC, especially over the EU referendum coverage or in matters of how programme budgets should be spent
  • no changes in the licence fee
  • no changes to the BBC’s commercial operations, including the possible sale of its stake in UKTV
  • No ‘top slicing’ of the BBC licence so that other broadcasters could benefit from a ‘public service fund’.
  • The BBC should remain at the heart of a complex state media patronage system in which it hands out cash to ‘independent’ producers
  • Only minor changes in BBC regulation, and strong doubt about the ability of Ofcom to become future regulator (as was proposed by the Clementi report). Further, he government should not be involved in any way in the appointment process of a future regulatory body or management board.

This was a facile, lazy speech which suggests that Labour’s only concern is to maintain the BBC’s dominance and the media status quo, along with the continuation of its funding by the licence fee, despite it being least affordable by the poor. The suspicion must be that Eagle and her colleagues do not want change because they know that editorially, the Corporation favours Labour values, and has been for years favouring its agenda – pro-EU, human rights (with all that loaded phrase entail in left-wing politics), multiculturalism, climate alarmism…and so on. Eagle’s only real reservation about the BBC’s current state of health is that it is not diverse enough. And she reserved her loudest cheer for Channel 4 (which she also says must not change) for its ‘360 degree diversity charter’ – a document that could serve as The Bible of the diversity industry.

Photo by Chingster23

Bbc correspondents’ comments raise impartiality issues

Bbc correspondents’ comments raise impartiality issues

Monday can be seen in referendum terms as the day that the Remain side produced what it believed was an Exocet.

Chancellor George Osborne released what he projected – to the point of pro-EU fanaticism – as a killer economic document which, on the basis of complex, algebra-led economic analysis, suggested that if the UK left the EU, every domestic household would be £4,000 worse off by 2030 and that income tax would rise by 8p in the pound.

How did the BBC do in covering this? That’s a tough question to answer because a News-watch transcript document covering everything that was reported and said about the Chancellor’s predictions on the mainstream news programme – starting with Today on Radio 4 and Breakfast on BBC1, and finishing with a 45-minute special edition of BBC2 Newsnight dealing with the economy in the event of a British exit – amounts to a boggling 36,000 words.

That, at an average speaking speed of 150 wpm is 240 minutes, or four solid hours of coverage. The issue in analysing this blizzard of coverage is where to begin?

One immediate point is that the BBC’s news judgment was that this was definitely a headline development in the campaign. They assigned immediate huge importance to the Chancellor’s report and freely suggested that it could be a defining moment in the campaign. From Today onwards, the Osborne document led the bulletins, and Today was crammed with references to it, for example in in the newspaper reviews and in the in business news. This was the BBC news machine in overdrive with all their big guns deployed.

In that sense, the Chancellor’s document was given huge credence. But was it properly scrutinised? The devil can often be in the detail. Early signs were not good. On Today’s business news, for example, Peter Spencer, chief economic advisor of the EY Club, and David Cumming of Standard Life Investments, were both asked what were said to be ‘quick questions’ about the report.

Their verdict? Spencer said that ‘it was not difficult to come out with figures like the Treasury have’ – suggesting the findings were credible – and Cumming, asked the loaded question  if the referendum itself was ‘already an economic drag’ replied that consumer spending was already being hit. He concluded:

‘I can see where the Treasury is coming from because the prospects for growth investment and profits would be poorer if we left the EU.’

There were no balancing comments, and these early verdicts thus stand out. So too, does the Today programme’s editorial decision to allocate 20 minutes at 8.10am to George Osborne’s advocacy of the report, against only around five minutes at 7.10am to John Redwood’s rebuttal. There is no doubt that Nick Robinson was robustly adversarial in the Osborne interview, but so too, was Sarah Montague in the exchange with Redwood.

Further question marks in Today’s coverage are raised by assistant political editor Norman Smith’s analysis at 6.35 am. He stated that the Osborne document was meant as the ‘Government’s big killer argument, that we will be poorer permanently if we leave the EU’. The bulk of his analysis focused on the key points of the report, and then, when asked about the likely repose from the Leave side, said that its reliance on attacking the reliability of past Treasury forecasts, for example, in supporting the euro, had ‘something slightly cobwebby’ about them. He contended that the problem they had was ‘being able to come up with a factual response’, then asserted:

‘And the reason they struggle there is because there’s nothing they can look at there’s nothing they can model it on, because no one has done this before. So they are in the realms of asserting that Britain would be more self-confident, we’d be more buccaneering, we’d be more entrepreneurial, we’d be more go-getting, but they have nothing to actually build a factual case.’

Almost 12 hours later – when the mighty BBC news machine had chance to analyse the report more fully, to talk in depth to the Leave side about the actual content of the report (the document was not released until 11am), Norman Smith’s boss, political editor Laura Kuenssberg was equally as attacking of the Leave case.  On the flagship 6 pm Radio 4 bulletin (clearly projected as the overview of the day’s events). Her conclusion?

‘….the weight of the establishment is moving more and more openly in favour of Remain, leaving the politicians arguing for exit seem like rebels with a cause.’

In 24 hours, it’s impossible to come up with a definitive verdict on whether 36,000 words of coverage were genuinely impartial. But here, on what was a crucial day in the referendum coverage, there were, some very loud flashing lights indicating significant cause for concern. Yes, the BBC are putting on Brexit voices. Yes, they are exploring the arguments of both sides. But Kuenssberg and Norman Smith are key figures in the BBC’s interpretative voice. And here – in the close analysis of the detail of their coverage – is clear prima facie evidence that they believe the ‘Remain’ arguments are stronger.

Photo by Working Word