A New Year's Resolution for the BBC?

The third-placed story on the home page of the BBC website this morning is: 

4.8m Britons 'earn below living wage'

The number of UK workers earning less than the so-called living wage has risen to 4.8 million, a report by the Resolution Foundation think tank suggests.

It's one of those stories which only the BBC rates as being that important. 

The BBC report outlines the think tank's findings and quotes its lead author, economist Matthew Whittaker, but also gives a lot of space to Labour's attack on the government on the issue, with the government's response being buried away (briefly) at the very bottom of the piece. 

It doesn't, however, directly tie the the Resolution Foundation's report to Labour's response. When the article says "In a speech on Tuesday, Labour frontbencher Rachel Reeves..."  it fails to say who she was giving that speech to and BBC website readers would easily be forgiven for assuming the two things were coincidental rather than directly connected.

The Guardian, however, reported yesterday that there was nothing coincidental about it: "Reeves, in a speech to the Resolution Foundation, will announce plans to generate living wages..."

The BBC's tendency to give the Resolution Foundation's reports a heavy boost is something we've noted here before (such as here), and the corporation's habit of presenting the think tank as if it were merely 'independent' is also an ongoing issue. 

As I wrote a little while back: 

The Resolution Foundation think tank's findings on 'the squeezed middle' (so helpful to the Labour Party and widely reported by the BBC), might benefit from context being given as to the centre-left nature of that particular think tank - plus the links of many of its senior figures to the last Labour government. 

Indeed, it might be time to resurrect a comment I posted on Biased BBC nearly two years ago:

January 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm

How ‘independent’ are they? Who are ‘the team’ behind the independent Resolution Foundation think tank? 

Well, there’s chief executive Gavin Kelly, former advisor to prime minister Gordon Brown, for starters. 

Then there’s Vidhya Alakeson, research and strategy director, who has worked for several left-leaning think tanks (some with links to Labour, such as Policy Network and the Social Market Foundation) and, like Mr Kelly. also worked in the prime minister’s policy unit under Labour. 

There’s also James Plunkett, Secretary to the Commission on Living Standards, who has written for the Guardian attacking Michael Gove’s education policies as “tired old Tory ideology” and elsewhere attacking the “malevolence” of “the Nasty Party”. He worked in Gordon Brown’s strategy unit from 2008-09. 

Then there’s senior economist Matthew Whittaker, who also serves as a “wise man” on the Labour-aligned IPPR’s New Era Economics panel. 

Also Felicity Dennistoun, external affair assistant, who was a parliamentary assistant to Labour’s Emily Thornberry, and Joe Coward, research and communications assistant, who came from the centre-left Demos think tank.

Guido got the main piece of the jigsaw quite some time back. The man who founded the Resolution Foundation, insurance tycoon Clive Cowdery, is a Labour Party donor. 

The Resolution Foundation looks set to join the IPPR and Demos as a favoured think tank of the BBC. Given the links so many of its key figures have to the last Labour government and their ties to other left-of-centre think tanks, would it be too much to ask BBC presenters/reporters to say things like, “A report today from the left-leaning think tank, the Resolution Foundation, found that….” or “Former advisor to Gordon Brown, Gavin Kelly/James Plunkett of the Resolution Foundation, said….”?

The author of the think tank's latest report, cited by the BBC in their article today, Matthew Whittaker, gets a mention there.

Shouldn't the BBC be clearer about the connections between the Resolution Foundation and the Labour Party?...Or else the Centre for Policy Studies will be after them again!

So, there are several charges here:

(1) That the BBC is reporting this story much more prominently than anyone else - and more than the story merits.
(2) That the BBC tends to report the Resolution Foundation's findings more widely than most other think thanks.
(3) That the BBC article is weighted in favour of the opinions of the Labour Party and against the government.
(4) That the BBC fails to make clear the links between the report and Rachel Reeves's speech to the Resolution Foundation.
(5) More generally, that the BBC fails to make clear the links between Labour and the Resolution Foundation. 

“What makes a story?”

At the end of the previous post I raised the question of what would be leading the Today programme this morning. Would it be the latest scandal to hit the NHS (and the Labour Party)? Well, we'll know in a few minutes time...

In advance of Today, a look at the stories featured on non-BBC news sites shows the NHS story to be still important for papers like the Telegraph, Guardian and Independent, though it's the deaths of two military personnel in Wales during training on the hottest day of the year though which is the major story that all news site share. 

The BBC News website's top two stories are utterly unique to itself though:

Benefits cap of £500 begins roll-out

A cap on the total amount of benefits that people aged 16 to 64 can receive begins rolling out across England, Scotland and Wales.

Rent 'unaffordable' in one-third of UK

A third of Britain is effectively off-limits to lower-income working families because private rents are unaffordable, a new report claims. 

That new report, when you click onto the story, turns out to be by the Resolution Foundation - a think tank that should be clearly labelled as 'left-leaning' by the BBC (but usually isn't).

No other news site (whether it be Sky, ITV, the Guardian, the Indie or the Telegraph) places any emphasis on these stories whatsoever.

Given the way the BBC usually operates, these two stories are very likely to dominate the Today programme, Breakfast, the News Channel and Radio 4's other current affairs staples. Expect to see and hear a lot about the fears of 'vulnerable' benefits claimants, plus to find the BBC's Mark Easton and various Resolution Foundation spokespeople popping up all over the place.


Update 6.00am: Well, Today is leading with benefit cuts, and the news bulletin tied it in with the issue of high rent, thus combining both of the two lead stories on the website. (Interesting timing from the Labour-friendly Resolution Foundation then). Breakfast has a report on now featuring someone from the Resolution Foundation. Here we go!!


Update 6.00pm: Twelve hours later and watching BBC One's News at Six, their chosen lead story was the benefit cap and, yes, their chosen second story was the Resolution Foundation report, featuring Mark Easton. The BBC is nothing if not dogged on days like this.

Have you forgotten something, Cardiff Uni?

Two of Cardiff University's academics, Justin Lewis and Stephen Cushion, have produced yet another report 'proving' that the BBC has a right-wing bias 

As regular readers will know, these researchers are from the same stable that the BBC relies on for its major impartiality reviews and they've previously produced reports 'finding' that the BBC, though broadly impartial, has a right-wing and anti-EU bias. (Hmm).

This latest one is a study of the BBC's use of think tanks and 'finds' that the BBC cites more right-wing than left-wing think tanks. QED.

The detail looks fascinating but within just one minute of looking in earnest at its data and hunting for its figures on the Resolution Foundation - the think tank I most associate with the BBC because I hear it mentioned a lot on the BBC (especially Today) and have written about the BBC's coverage of it before - guess what? I couldn't find any mention of the Resolution Foundation among the large list of think tanks they've monitored. 

Yes, it's not there. They've forgotten it!

So within a minute of digging deeper my initial impressions that their study looked impressive melted into air, into thin air.

How on earth could they forget the Resolution Foundation? As I say, it gets a lot of mentions on the BBC. (Check that link for yourselves if you fancy trying to doubt it). 

Though it has David Willetts as its executive chairman, the think tank is generally characterised as 'left-leaning', even by the BBC, as well as by the FT, Buzzfeed, The Times, etc, and if Justin and Stephen had remembered them then, using their own criterion, they would have to have included them in their 'Left or left-leaning' column, and that might have had a very significant impact on their results.

Professors Lewis and Cushion have surely made a fatal blunder in forgetting to include the Resolution Foundation. It's like conducting a study of bias based on the questions of Radio 4 current affairs presenters and forgetting, say, Mark Mardell. 

Please take a look at the report for yourselves, especially TABLE 2: Political classification of think tanks mentioned on BBC news, and see what you make of it.

War!

Theresa May, picking a tank to take to Salford

The Mail on Sunday says that "Theresa May has gone to war with the BBC":

Downing Street has made a furious complaint to the broadcaster after it led its Radio 4 bulletins with claims from a Left-leaning think-tank that the measures unveiled by Chancellor Philip Hammond would mainly benefit the rich. One aide described the report on Tuesday’s Today programme as ‘the most biased bulletin in history’. 

The row erupted after the flagship news show highlighted research by the Resolution Foundation without revealing that its director, Torsten Bell, was head of policy for former Labour leader Ed Miliband.

It continues:

The 7am bulletin declared that ‘an independent analysis of the Budget has said that despite moves to end austerity, low and middle income families face a continued squeeze’. 

It repeated the claim in its 8am bulletin – but minus the word ‘independent’. 

Of course "the BBC refused to apologise for its coverage", saying that the research was "the first detailed analysis of the Budget" and that it was "clearly attributed to the Resolution Foundation".

The headlines in question ran as follows:

It's 7 o'clock on Tuesday 30th October. The headlines. An independent analysis of the Budget has said that, despite moves to end austerity, low and middle income families face a continued squeeze. 

It's 8 o'clock on Tuesday 30th October. The headlines. An analysis of the Budget, which was billed as the beginning of the end of austerity, has suggested low and middle income families won't feel much of a benefit.

Both bulletins did, however, go on to describe the Resolution Foundation as "left-leaning",which is an improvement on how they used to describe it (or, more accurately, not describe it). I used to write a lot about their failure to give such context to Resolution Foundation reports (which they are unusually keen on), so that's good. 

Anyhow, with Mrs May "going to war" with them, the BBC must be trembling in its leather formal chukka boots.

Full employment

Here begins a more detailed look at this week's editions of Newsnight...

Monday night's Newsnight began by casting a characteristically jaundiced eye over George Osborne's pledge to fight for full employment. Jeremy Paxman flared his nostrils and raised his eyebrows from the word 'go'. 

Laura Kuenssberg's report not only featured that clip of former Tory chancellor Norman Lamont saying unemployment is a "price...worth paying", but then managed to nab ol' Norm for one of her two 'talking heads', asking him about the contrast between what he - and other former Tory chancellors - have said, and what George Osborne is saying now. 

Her other talking head was Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation (which is precisely how he was labelled.) Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation said that jobs these days tend to be more "insecure"). As so often, viewers weren't informed that Gavin Kelly was one of Gordon Brown's advisors and that the Resolution Foundation is close to Ed Miliband's Labour Party (something we may have mentioned before at "Is"). 

Then the Conservative Economic Secretary to the Treasury Nicky Morgan (who, I'll admit, was new to me) was given a thorough-going over by Jeremy Paxman. (No Paul Flowers treatment for her.) 

As a stats fan, I was intrigued by Laura's summary of the trajectory of UK unemployment since the Second World War:

It was remarkably stable and low between 1950 and the early '70s. Average unemployment was just 2%, almost under a million. But by the 80's the picture was drastically changed, hitting 13% at its peak in 1982. Right now it's 7.2%.

That is certainly the broad outline. What about historically?

Curiously, it's very hard to find a simple year by year online guide to the UK unemployment over time. Even the ONS website doesn't seem to contain a list that carries us over the past one hundred years or so.

The nearest it comes is an old 1995 report that shows the sheer scale of unemployment between the First and Second World Wars (reaching an astonishing 21.3% in 1932 during the Great Depression), the way the Second World War made it plummet to 0.8%, the slight immediate post-war rise, then the long years when under-2% rates were common, the very gradual beginnings of a rise in the late 60s, the sharper rise in the late 70s, the staggering leap between 1980 to 1981, those five years when unemployment was above 3 million, the dramatic fall in the late 80s, then the rise again in the early 90s. 

This list shows the year, the number of people unemployment and the unemployment rate (%) for that year:

1922 1,541,500 14.3

1923 1,292,058 11.7

1924 1,152,875 10.3

1925 1,288,742 11.3

1926 1,441,175 12.5

1927 1,141,525 9.7

1928 1,286.858 10.8

1929 1,275,992 10.4

1930 2,014,017 16

1931 2,718,325 21.3

1932 2,813,058 22.1

1933 2,588,367 19.9

1934 2,221,067 16.7

1935 2,106,125 15.5

1936 1,821,700 13.1

1937 1,557,000 10.8

1938 1,881,367 12.9

1939 1,589,800 9.3

1940 1,035,325 6

1941 391,317 2.2

1942 144,117 0.8

1943 99,075 0.6

1944 89,575 0.6

1945 202,283 1.3

1946 389,758 2.5

1947 495,658 3.1

1948 330,525 1.8

1949 338,000 1.6

1950 341,092 1.6

1951 281,350 1.3

1952 462,525 2.2

1953 380,033 1.8

1954 317,767 1.5

1955 264,525 1.2

1956 287,125 1.3

1957 347,233 1.6

1958 500,883 2.2

1959 512,092 2.3

1960 392,817 1.7

1961 376,817 1.6

1962 499,883 2.1

1963 612,275 2.6

1964 413,367 1.7

1965 359,742 1.5

1966 390,933 1.6

1967 599,125 2.5

1968 601,333 2.5

1969 597,049 2.5

1970 639,858 2.7

1971 796,680 3.5

1972 875,650 3.8

1973 618,758 2.7

1974 618,775 2.6

1975 977,600 4.2

1976 1,359,417 5.7

1977 1,483,592 6.2

1978 1,475,042 6.1

1979 1,390,467 5.7

1980 1,794,717 7.4

1981 2,733,800 11.4

1982 3,119,019 13

1983 3,104,660 12.2

1984 3,159,821 11.5

1985 3,271,232 11.7

1986 3,292,867 11.8

1987 2,953,379 10.5

1988 2,370,383 8.3

1989 1,798,713 6.3

1990 1,664,516 5.8

1991 2,291,942 8

1992 2,778,591 9.8

1993 2,919,224 10.3

1994 2,636,478 9.4

Its subsequent history - the fall from the mid 90s onwards, the massive rise following the bust of 2008, and the subsequent fall from 2010 onwards are told in the following two graphs:

(1979-2013)

(2002-2014)

So what happened next?

It only seems like yesterday, but was actually two days ago, that I wondered aloud whether the BBC's capitulation to a complainant's call for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) to be labelled when introduced (e.g. as 'free-market') would lead to think tanks from other parts of the political spectrum receiving similar treatment. 

I specifically mentioned BBC favourite the Resolution Foundation. 

Well, the BBC is making headline news of another Resolution Foundation report today under the headline Levelling up to cost billions more than government thinks, says think tank and, no, there's not a label in sight in that article. It's simply 'the Resolution Foundation' and 'the think tank'. 

Much as could have been guessed. 

Other media outlets go with 'left-leaning'.

Running orders

Following on from the last pair of posts, here's another way of looking at the BBC's unique set of news priorities today - simply by comparing the list of stories covered by BBC One's News at Six with that covered by ITV's News at 6.30. 

What stories were covered? In what order? And how long was spent on each story?

BBC News at Six

1. The benefit cap (over 4 minutes)

2. The Resolution Foundation's report on high rents (well over 3 minutes)

3. The benefit cap, again (over a minute)

4. The soldiers who died while training in Wales (over 2 minutes)

5. More charges against "former TV presenter" Stuart Hall (22 seconds)

6. A man kills the neighbour of a paedophile (20 seconds)

7. Liverpool Care Pathway (end of life care) is to be phased out (over two minutes)

8. A mother accused of starving and murdering her son (one and a half minutes)

9. Fuel - oil drilling in the U.S. & the fears of environmentalists (over 3 minutes)

10. The woman who died swimming the English Channel (2 minutes)

11. The hot weather (3 minutes)

ITV News at 6.30

1. The new NHS report into high death rates and unacceptable standards (over 4 minutes)

2. The soldiers who died while training in Wales (just under 3 minutes)

3. The woman who died swimming the English Channel (2 minutes)

4. More charges against "former BBC presenter" Stuart Hall (18 seconds)

5. A man kills the neighbour of a paedophile (15 seconds)

6. A mother accused of starving and murdering her son (over 2 minutes)

7. Liverpool Care Pathway (end of life care) is to be phased out (two and a half minutes)

8. The benefit cap (18 seconds)

9. The top athletes who failed a drugs test (15 seconds)

10. The Traynor Martin-George Zimmerman case (two and a half minutes)

11. The demise of the telegram (one and a half minutes) 

As you can see, ITV led with the big story about the Keogh report into thousands of 'needless' deaths in the NHS - the same story the BBC were avoiding until late yesterday evening after every other media organisation had been reporting it for hours (as a major story). The BBC's News at Six completely failed to mention it. In other words, the BBC ignored ITV's lead story completely. 

The BBC will have to come to terms with it when the report is officially launched tomorrow. Not even the BBC will be able to avoid it or downplay it then. (Or will they?)

ITV didn't totally ignore the BBC's lead story - the benefits cap - but they placed it well down their running order and spent a mere 18 seconds on it. The BBC not only led with it but, alongside the Resolution Foundation report (with which it was again tied), spent almost ten minutes (a third) of the whole programme discussing it. [ITV didn't mention the Resolution Foundation report at all.]

Why haven't the rest of the media been leading with the same story as the BBC?

Well, the benefit cap will affect some 40,000 households. There were 26.3 million households in the UK in 2011. By my calculation that makes those affected a mere 0.15% of all UK households - which, by my other calculation, that means that 99.85% of all UK households weren't affected by today's changes....

....and yet the BBC made this its main story of the day, and has been making such an enormous song and dance about it from dawn till dusk! 

Isn't that truly extraordinary when you think about it?

Yes, surely the Today programme should have been dragging Andy Burnham into the studio for an 8.10 grilling by John Humphrys instead of Iain Duncan Smith this morning? Ah well, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow...

Away from that angle, I did smile though at the BBC describing convicted paedophile Stuart Hall merely as a "former TV presenter" whilst ITV called him a "former BBC presenter". You could have seen that coming a mile off!

************

Update 9.30pm: It's getting late on Monday evening.

Sky News is going big with the NHS report story. Their website has it as the lead story:

Report Slams High Death Rate NHS Hospital

Sky News can reveal exclusive access to a shocking report detailing a catalogue of failures at an NHS hospital.

The ITV News website also has the report as one of its top two stories:

'Hit-squads' to help failing trusts
Specialist teams are to be sent in to help up to 10 failing hospital trusts on the orders of the Health Secretary. The move will be announced tomorrow after a report by NHS England Medical Director Sir Bruce Keogh into trusts with high-death rates.

What of our reluctant-seeming friends at the BBC? Well, the BBC News website's home page, remains completely free of any mention of the story.

Their time for hiding away from this story is almost up though. The report will be published tomorrow.


Further updates: Ah, at least my local BBC news programme North West Tonight reported the story this evening, though not at any great length. We've got three of the offending NHS hospitals in our area.

10.00pm: And so it begins....

The World Tonight is discussing the story, interviewing Professor Brian Jarman, an advisor to the report's author. Ritula Shah is talking about "ministers" ignoring things (not naming any names, or parties, leaving listeners to make their own, possibly wrong assumptions). She's now interviewing Labour's Lord Hunt (defending the NHS, repeatedly attacking the Conservative Party) and Lib Dem free-marketeer Mark Littlewood (questioning the NHS, not engaging in party politics). Ritula is not raising Labour's record with the highly party political Lord Hunt, despite him continuing to attack the present government over and over again, without interruption. Is this the pattern of things to come?

10.30pm: Well, not necessarily, if Newsnight is anything to go by.

It's leading with the story and giving much of the programme over to it. Science Editor Susan Watts is presenting a report providing the background to the story and presenting some grim personal stories about treatment at one of the NHS hospitals. Questions for the CQC are being raised. The story of Joshua Titcombe, the baby who died so needlessly at Furness hospital, is being retold. Joshua's father, James, was Professor Jarman in the studio with Kirsty Wark.

Kirsty is now talking to Newsnight's Political Editor Allegra Stratton. The latter is angling the political aspect of the story as being about the Conservatives being "shocked" that no mud is sticking to the last Labour government. Their allegation is that Andy Burham "ignored" 1,500 warnings. Mr Burnham, who has been "dragged" into this, is denying the allegation. Why are the Conservatives so "desperate to land a glove" on him, asks Kirsty. It matters to the Conservatives because "they're never going to get the lead on the NHS", and yet "nothing has stuck to the Labour Party", replies Allegra. So it's all about the Conservatives wanting to sling mud at Andy Burnham for party political advantage, it seems. Poor Mr Burnham! This was a rather Guardian-like political commentary - and the bit that had the strongest whiff of bias about it.

James Titcombe and Professor Jarman were joined on the panel by Camilla Cavendish of the CQC board, former Conservative minister Stephen Dorrell, shadow health minister Andrew Gwynne and senior consultant Bernadette Garrihy. This was a panel full of people with deep concerns about the NHS - and, I think, a well-judged panel. A very interesting set of insights came from all the non-politicians. Kirsty hardly pushed Labour's Mr Gwynne very hard or for very long over Andy Burnham (and he defended his boss with vigour), but she did push him a bit and invited both Mr Titcombe and Professor Jarman to comment on Labour's record too. Stephen Dorrell didn't make any party political points.

Fraser Nelson of the Spectator then joined the discussion to talk about the economics of funding the NHS as time goes on - the "funding pressure". Whether this is the night for such a discussion might be questioned. Fraser didn't get to say very much at all on this, and hardly much more on the next question: What of Danny Boyle's NHS celebration at the Olympics? Do we romanticise the NHS? The non-politician panellists quickly returned the discussion to more practical matters.

So the story is unfolding now on the BBC....though, unbelievably, still not on the BBC News website!!


Final update (6.30am, 16 July): The eagle finally landed on the BBC News website during the early hours of this morning. Health correspondent Nick Triggle's article, Report focuses on high death rates at NHS hospital trusts, appeared at 01.24. As of 6.00am, it is leading the BBC News website (and leading the Today programme):

Standards of care at 14 hospital trusts with the worst death rates in England are to be laid bare in a report later.
An investigation was launched earlier this year after the public inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal.
The trusts all had higher-than-expected death rates from 2010-11 to 2011-12.
The probe, led by NHS medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, has focused on whether the figures are indicative of sustained failings in the quality of care and treatment at the trusts.

Interesting use of dates there. Most other news sites have been talking about deaths "from 2005" or "from 2005-2010" - dates which have been making it all look quite bad for Labour. Nick Triggle's report only uses the dates "2010-11 and 2011-12", dates from after Labour's loss of power. Does this suggest that the pre-spin from the rest of the media has been biased (perhaps resulting from careful government leaks)? Or is Nick Triggle spinning now? We'll see when the report comes out I suppose.

At exactly the same time James Chapman was posting an article at Mail Online, '20,000 extra NHS deaths' on Labour's watch amid calls for on-site inspectors at struggling hospital, based on what looks like a scoop. The paper has "seen" an e-mail sent to Andy Burham by Professor Jarman in April 2010, warning of very high death rates in 25 NHS hospitals (especially in 2007-08):

In a reply to his letter, sent in April 2010 as the parties prepared for a general election the following month, a junior health minister, Baroness Thornton, told him [Professor Jarman] it would be more appropriate to take up his concerns with the Care Quality Commission.  

Zero further coverage

BBC News

Commenters Bob Nelson and 1327 on the Biased BBC open thread noted that "The BBC’s crusade against zero hours contracts a few days ago appears to have come to an abrupt halt (as has the opposition’s outrage)" and speculated that this might be because "The Guardian, The Co-operative Bank and several Labour councils use them" - something that only emerged as the story snow-balled.

I must admit that I saw, heard and read the initial onslaught of BBC coverage, but failed to notice that the story had gone away again...until I saw their comments.

Much of the BBC's coverage occurred on August 5th, with four articles appearing on the BBC News website that day, Radio 5 Live doing a live Breakfast Call on it and Today making it their main story, with. Newsnight also covered it, as part of their 'cost of living' coverage.

Thereafter, it all went quiet again. At least on the BBC.

News outlets from The Times to the Financial Times, from the Sun to Channel 4 News, however, reported the Labour Party's own use of zero hours contracts on August 8th-9th.

You might reasonably have expected the BBC News website at least to post an article about that development (given their interest in political angles), but they didn't.

Why?

Was it because the story had taken a turn against their friends in the Labour Party (as they suggested at Biased BBC)? Or was it just a case of them having binged on the story one day and then thinking they'd covered it...full stop...time to move on (as happens with so many stories)?

And there I was going to leave it, but...

....it could be because they'd already covered the story back on 31 July...

...or at least BBC London covered (part of) it, 'breaking' an FOI request they'd put in and reporting the results in conjunction with the left-leaning Resolution Foundation [not that they said the Resolution Foundation was 'left-leaning'].

However, given that it was a local news bulletin and that the video on the BBC News website would have been on its 'London' page, few people are likely to have seen it and, were you wondering, no party affiliations [for the councils concerned] were mentioned during the report.

So, where does this leave us? Confused?

Well, the BBC is clearly interested in reporting the 'zero hours' story. As proof of that, it has actively initiated some aspects of the story. It gorged itself on the story on 5 August and then went cold turkey thereafter, even while other new outlets (including the Guardian) kept plugging away at it.

Why the BBC went cold turkey remains mysterious to me. I'm torn between thinking that it's 'cock-up' territory (they move on so quickly from stories) or 'conspiracy' territory (that they lost interest when the Co-Op, Labour and the Guardian found themselves in the frame).

Please feel free, as ever, to make your own mind up.


Addendum 18.10

One test of BBC bias here is, obviously, to test how they reported the story - and the best test case is surely the Today programme. 

The 8.10 spot on Today on Monday began with Evan Davis interviewing Rochelle Monte, a lady who works on a zero-hours contract. Evan left the question open at the start of the interview as to whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, but Rochelle was downbeat about it and would have left listeners with the feeling that zero-hours contracts bring far more negatives for the employee than positives. 

Evan then talked to Peter Cheese, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), whose report, claiming that four times as many people (around a million) were on zero-hours contracts than official figures suggest, was the starting point for today's (and Today's) coverage. Mr Cheese trod a middle path between denouncing and supporting the scheme.

At 8.49 Evan returned to the issue, talking to Vidhya Alakeson, deputy director at the Resolution Foundation [a "think tank that's been thinking quite hard about this"], and Colin Angel, policy director at UK Home Care Association, discuss the ethics of zero-hour contracts. Mr Angel was there to defend zero-hours contracts and Evan duly placed him in the dock, questioning him more sharply than Vidhya [who Evan then re-introduced as having "thought quite hard about this"]. Vidhya has plenty of concerns about zero-hours contracts, so was placed in the opposing camp to Mr Angel here. Evan interviewed her (to begin with) as if she were an impartial expert, echoing her words as as she went along. Evan then went back to challenging Mr Angel, putting his question from an anti-zero-hours standpoint. He did, finally, put a counter-question to Vidhya Alakeson and then challenged her, using the BBC's freelance model as his example. So, listeners did get both sides of the argument but one side of it (Vidhya Alakeson's side) came out of it less challenged than the other (Colin Angel's). 

On top of the earlier segment - a woman with strong reservations about these kinds of contract and an expert who sat on the fence on the issue (ever so wisely) - that clearly gave the edge to those opposing zero-hours contracts. It may, therefore, be described as 'moderately biased'.

'Working Street'

Following on from the completely-and-utterly one-sided pro-drug (khat) piece on Wednesday's night's Newsnight, what can we say about the rest of that edition?

Well, it contained three other topics: (a) the latest unemployment figures, (b) Syria and (c) sex pests (in the light of the Lord Rennard story). Let's look at the first of those.

The bias in the khat piece can be excused (at a push) by saying that it was a non-BBC 'personal view'. The 'latest unemployment figures' report, in contrast, was an entirely inhouse report. It came from the BBCs Andy Verity.

It's framing imagery - 'Working Street' - mocked the Left's bogey-programme-of-the-moment, Channel 4's much-talked-about, ratings-grabbing (7 million!) documentary Benefits Street. [People at work really are talking about it. No one is talking about Newsnight.] 

On the day that the Office for National Statistics (see a few posts ago) released its latest stats for employment and unemployment in the UK showing a large rise in total employment (now at a record level), a sharp fall in unemployment, a fall in the number of economically inactive people and a rise in total pay and regular pay, Newsnight chose to report from another street in Birmingham - one where people work rather than being just on benefits. Strikingly, this was presented as being more representative of Britain now - "not too far from the average street," as Andy put it. 

He talked to two such residents - one who complained about being on zero hours contracts and the other who, whilst in work (self-employed), was "classed as being in poverty". Neither, as you can see from the stats in the post slightly lower down the page, are at all 'average' or 'representative'. Both are outliers, statistically-speaking. Why then were they presented as Mr Averages, typifying the present condition of Britain?

Well, this all seemed pretty biased stuff, rather bearing out the complaints of many at, say, Biased BBC that the BBC seems to be accentuating the negative, as usual, about the economy under the coalition. 

Then came what might be seen as the the clincher. 

Andy began talking Labour's talk about the 'cost of living crisis' and, for his expert 'talking head', he featured James Plunkett of the Resolution Foundation, as well as citing statistics from that think tank. Now, the Resolution Foundation is a centre-left think tank with many links to the Labour Party. Labour and the Resolution have worked closely on the 'squeezed middle' agenda. Andy Verity failed to mention any of this. 

"Labour's little helpers"?

Still at least the following interview balanced the Conservatives' David Gauke with Labour's Stephen Timms.


Incidentally, the 'sex pests' feature was a discussion between Kirsty Wark and Labour MP Stella Creasy, Labour peer Baroness Bakewell and well-known Labour supporter Anne 'The Wink' Robinson. Nice.


Update 25/1: That said, Andy Verity was back on last night's Newsnight as the programme plugged previewed a Labour speech intending to reassure voters that Labour will be a safe pair of hands on the economy, and he didn't underplay the problems Labour face with the public over their economic reputation. There were images of cars and dummies depicting the crash that happened on Labour's watch [which they can't have enjoyed watching!] and memories of pledges of economic competence past which smashed into the ground. Victoria Derbyshire's introduction laid out the agenda:

Tonight Labour promise to wipe out the budget deficit by 2020 if they win the next election and to bring in legislation to make sure they actually do it. But can he {Ed Miliband} persuade the voters to forget it's Labour who presided over the financial crisis which created much of the deficit mess. Right and Left are here to point the finger at each other.

New Year's Resolution Foundation

For those who recall the BBC's fondness for reports from the Resolution Foundation, here's a bit of festive gloom from the main headlines on their News website this morning:

And guess what's to blame? Yes, the Brexit vote.

Here's to 2018!

Newsnight: 13-15 January 2014

If Friday and Thursday's editions of Newsnight were brimming to the very top of the glass (plus added foam) with BBC bias, what of the remaining three days? Well, as the French president said  to the actress (as he invited her to join him on his moped), 'Continuez tout droit' and let us see.

Like Monet, I shall give my own impressions here. Minus the lilies. Oh, OK then, with lilies.

Wednesday night's edition was the edition which provided the subject for an earlier post - the one called 'Bang, bang'. (Did you read it?)

The first segment of the programme dealt with Labour's banking reform proposals. This was the second of the three editions which made much of Ed Miliband's upcoming speech - and he didn't even deliver it till Friday! (Talk about advanced publicity!!)

Emily Maitlis's report used Labour's Lord Myners (who praised Ed Miliband's "courage") and Jodie Ginsberg from the centre-left Demos think tank as her two 'talking heads'. The overall tone of Emily's report - and Jeremy Paxman's introduction - was sceptical of Labour's plans though, despite the left-leaning tilt of her 'experts'. The following studio interviewed featured another left-leaning voice, Labour's Lord McFall (aka John McFall), set against bank analyst Chris Wheeler. Lord McFall was on Labour's side (understandably), while Mr Wheeler was sceptical. 

...as promised...

The next package dealt with the fraught issue of teacher-pupil relationships. Around 950 teachers have been accused over the past year of having a relationship with a pupil, according to FoI requests. This was based on an investigation by The Independent. (Not an investigation by the BBC itself, natch).

The Newsnight report (by Anthony Baxter) featured two very different cases - that of a girl who'd been groomed by a teacher, and that of a teacher who'd been the victim of a false accusation of assault. The conflict between these two types of case was then discussed by Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and John Brown of the NSPCC, who represented the two sides of the story - the one warning about malicious allegations by pupils, the other warning about neglecting of the problem of abusive teachers. A scrupulously balanced package, and one that left me feeling that 'something must be done' on two possibly contradictory fronts.

The closing package dealt with Lord Rennard and the Lib Dems, following his exoneration by the party over allegations of sexual harassment. Unfortunately for him, the leadership of the party doesn't think his exoneration has exonerated him at all. Newsnight interviewed Bridget Harris, former advisor to Nick Clegg - one of the women who accused Lord Rennard of harassment. She wasn't happy either.


The topics on Tuesday's edition were (a) Labour's banking reform proposals, (b) Syria, (c) President Hollande's affair, (d) inflation in the UK and (e) driverless cars. I may have mentioned that before.

As you can see, Labour's banking reform proposals led Newsnight's agenda, and Emily Maitlis (deputising as the programme's political editor during Allegra Stratton's maternity leave) ran through Ed Miliband's proposals in a straightforward, serious way, without even the faintest hint of Newsnight's usual ironic tone - which was a rather different to the way she outlined George Osborne's minimum wage proposals two days later. That said, Wednesday's Newsnight (see above) ploughed plenty of irony back into the issue, which redressed the balance somewhat.

I was going to post a photo of the devastation in Syria, but...

Jeremy Paxman welcomed the BBC's Lyse Doucet to the studio with the words, "It's a real treat tonight. Thank you Lyse". And he meant it. He was honoured to speak to her. Whether we viewers, many of whom are well used to hearing and seeing Lyse, felt quite as moved as Jeremy at the slight of her presence in the Newsnight studio...well, I'll let you be the judge of that!

Syria was the subject. The Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister had dropped some heavy hints to her that Western governments (including our own) have been getting back on terms with President Assad's regime via its intelligence services, driven by a sense that the Assad side is now less of a concern than the myriad jihadists in the country (including large numbers of west Europeans). [What took them so long?]

Lyse painted a picture of devastation, ghost towns everywhere across the country, but then said there are "bubbles" of apparent normality - such as in central Damascus. The normality is, however, only "apparent". It remains a warzone, and life remains abnormal. We heard from a Syrian pianist, seen playing a Scarlatti sonata (beautifully) in Damascus's main opera house and trying to carry on regardless amid the horrors around him. He was Lyse's first 'unheard' voice. Her second was a young, pretty, female, Westernised pro-democracy activist, who took to the streets and talked to the BBC when the uprising first broke out [at the time when the BBC looked through dewy eyes at the Arab Spring and thought that such people were the future]. She's dejected, yet (in dewy-eyed fashion) still hopeful that it will turn out OK in five years time. (Hmm). A "wealthy industrialist with ties to the president" was up next. He emphasised that this is a war against terrorism and that everyone who wants to fight terrorism should be on his president's side. He got a much less sympathetic hearing from Lyse.

The subject of President Hollande's affair led to a report from Allan Little on why the French elite are so reluctant to discuss the private affairs of their randy presidents. It was a beautifully filmed report, making Paris look even more romantic than usual - and that's quite an achievement! Then came a delightful double interview with the Daily Telegraph's French expert Anne-Elisabeth Moutet and veteran foreign correspondent of France 2 Jean Marc Illouz. [Was the BBC's go-to-girl-for-anything-to-do-with-French-politics Agnès Poirier indisposed?] I've no complaints about this section whatsoever. Far from it.

Pres. Hollande's latest squeeze

The discussion on inflation was preceded by a report from the BBC's Andrew Verity, which concentrated on how people of a certain age apparently misremember the 1970s as an age of falling living standards. This is a point which divides political opinion, of course. Many on the Right remember the 1970s as being just that - an age of falling living standards - while many on the Left claim the 1970s was an age of rising living standards. Andrew Verity said the stats proved that living standards rose in the 1970s - unlike now, post-recession, when the cost of living is such an issue [especially for Labour]. He, therefore, sided with the Left's view. A balanced discussion followed between Newsnight regular David ('Danny') Blanchflower (for the Labour side) and Margaret Doyle of Deloitte UK (also a Conservative councillor).

Against the spirit of balance, let me say that I sniggered when Danny B. complained about people making rubbish economic predictions. He was very lucky that Jereissmy Paxman didn't pick him up on that. No economic commentator has a worse record of predicting economic trends than David Blanchflower. He even runs Channel 4's Paul Mason close for utter ineptitude (and lack of insight) on that front.

This edition of Newsnight ended with a report by David Grossman - former-Newsnight-political correspondent-turned-technology-corrrespondent-(for-some-reason)) - on driverless cars ('autonomous automobiles'). David reported on it as you would expect a political correspondent to report on it - without being very scientific. I wouldn't have been too surprised if he'd said 'Wow!' at some stage.


Finally, and ending up at the beginning, Monday's edition discussed (a) UK spending cuts, (b) obesity in the UK, (c) sexual abuse in NHS psychiatric hospitals, (d) Ariel Sharon and (e) Google's purchase of Nest - as I also may have mentioned before.

On the UK spending cuts issue, Emily Maitlis's report outlined the small state v big state argument, framing it as being about Tory ideology. To back that up Conservative MP Douglas Carswell criticised George Osborne (from the Right) for 'ersatz radicalism', failing to shrink the state anywhere near enough. Former Blair advisor John McTernan said government intervention can often be better than private enterprise at such things as, say, childcare. The Tories were firmly in the dock here.

...from the New Year's Resolution Foundation

The following studio discussion featured four people and, yes, it was a balanced panel with Allister Heath of City A.M. and former Conservative advisor Sean Worth from the centre-right Policy Exchange think tank on the Right and former Gordon Brown advisor Vidhya Alakeson of the centre-left Resolution Foundation think tank and Labour peer Maurice Glasman on the Left. The two sides made their case sparkily, with Jeremy Paxman holding back and letting the discussion flow - as it should be.

The warning over obesity was the next subject. Changing attitudes, raising awareness - that's the key, apparently. Or else. Or else...we're heading towards a "Doomsday scenario". Tam Fry from the Obesity Forum was on hand, in Tim Reed's report, to scare the bejesus out of us (even those of us you aren't "grossly fat", as Jeremy Paxman put it) and assert that namby-pambying (as he himself put it) is good for us and that the goverment's laissez-faire attitude is bad for us. Tim reviewed some of the past scary ads that governments have used, over such things as AIDS and smoking, but Deborah Arnott from the anti-smoking campaign group ASH then said that such shocking ads aren't enough. Legislation is needed, she said, to "frame" and "change" behaviour. Various undergraduate marketeers were asked how they'd change behaviour. Plenty of catchy slogans resulted. Tam Fry thought that shocking ads might be offputting at the start of a campaign over obesity. Hmm, that was a report entirely from the perspective (however nuanced) of various health campaigners. Critics of 'namby-pambyism' didn't get a look in.

And here's where Radio 4's More or Less comes in handy. I'd heard their take on this before watching this Newsnight piece so I knew that the Obesity Forum's terrifying projections for UK obesity in 2050 were deeply, deeply dubious. Tim Hartford of More or Less more or less forced Tam Fry to admit that the figures had no concrete basis in reality and were merely anecdotal. Tim even got Tam to admit that their projections were 'exaggerated in a good cause'. Exaggeration in a good cause is what lots of campaigners get up to, and it was admirable of More or Less to get a campaigner to 'fess up to that fact.

That, obviously, leaves open the question of why Newsnight didn't challenged the Obesity Forum, instead opting to yield themselves like a submissive lover to the health campaigners' cause.

Next came a shocking report into sexual abuse in NHS hospitals, centring on a woman whom, it is claimed, was raped some 50-60 times in an NHS psychiatric hospital in Kent by one of her care workers. (He's now been convicted of the offence). Victoria Derbyshire interviewed her, and it wasn't an easy watch. This is the sort of story Newsnight deserves credit for covering.

Ariel Sharon 

The burial of the "hugely controversial" Ariel Sharon - as Jeremy Paxman put it in his introduction - came next. Jeremy's introduction continued by saying that Mr Sharon has "a very mixed reputation" and the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse described him as "a man with two faces". His report's chosen talking heads were Prof. Eyal Winter of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Yossi Mekelburg of Chatham House. Then Jeremy Paxman interviewed Daniel Taub, Israel's ambassador to the UK, and Mustafa Barghouti, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Mr Taub was charming. Mr Barghouti less so.

Google's purchase of Nest was the final subject. Former political editor David Grossman's new-found 'technological expertise' (scare marks probably needed) was put to the test. He blagged his way through well enough, I presume.


So that's the end of this week's Newsnight survey. It wasn't bias all the way by any means, but there was plenty of BBC bias in evidence throughout, I think. As ever, please form your own judgements. Mine could be wrong. 

Update

Further to the last-but-one post, A New Year's Resolution for the BBC?, I see that the BBC article was amended (soon after I'd posted this morning) to add the words "left-of-centre" to describe the Resolution Foundation. 

You can track the changes to the article at the estimate News Sniffer site. 

This is progress. 

Is this a sign that the BBC is becoming more conscious of their use of labels in light of that Centre for Policy Studies report?