One for BBC Trending?

 

Sounds interesting, Marianna. But what about daft MSM conspiracy theories promoted by political editors of major UK broadcasters, like the one about a Downing Street photo of the UK PM's call to Joe Biden featuring a photoshopped telephone cord?

Well, ITV's Robert Peston read a tweet today from a right-bashing parody account called Michael Govern Ready (@mikegove12):

It was a joke of the kind such left-leaning political parody sites favour - i.e. clever, if not especially funny - but ITV's political editor didn't seem to realise that and took it seriously. 

(The parody tweeter himself/herself couldn't believe that people ('normally sane' people) were actually taking it at face value. Whoever it is behind that account has had quite a day!). 

The sainted Robert then put his tin-foil hat on, stuck a couple of carrots up his nose, said 'Wibble!' out loud, and sprang into Twitter action with 3 characteristically gormless tweets (no offence!) spread over a couple of wasted hours:

1. This is flipping weird. The phone cable should be visible in the mirror descending from Boris Johnson's watch, in this official Downing St picture. It’s not. What is going on?
2. Or maybe the angle of the mirror just means it looks as though the cable is going straight down when in life it’s at an angle. I am just trying to work out if that’s physically (as in physics) possible.
3. And just for the avoidance of doubt, Downing St tells me they would never doctor or photoshop a picture, and - as I assumed - it is the angle that makes it look strange. But it is certainly strange.

My favourite chain of Twitter responses (so far) runs like this:

• Giles Dilnot: What ARE you talking about? It took less than two seconds to locate and is exactly where it should be.
• Prof Colin Talbot: Giles is right. Think Robert should be going to Specsavers.
• SharonTateModern: I think he should be going to the job centre, but suit yourself.

An even stranger thing here is that Downing Street actually dignified Robert Peston's dopey conspiracy-mongering with a response. 

I suppose they felt they had to because he's one of the UK's top broadcast political editors. 

(And the fact that he's one of the UK's top broadcast political editors is the strangest thing of all here).

Robert Peston is driving Newsnight's Deb Cohen insane!

As Charlie spotted...

If there's one thing ITV's political editor Robert Peston is known for - other than his unique manner of delivery and his legendary activities as a Punch & Judy man - it's for his famously loose lips. 

Last time those lips of his caused the collapse of Northern Rock and the entire world financial system. (Allegedly). 

And he's distinguished himself over the past near-year of Covid-related Downing Street press conferences by asking the most ill-judged questions at the greatest length. (No 'allegedly' needed).

Today, his loose lips - in the form of overeager fingers - have taken to Twitter and provoked Newsnight's Deb Cohen to pop the cosy media bubble and denounce him for being irresponsible:

Robert Peston, ITV: The government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (or Nervtag) has concluded that the new Covid-19 strain may be a bit more lethal than the existing strain. I've spoken to the influential Nervtag member, Prof Neil Ferguson about this. He has given me this statement: "It is a realistic possibility that the new UK variant increases the risk of death, but there is considerable remaining uncertainty". Four groups - Imperial, LSHTM, PHE and Exeter - have looked at the relationship between people testing positive for the variant vs old strains and the risk of death. That suggests a 1.3-fold increased risk of death. So for 60 year-olds, 13 in 1000 might die compared with 10 in 1000 for old strains. The big caveat is that we only know which strain people were infected with for about 8% of deaths. Only about 25% of people who eventually die from COVID get a pillar 2 test before they are hospitalised (at which point they get a pillar 1 test, but pillar 1 tests don’t tell us which strain they were infected with). And we can only distinguish the new variant from the old variant for about 1/3 of pillar 2 tests. All that said, the signal is there and is consistent across different age groups, regions and ethnicities." The worrying news is that although treatments for Covid-19 have improved, the new strain does seem to be more lethal. I understand Sir Patrick Vallance will address this issue at the press conference with Boris Johnson later today. The original work on the lethality of the new strain was done by Nick Davies of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and has been checked and rechecked by assorted other experts (including, obviously, Prof Ferguson).

Robert Peston's tweets are like his TV contributions. They flow on, without regard to form, like the poorest early 20th Century modernist poetry, from tweet to tweet...

...unlike Deb Cohen's. She's straight to the point, reacting to Robert's outpourings:

Deborah Cohen, BBC Newsnight: I don't often do this...but this is irresponsible. We should be able to see the evidence and the analyses so we fully understand any potential limitations or confounders. Science by briefing has become an unfortunate part of this pandemic and it's not helpful. It's really not good for public trust and probably not good for science in the long run. So many preliminary studies based on limited analyses or tiny samples are being reported with scant attention paid to limitations. It's driving me insane!

Deb Cohen has struck me for a while as being the exception that proves the rule at Newsnight (along with Mark Urban). 

Robert hasn't replied. (Very him.)

He does love parroting things as 'scoops' though.

A difference of opinion

ITV's political editor opines, pursued by a reply:

Robert Peston: Decision on who replaces Lord Hall as bbc DG is probably as important as who becomes next Labour leader. Because given size of Boris Johnson’s majority, the task of holding the government to account will probably fall more on media than on parliamentary opposition. And also new DG will have to make powerful public case for the importance of a poll-tax funded public service broadcaster, in the face of a sceptical government. Much at stake.
Jon Holbrook: It is NOT the role of a state funded broadcaster to 'hold the government to account'.The fact that Robert Peston (a BBC luvvie) thinks it is, explains why the BBC has lost public support.

Meanwhile, over at ITV...

ITV's political editor Robert Peston speaks (on Twitter):

The Chief Rabbi’s intervention in the general election is without precedent. I find it heartbreaking, as a Jew, that the rabbi who by convention is seen as the figurehead of the Jewish community, feels compelled to write this about Labour and its leader. I am not making any kind of political statement here. What I am saying is our democracy has traditionally been a beacon of tolerance and understanding. The Chief Rabbi says our democracy has been poisoned. I hope his intervention is a catharsis that heals but I fear the worst. There is an enormous amount of predictable “whataboutery” in response the Chief Rabbi - “what about Islamaphobia in Tory party?” etc. Which is as if to say we don’t need to worry about alleged racism in one of the main parties if there is alleged racism in the other one...Really? If that is your argument, we really are in the handcart to hell.

Tolerance, understanding, catharsis and healing aren't much in evidence in the Corbynista-dominated replies. And they do think it's a political statement.

Who's the fairest of them all?

If you're interested, here are the results of the other surveys by Mark Lees:

Just looked at the last 50 tweets & retweets on Beth Rigby's Twitter Timeline. Of the last 50 tweets or rt's, 18 included overtly critical messaging of a political party. Of those 18: 15 were critical of the Tories. 2 were critical of Labour. 1 was critical of the Lib Dems.
As a % of criticism towards a particular party: 83% criticism of the Tories. 11% criticism of Labour. 6% criticism of the Lib Dems. 0% criticism of the SNP. 0% criticism of the Greens. 0% criticism of the BXP Source: Beth Rigby's Twitter timeline, last 50 tweets & rt's.

Here are Kay Burley's stats: Of the last 50 tweets and retweets, 24 overtly criticise a political party. Of the 24: 23 criticise the Conservatives 1 criticises Labour 0 criticise the Lib Dems 0 criticise the BXP 0 criticise the SNP 0 criticise the Greens 0 criticise Plaid
As a percentage that is: 96% criticism of the Conservatives. 4% criticism of Labour. 0% criticism of the Lib Dems. 0% criticism of the SNP. 0% criticism of the Greens. 0% criticism of the BXP. Source: Kay Burley's twitter timeline, last 50 tweets and retweets.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Of the last 50 tweets or retweets on Krishnan's timeline, 15 tweets overtly criticise a political party.

11 criticise the Conservatives. 3 criticise the Lib Dems. 1 criticises Labour. 0 criticise the SNP. 0 criticise the Brexit Party.
As percentages: 73% criticism against the Tories. 20% criticism against the Lib Dems. 7% criticism against Labour. 0% criticism of any other party. Source: Krishnan Guru-Murthy's Twitter timeline. Last 50 tweets or retweets.

Just looked at the last 50 tweets or retweets on Robert Peston's Twitter feed. Of the 50 tweets or retweets, 17 overtly criticised a political party. Of those 17: 12 criticise the Tories 3 criticise the Lib Dems 2 criticise Labour 0 for any other party.

You may have noticed a pattern. But there's one exception (so far):

Laura Kuenssberg
Of the last 50 tweets or retweets on Laura Kuenssberg's timeline, 12 were overtly critical of a political party. Of those 12: 6 criticised the Conservatives. 6 criticised the Labour Party. 0 criticism of other parties.
In percentages: 50% criticism of the Conservatives. 50% criticism of the Labour Party. That's an exact balance of criticism between the 2 main parties. Source: Laura Kuenssberg's Twitter Timeline. Last 50 tweets or retweets.

Weel done, Laura K!

Down Memory Lane (With Mark Mardell)

Returning to the theme of Sue's post about James Harding’s Impartial Journalism in a Polarised World on Radio 4 (which, like Sue, I also enjoyed), all I'd add is that I was particularly taken by Mark Mardell playing the BBC Roundhead to Robert Peston's Cavalier.

Robert Peston - ITV's dandy highwayman - declared himself proud (as a journalist) to pronounce TheTruth. His example? Telling us - as he has been doing for three years now - that Brexit will make us poorer. Other journalists should do the same, he suggested.  

Mark Mardell recoiled from that and declared that the BBC impartiality he evidently believes himself to embody means that journalists shouldn't make themselves the arbiters of Truth but simply present a range of voices and let the listeners judge.

Ironies abound. Robert Peston could be speaking for the BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson here, and Mark Mardell is a man whose opinions have haemorrhaged through his reporting for decades.

On which theme, Mark also made a bold claim:

Shoot me if you like. But I was the guy that insisted when I was Europe Editor that UKIP and Farage should have a voice, because they fell between the cracks. They weren’t at Westminster and they weren’t getting their hearing. So I think it’s important to hear the people who are behind them.

Really?

One of the first things I remember as a blogger was noting Mark Mardell's Today report about UKIP during the 2009 European election - the infamous "BNP in blazers" report.

Let's just recall that in all its 'glory':

A small sea, more like a pond perhaps, of Union flags drop in front of a diminished group of men in the European Parliament.   

They thought their election heralded a revolution, but what have they achieved?  

Not, obviously, their main ambition of getting the UK out of the EU.  

Most members of the European Parliament regard UKIP as profoundly unserious pranksters with a weird obsession.  

‘Criminal betrayal’ – so said UKIP’s rising star Robert Kilroy-Silk MEP, the former Labour MP and daytime TV host. He’s the man with the orange complexion, you’ll remember, before he quit the party.  

‘An incompetent joke’ – that’s the verdict of another leadership contender.  

The pronouncements of sore losers, perhaps, but there’s something of a theme here which real opponents have been quick to pick up on. 

‘Fruitcakes, loonies, closet racists’ was what David Cameron said about them, and it’s the last bit that annoys the current leadership. 

Nigel Farage has dismissed the idea that they’re the BNP in blazers, but their main plank in this election is perhaps their opposition to unlimited immigration, and Mr Farage admits he’s spent a lot of time and energy fighting off a take-over by the far right.  

That must say something about the sympathies of some members. 

And what about the MEPs? Of the dozen elected, Robert Kilroy-Silk has disappeared from the political scene and two others have been expelled, one jailed for fraud, the other awaiting trial on similar charges.  

UKIP condemns the EU gravy train, but a good proportion seem to have prominent gravy stains all down their blazers. 

The European Parliament, for all its bad reputation, is a place where the politicians have a serious job modifying, tweaking, even kicking out proposed new laws. UKIP don’t boast of any achievements on this front, and their opponents say they’ve voted against Britain’s interests in a host of areas from fishing to trade talks. A UKIP news release ruefully admits that occasionally UKIP do miss pieces of legislation. 

If not the BNP in blazers, then there is something of the golf club militant about UKIP – so old-school they’re in constant danger of being expelled, the boys who didn’t make prefects because they were too ready to cock a snook and put two fingers up at the establishment.   

But there’s no doubt there is a market for this at the moment, but in a parliament that’s about quiet conciliation not gestures, they make a lot of noise, no one is unaware of their cause.  

For them the risk is that they become part of an institution they despise, the licensed court jester, who can poke fun at the EU’s po-faced pretentions, as long as they make withdrawal look like a lost cause for mavericks.

I'm betting, even now, that Mark Mardell would re-read that and think himself a splendid fellow and a beacon of impartiality, despite it being a massively biased piece of reporting - as demonstrated in pretty much every one of its sentences. 

And how complaisant it seems now. Nigel Farage's golf club militant went on, within seven years of this, to compel a Conservative PM to hold a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU - and the people voted OUT. 

This polarised world

I intended to listen to James Harding’s  “Impartial Journalism in a Polarised World’ on Radio 4 this morning at 9am, and for once I remembered to do so - (not that it really matters when there’s iPlayer) but listening to an ear-marked programme in real-time is always best. Here’s the blurb: 

“Polarised politics, cacophanous culture wars and the advent of unchecked, unchallenged news at the click of a button. Can impartial journalism win out in a world of alternative facts and the re-tweet echo chamber of Twitter? If it doesn't, what becomes of democracy? 

When radio arrived, it gave politicians the means of mass propaganda. Television brought us the politics of the soundbite and the twenty-four hour news cycle. But the digital age - unmediated opinion, unchecked sources - has put old-fashioned, impartial news itself under the spotlight. Are we - the BBC and others - any longer believed? Are we trusted? And what happens when we aren't? Do democracy and digital sit comfortably together or is one currently winning at the expense of the other? 

James Harding was editor of The Times and then took the helm at BBC News. After 2016, the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, he started to think that a different approach was needed, focused on slow news and opening up journalism. He set up Tortoise. In this noisy discussion, James and other journalists grapple with all of these matters, and attempt to navigate a digital future without losing our democratic past. 

He's joined by the political editor of ITN, Robert Peston; staff writer on The Atlantic, Helen Lewis; presenter of BBC Radio 4's The World this Weekend, Mark Mardell; Talk Radio host, Julia Hartley-Brewer; and Gavin Haynes, editor-at-large of Vice UK.

I enjoyed listening but I didn’t think any ground-breaking revelations were made.

Helen Lewis talks at break-neck speed, doesn’t she? She has an impressive ‘radio voice’ though. She made her mark as one of the regular news reviewers alongside Nick Watt on the BBC’s ‘Sunday Politics’ in its Andrew Neill era. Ms Lewis obligingly toned down her political bias a little then, but now, no longer constrained by the BBC remit, she’s an out-and-proud leftie and for all her bright, articulate and knowledgeable manner she can't conceal the limitations of bubble-dwelling. Maybe she can’t see it herself, but why should she? 

Also present were Mark Mardell and Robert Peston.  I want to like Robert Peston, but I can’t. His delivery is tailored to irritate us. You can almost accept the erratic pacing, but it’s that “That” of his that bothers me. It goes something like: “eh-ththutt”; a retch. Perhaps he’s overcoming a stammer. (?)

Where were we? Oh yes, Julia Hartley-Brewer, another hyper-fast-talker. She brought a little counterbalance to the consensus, but I felt she was holding back. 

The other participant was the chap from the edgy media outlet, Vice UK,  Gavin Haynes.   He broke a tacit BBC taboo by bringing Paul Joseph Watson, Carl Benjamin and ‘Count Dankula' into the mix. But for Gavin Haynes, I don’t believe anyone would have mentioned those hitherto unmentionable characters by name, let alone admitted that they might bear some relevance to ’journalism’, at any rate to the ‘polarised world’ compartment of it. (Apparently, Benjamin calls himself a social commentator, not a journalist.)

The discussion covered (pure) impartiality versus ‘due impartiality’ - ITBB has been over this many times, but briefly it (the ‘due’ bit) necessitates making a value judgement somewhere along the line, which Robert Peston called “evaluating”, meaning being sensible enough not to give equal weight to an ‘expert’ and a ‘nutter”. The BBC must be trusted to decide which is which. This leads us gently towards the knotty question of ‘no-platforming’.

Confirmation bias and the echo-chamber phenomenon were alluded to. “People rarely come into contact with arguments they disagree with,” said someone and it’s hard to argue with that. Mingling with the like-minded is reassuring, and comfort zones are just that. Places where you feel comfortable. Stumbling into a hostile environment is exhausting, especially when their default ‘truth’ hangs on a very shoogly peg. People on one side will say  “but you won’t even listen to the other side of the argument” which is precisely what the opposite side is thinking about them. (As Helen Lewis and Julia Hartley-Brewer demonstrate midway through the programme) 

The entire panel, including Julia H-B, was dismissive of Tommy Robinson following a short audio clip of him talking about the media’s lack of support of him as “a political prisoner“. They also played clips from that infamously curtailed interview between Andrew Neil and Ben Shapiro, and Emily Maitlis’s interview with Steve Bannon.  ‘Stranded’ and taken out of context, I thought these examples  - particularly the unrepresentative Ben Shapiro one  - were unhelpful. 

Helen Lewis described Tommy Robinson as having made ‘a whole career out of saying he’d been silenced’ and Mark Mardell called him “a peripheral figure with very little support”.

Julia H-B accused Mark Mardell and the BBC of “creating Tommy Robinson’ because they’d constructed a verbal ‘forbidden territory’ consensus around immigration, while she too skated around the aforementioned ‘forbidden territory’ with some carefully chosen language of her own.

Since much of the media’s bias and a considerable amount of actual news in this polarised world of ours concerns incidents and issues emanating from ‘Islam’, it is significant that the word itself wasn’t uttered at all.  This alone suggests that tiptoeing around this issue indicates that ‘due impartiality’ is as far away from achievability now as it ever was.

Robert Peston is bemused by the BBC

Ex-BBC now-ITV political editor Robert Peston has been getting up quite a few people's nostrils (including mine) this past week or so with his opinionated tweets.

He's taken strong stances on quite a few things - for example taking firmly against Mark Field MP in the culture war over the Tory MP's forceful ejection of a female Greenpeace protestor from an event where Chancellor Hammond was spouting forth, and, above all, for seeming to be absolutely besotted with Rory Stewart MP. 

But a couple of his tweets today made me smile - especially after having just re-watched Toy Story II tonight with a family young 'un:

I am a bemused by why R4 Saturday Review would choose four reviewers for Toy Story 4 who have no emotional attachment to the Toy Story series, including two who had never seen any of them, and review it on the basis of whether the characters were ethnically diverse enough, whether it was feminist in the right way and why it did not have a powerful ecological message. For those of us for whom Toy Story were wonderful milestones as our children grew up, this is to miss the point completely. This is the BBC as self parody.

Oh Robert, for goodness sake, why be bemused? You're talking about BBC Radio 4, one of the most 'woke' channels on the planet. But, having just listened to it myself, you've still managed to be spot-on and to skewer the BBC here.

That's the way to do it!

Play for the Day: 'A Difference of Opinion'

Act One

Enter Media Guido and Rob Burley of the BBC, through different doors.

Media Guido: The probability of six guests selected at random all being remain supporters is 0.03125 - amazingly Peston has managed it.
Rob Burley: It’s not June 2016. Ex- Remainers are members of a Brexit delivering government and a Brexit supporting Labour Party. This measure is silly.
Media Guido: Brexit is still the main subject of discussion in politics, this is a political discussion show with six guests, none of whom campaigned for Brexit. You think drawing attention to that is silly. No further questions m'lud.
Rob Burley: I think the measure is wilfully designed to distort. Parking a specific programme I have no involvement with, I suggest we stop measuring as if it’s June 23rd 2016. It’s just not.

Trap door opens. Stephen Colvin rises, delivers heckle and descends again.

Stephen Colvin: (to Rob Burley) You are an embarrassment. The discussion is very much alive and it is up to so called impartial broadcasters to demonstrate it. 

Trap door closes. Exit Media Guido. Enter BBC Waste, stage right.

BBC Waste: Brexit still prism through which everything seen & decisions taken (govt policy shaped by opinions of those for or against within cabinet). Naive to think those who publicly back don't privately what to demur or seek to modify. Silly of BBC to ignore. Measure entirely appropriate.
Rob Burley: Disagree. Nuances of these issues reflected in the coverage but to base balance on position of guests pre-referendum is neither desirable or practical.
BBC Waste: Further difficulty with this position is this is the position BBC (rightly) adopts for aportioning airtime to political parties. But now not referendum views?
Rob Burley: We did in, yes, the referendum.
BBC Waste: Do love a robust courteous debate. Yes. Those attacking the BBC should also acknowledge the impossible task they have to balance. Good for Peston/ITV and others to be mindful of optics though. Looks bad. And very easy to  criticise.

Exit BBC Waste, stage right pursued by a 'Like' from Rob Burley. Enter Andy #FBPE, stage left.

Andy #FBPE: Therein lies the problem with the BBC...they think it was all over in 2016 and choose to ignore  both reality and the ongoing debate.
Rob Burley: That’s precisely the opposite of the point.

Exeunt omnes. Enter Tim Montgomerie. Turns to face audience. 

Tim Montgomerie: It’s not silly. BBC way of measuring balance classifies likes of Amber Rudd, Damian Green and Keir Starmer as pro-Brexit and that’s well short of giving the 52% the representation they deserve.

Curtain falls.

Will there be an Act Two?

Moths to a flame

It seems like only a decade ago that we were reading Craig’s piece about Claire Kober’s upcoming spot on the Marr Show. Oh, hang on - it was yesterday. 

Anyway, I think there was something about antisemitism in there? 

Oh, here it is, look.

Well, Andrew Marr wasn’t interested in any of that. When Kober touched on it briefly, Andrew ushered her away quick. Remember? Something about a demonstration against defining antisemitism? “There’s nothing wrong with demonstrations” said Andrew, or words to that effect, before swiftly moving the conversation back to the matter in hand.

So, here’s the thing. Everyone (well, not everyone) said it was a good interview, including ((Hodges)) and I do realise that Kober wouldn’t have been on the show at all if it wasn’t for all that London-centric stuff about Housing in Haringey.

Far be it for me to hijack that earth-shatteringly controversial topic with my feeble little bleatings and whinings about antisemitism, but frankly, after that piece in the Times it was a little conspicuous by its absence. 

The only mention of antisemitism I spotted in BBCland all morning was Sarah Smith talking to Jon Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, who uttered those galvanising words “if there was antisemitic chanting it needs to be reported and if they are antisemitic they need to be thrown out of the Labour Party.” Yep, ne e e e d away. 

Stella Creasy brought it up on the other side, with Robert Peston. There’s nothing like mentioning antisemitism for attracting the antisemites. Like moths to a flame.

.@stellacreasy reacts to the resignation of @ClaireKober and insists it is time for @UKLabour to act more strongly on anti-semitism and misogyny. #Peston pic.twitter.com/d1LrF9JH4E

— Peston on Sunday (@pestononsunday) February 4, 2018

Nobody can deny?

I forgot to watch Robert Peston’s new Sunday morning show. It’s hard to break the habit of watching Nicky Campbell’s low-brow, tabloid style, down-market antidote to those decorous political one-to-ones. It’s like an indecorous filling sandwiched between Two Andys.

The funniest article I’ve seen concerning Peston’s debut isn’t a review of the show itself, it’s Roy Greenslade accusing Quentin Letts of cruelty to Andrew Marr. The offending opening paragraph: 

Sunday mornings just became a little madder and more metropolitan. Not only do we have Andrew ‘Captain Hop-Along’ Marr growling away on BBC1, throwing his arm about like a tipsy conductor.

Mocking the afflicted is a bit ‘Frankie Boyle, but the arm-throwing gesture is certainly worth a mention. I see it as olden-day, music-hall semaphore for ‘mark my words’ and it’s spookily reminiscent of Arthur Askey. 

Come to think of it Marr is very like Arthur Askey. I bet he’d make a great job of “Busy Bee” 

“Sting who you like but don’t sting me!”

Roy Greenslade said:

“I was full of admiration for Marr (and for the BBC) when he returned to presenting his show some eight months after his stroke. And no-one can deny that he remains a first-class interviewer.”

Hmm. No-one? 

Nobody can deny? All together now: “For he’s a Jolly Good fellow.” 

Robert Peston gets carried away

There was an odd contribution to last night's News at Ten on BBC One from Robert Peston. 

He was commenting on Tony Blair's warnings about holding an EU referendum in the UK during the next parliament. 

It began:

Well, the UK is an economy particularly dependent on big multinationals; in fact, it's been a point of government policy for about 30, 40 years to attract them here. Why do they base themselves here? Well, it's for access to the single market of the European Union - the biggest market in the world of its sort. Now, in the couple of years or so, if the Tories win the election, that would be the run-up to a referendum there would be considerable uncertainty about the outcome in that period, there's a risk those multinationals would stop investing, or at least put investment on hold. That would be a cost. That would slow down the economy.  

Then, moving beyond reinforcing Tony Blair's point, Robert began talking about the possible economic effects of a Brexit:

If in that referendum we were to vote to leave the European Union, well, a group like Open Europe, which is fairly critical of the way the European Union runs itself, it estimates that the potential costs by 2030 of leaving on worst case basis would be about 2%...a bit more than 2% of GDP. They do address the UKIP argument that we would have more control over thinks like red tape imposed on businesses, how to tax ourselves, you know, how to run our economy. They say the best case, if everything went to plan, would be an improvement in GDP of 1.5%. So they're saying the worst case outcome is significantly worse than the best case outcome of independence. So they would say the costs massively outweigh...well not massively, but they outweigh the potential benefits.

I had to re-listen to that to make sure he hadn't said 5% or something rather than 2% as I was thinking that 2% one way certainly isn't that much more "significant" than 1.5% the other way - especially given that one is a worst case scenario and the other a best case scenario.

Indeed, when you look at Open Europe's report they describe both their worst case scenario (a 2.2% cost) and their best case scenario (a 1.6% benefit) as "outliers" and say that "the more realistic range" lies between a cost of 0.8% and a benefit of 0.6%. 

Having skimmed the Open Europe report for myself, I'd say that Robert was spinning their findings here - and doing so, in characteristic BBC fashion, to make a pro-EU point. 

The actual findings of the Open Europe report into the economic consequences of a British exit from the EU seem to suggest that it wouldn't be either economically catastrophic or a great economic boon for Britain; indeed, the "realistic range" suggests it could have a surprisingly neutral economic impact. 

You probably wouldn't have guessed that from Robert Peston's piece.

Robert Peston en France

Did you watch Robert Peston's BBC Two documentary, Quelle catastrophe! - France, with Robert Peston, last night? 

I did - and I enjoyed it too. (Reservations, vis a vis bias, will also be found below).

It told the story of how France's massively expensive, taxpayer-funded post-war social model, which used to seem so alluring (to the likes of Robert Peston), has been living on borrowed time for some time, and is now falling apart at an alarming rate. The French economy is tanking, unemployment rocketing. Malaise is gathering everywhere. 

Robert Peston laid out what he sees as the causes, including: severe over-regulation which chokes French competitiveness; a hugely expensive and all-embracing welfare state; over-powerful unions; incredibly prescriptive and wide-ranging workers' rights; extravagant public spending (with little regard for value for money); a fear of renewed riots (on the part of the political class); and a self-serving elite who are taught a single way of thinking, etc.

Did you know that 57% of France's national income goes on public spending?

Robert also made it clear that President Hollande's initial attempts to keep the whole thing going with more of the same, plus additional punitive taxation, merely led to a further worsening of the situation. 

*******

We got a broad spectrum of views, with both defenders and critics of the French system having their say. There were union officials, unemployed steel workers and Jean de Florette-style farmers on one side; and exasperated small businessmen and government ministers on the other. There were also grown-up interviews with figures from the Front National, including Marine Le Pen. 

Robert Peston's criticisms of the Front National weren't the usual (BBC) ones. His point was that the party's hard-left economic policies (not that he quite put it that way) won't rescue France from its present plight. In fact they are precisely the kind of policies that have landed France in its present mess in the first place: 

The point is that the policies championed by Le Pen - protection of workers' rights, lavish benefits for the French middle classes - produced very high levels of long-term unemployment.

He was also good at pointing out the crisis faced by the European Union's elite.

*******

His own pro-EU instincts came though, however, I think, in his concluding warning about what might happen if Marine Le Pen took France out of the EU, established its own currency again and pursued protectionist policies: 

A vicious slump could follow which would impoverish not only France but also its neighbours - us.

Is he right about that? Isn't that just pro-EU scaremongering? And what about France's current involvement with the euro? Hasn't that played a part in preventing France from tackling some of its present problems? 

Plus the programme seemed to avert its eyes from investigating the part that mass immigration (especially non-EU mass immigration) could be playing in exacerbating France's malaise. (Immigration was merely something that the Front National talked about.)

Mme Le Pen's closing words were:

My country and all the countries in Europe are at a crossroads. The coming months and years are going to be decisive. I couldn't care less about the European Union. What I'm concerned about is my country. It's to my country, to the French, that I have a duty. It's their wellbeing I have to think of, their prosperity, their security. The European Union we see today has been a total failure. There's no more left or right. There are nationalists and globalists. That's the big demarcation line that determines the fate of the world today.

Robert was clearly on the side of the globalists throughout this programme.

*******

Here are a few of my personal highlights from Quelle catastrophe!:

Robert Joseph [vineyard owner]: What we all love about France, all this patchwork of vines and villages, behind it there is an intensely structured system. A man in this village will be told the grapes he's allowed to grow. Every little bit of vineyard here has to be rubber-stamped eventually by some minister in Paris. Everything you do involves a piece of paper. And in France, they complain about it but they kind of accept it because it is part of this feudal system: I expect somebody above me to sort my life out. In return that I will fill in the form in triplicate and let them have it.

And then there's the Code du Travail [France "Big Red Book"] - a monster book of employment rights dating back to 1910 - the latest edition containing 3,600 pages of rules:

Agnès Verdier-Molinié [economic historian]: We've weighed the Code du Travail. In 1990 it weighed 500 grams, now it's almost two kilos. For an employer it's impossible. It's too complicated. The spirit of the Code du Travail at the start was to regulate the relations between employers and their employees. It's a terribly French idea of protecting employees against their employers. That employers will have to be guided at every stage. 

Agnès Verdier-Molinié: Something that would be unbelievable to a British person: In France a woman who takes maternity leave doesn't hae to say when she's coming back. She can take a year's leave, then another year and another. And the worst part is that at any time during her maternity leave she can resign to take a different job that she thinks fits in better with family life. But in the year following her resignation she can go back, saying 'I've changed my mind, I'm coming back to you after all'. 

Robert Peston: Last year the French finance minister came up with a very clever plan to cut the burden. Agnès Verdier-Molinié: He said, 'You just have to shrink the typeface'. Robert Peston [laughing]: They just said, 'Change the typeface, make it smaller?' Agnès Verdier-Molinié: Voila! Make it smaller. Exactly!

And, on the French bureaucracy...

Robert Peston: France spends significantly more than the government collects in taxes. And the country's massive public spending is presided over by a bloated army of more than 5 million bureaucrats. These public sector workers, especially here in Montpelier, seem to be off work quite a lot of the time. Its public servants have an absentee rate greater than in any other French municipality at 39 days per worker. Now, when you add in holidays that means they're out of the office for a full 90 days - that's a full third of the working year. [The locals's explanation is: "It's because of the sun].

Of Hacking, Hypocrisy and Weasels

The BBC (and the Guardian) pursued the Murdoch empire relentlessly over phone hacking. 

You'll doubtless recall the countless lead stories on the website, the innumerable 'Newsnight' reports, the endless updates on 'PM', all those Robert Peston blogposts, etc, etc, etc. Pretty much every twist and turn in the story received massive attention from the BBC. 

Murdoch's Sky is, of course, the BBC's major rival, so they were never going to be a disinterested party. The outrageous thing was how little effort they made to hide the fact. 

Of course I could be wrong, and if the BBC reports the growing Mirror Group hacking scandal with the same obsessive focus as it reporting the 'News of  the World' scandal then I'll have to eat my words, won't I? The BBC will have proved itself to be disinterested as the Mirror Group isn't a major rival of the BBC in the way that News Corp is. We will have to see.

At the high court today the Mirror Group stands accused of phone hacking "on an industrial scale" - a scale dwarfing that at the Murdoch newspapers. 

According to the FT,

David Sherborne, barrister for the victims, told the High Court that the trial would look at the “size and scale of unlawful activity” at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), where he claimed phone hacking was carried out by “scores of journalists”.

He told the High Court that the “vast” amount of phone hacking carried out throughout the three national newspapers “makes News of the World look like a cottage industry and a small one at that”.

How is the BBC reporting this astonishing claim? Well, it is reporting it. It's seventh in its running order on the news website. And the BBC News at Six on BBC One reported it as its next-to-last story, 24 minutes in, just before the 'weasel riding on the flying woodpecker' story - and after two 'Jihadi Mohammed' stories, including more propaganda from CAGE. 

Hmm. Yes it's been a day full of of big, harrowing domestic stories - the report into "industrial scale" abuse by grooming gangs in Oxford, the report into the maternity unit scandal at Furness Hospital - but had this been a damaging Murdoch empire story then I suspect it would have featured a good deal more prominently, and not been merely the warm-up-story to the weasel riding on the woodpecker's back. 

Plus, David Sillitoe's report for BBC One didn't even mention David Sherborne's most striking claim: that phone hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers made 'News of the World' "look like a cottage industry and a small one at that". 

The same cannot be said for the Guardian, which makes that very point its main angle and features thestory far more prominently than the BBC. The Mirror Group is much more of a rival for the Guardian than it is for the BBC, of course.

Everyone seems to be behaving according to their own interests here, don't they? 

Incidentally, another of the Guardian and the BBC's go-to-men during the whole course of the 'NOTW' scandal, Labour MP and prolific tweeter Tom Watson, is unusually quiet on Twitter today. He's tweeted nothing about hacking at Mirror Group. [And neither for that matter has Robert Peston]. It's most unlike him not to tweet about hacking. What's gotten into him? Just what is it about the Labour-supporting Mirror Group that isn't exciting his righteous anger as much? 

Is the smell of hypocrisy hanging heavy in the air today?

It's the West wot done it!

Just a thought on Alan's latest piece at Biased BBC, Peston's Megalomania. 

There does seem to be something of a trend emerging in the BBC's coverage of Ebola to 'blame the West', just as Robert Peston is doing in his latest blogpost (whilst also pushing the need for greater global governance and a reduction in national sovereignty, plus the primacy of the public sector over the private sector when confronting issues like Ebola "and, yes, many would say climate change too"). The opening question on this morning's Sunday Morning Live - see previous post - is a case in point.

I'm inclined to agree with one of the top-rated comments beneath Robert P's article:

20. Rosemary 

8TH OCTOBER 2014 - 17:51

Then suggest a better way, Mr Peston. Many of my UN and WHO colleagues are on the ground in West Africa now trying to organise the response, not carping safe at home.

As for 'The West', I see huge sums of money and many medical professionals from 'The West' heading to the countries worst affected. Please change the record. 'Blame The West' is scratched, worn, and is played far too often. 

It's a way of thinking that seems to come quite naturally to BBC reporters though, in a rather lazy, knee-jerk kind of way - just as it does at the Guardian. It does seem to be almost automatic for a certain kind of person (usually on the Left) to wonder, 'Is the West to blame for this?' whenever a war or a disaster arrives. 

Robert Peston accuses the BBC of having a pro-establishment, right-wing bias

Do you believe that the BBC has a left-liberal bias, and that it tends to follow the lead of the Guardian more than it does the Mail and Telegraph? 

I've spent some five years arguing that kind of thing - as have the massed ranks of other posters and commenters from blogs like Biased BBC to the Spectator, from the Telegraph to Breitbart London. 

Several present and former BBC presenters have also said as much - from Peter Sissons to John Humphrys, from Jeff Randall to Andrew Marr, from Helen Boaden to Mark Thompson.

Another famous BBC name has now joined the debate though - the BBC's Economics Editor, Robert Peston, no less.

Except that he's saying the exact opposite.

The left-wing Twitterati are lapping it up.

Robert Peston was giving the 6th Charles Wheeler Lecture  at the University of Westminster. In the Q&A session that followed [with a left-biased audience, by the sound of the questioners!] he was asked whether he agrees with Jeff Randall's oft-quoted remark that the corporation has an "institutional left-wing bias". 

He replied:

Look, I love Jeff. He's a great mate of mine. But it's bollocks really.

If I'm honest, the BBC's routinely so anxious about being accused of being left-wing, it quite often veers in what you might call a very pro-establishment, [a] rather right-wing direction, so that it's not accused of that.

Later, he added

There's a slightly 'safety first' thing at the BBC - that if we think the Mail or the Telegraph is gonna lead with it, then we should lead with it. I happen to think that's mad.

I don't know about you but I'm inclined to say, "Look, I like Robert. He's great at playing Mr Punch, and his thing with Eddie Mair is quite funny. But it's bollocks really." 

Still, what he says is what surveys show that quite a lot of people believe [unless you think they're being disingenuous].

You will, no doubt, recall that YouGov poll from last year:

Do you think that, overall, the BBC's coverage of British politics is fair or biased?
Fair 35%
Biased towards the left-of-centre 17%
Biased towards the right-of-centre 4%
Biased towards "establishment' views rather than left or right 16%
Not sure 28%

I would still say that the startling figure there is that only 35% of respondents believe the BBC to be fair (as far as its coverage of British politics is concerned) - i.e. 65% of respondents don't think it's fair (for one reason or another - including uncertainty). 

Those who don't agree with what Robert Peston said though can, perhaps, take comfort from the possibility that a disgruntled anti-BBC Left and a disgruntled anti-BBC Right might, though attacking from completely different directions, so scupper the BBC's precious reputation for impartiality that the license fee becomes even less feasible than ever. (Our enemy's enemy is our friend).

Of course, Robert Peston says he, himself, isn't biased:

I suppose the thing which gives me most comfort in all of this is that if you make the mistake of looking at my Twitter stream you will see that I am unbelievably passionately attacked by certain people for being too right-wing and by other people for being far too left-wing, and it just seems to me that if one is in the position of being attacked from all sides one might be in the right place.

BBC editors are always appearing on Newswatch saying that very thing, repeating the mantra that 'We get complaints from both sides, which shows we're getting it about right', over and over and over again. They clearly think it's a knock-down argument. It isn't. It ignores the quantity and the quality of the complaints from either side. 

OK. I'll now leave it to the unbelievably passionate types out there to get out their slapsticks and tell Robert, "That's not the way to do it!"

'Pricks', 'normos', UKIP and Robert Peston

It's UKIP Night tonight here at Is the BBC biased? (and, very unusually for me, being - generally-speaking - a politically indecisive man, it will be UKIP Day for for me tomorrow), so..

An eagle-eyed soul at Biased BBC has spotted a revealing re-tweet from Robert Peston, no less. He re-tweeted something from saxophonist Pete Fraser (who's saxed for the Pogues no less).

Many of Pete's recent tweets have been anti-UKIP. (He's even played the 'racist' card against them).

Here's what Robert Peston chose to re-tweet from him:

DO go and vote on thurs. It isn't hard, and a lot of people who are MASSIVE pricks definitely will, so every normo who shows up is a bonus.
— Pete Fraser (@petefrasermusic) May 19, 2014

Yes, I think we know who you mean, Pete. And I think we know that Robert Peston knows who you mean too, Pete.

I've got a soft spot for Robert Peston. I like him. Still...he's obviously no UKIP voter.

As we can see from his (oh-so-very-impartial) re-tweet.

Gathering Flowers, or not (as the case may be)

Charles Moore makes a telling point over at the Spectator:

There has naturally been plenty of unfavorable comment on how the Revd Paul Flowers, the ‘crystal Methodist’, was allowed by the Financial Services Authority to become chairman of the Co-op Bank. But the story does not reflect very well on the media either. If you look at Robert Peston’s BBC blog on the subject, for instance, there is a lot of ‘I am told’ and ‘according to the Manchester Evening News’.

Is there no one in the BBC’s enormous staff who could have done a bit of work years ago on the Revd Mr Flowers? Isn’t it even more extraordinary that the media did not pick up Mr Flowers’s ignorant testimony earlier this month to the Treasury Select Committee until it was drawn to their attention on Sunday after he was exposed by the Mail on Sunday for buying illegal drugs? It seems truer than ever that the only way to ensure no one notices you is to say something publicly within the Palace of Westminster.

A difference of opinion between Paul Mason and Robert Peston

The departure of Stephen Hester as CEO of the largely taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland was the lead story on both Radio 4's The World Tonight and BBC Two's Newsnight last night. A comparison of their respective treatments of the story might  prove interesting. (Well, it interests me anyway!)

Both programmes structured the way they reported the story in a strikingly similar fashion. They each included two interviews - one with a senior BBC reporter (The World Tonight talking to Robert Peston, Newsnight to Paul Mason), the other with a senior Labour Party figure from the Gordon Brown era. Both of the Labour interviewees (Lord McFall and Lord Myners) spent much of their respective interviews strongly criticising Tory chancellor George Osborne and arguing that Mr Hester should have been left in place to oversee the privatisation of RBS. No coalition spokesmen were interviewed to balance this out on either of the programmes. 

There were differences however.

The way Newsnight chose to frame the story was summed up by the question, "Is RBS rushing to privatise?" The World Tonight had no such up-front angle.

The World Tonight prefaced its interview with Labour's Lord McFall with a clip of George Osborne stating his position, while Newsnight chose not to include any such clip. Nor did Newsnight include either of the clips used on The World Tonight of Stephen Hester saying "It's been a very bruising and difficult job and so I certainly don't have to be prised away reluctantly" and "I would have taken it through privatisation but if the right person can be found for whom it is the beginning of a journey to lead RBS, it's the better way".

Paul Mason, all in all, seemed to be telling a different story to Robert Peston's. Paul talked of the "big obsession" at the time of the government takeover of most of RBS with being seen not to wholly nationalise the bank. He inferred than Stephen Hester is less sure that RBS is ready for privatisation by the end of 2014 than George Osborne. He had what came across as a little dig at the Treasury for not sharing the "popular" option of breaking up the bank. He provided evidence (in advance) for Lord Myners's criticism of the "political interference" faced by Mr Hester (criticism Lord McFall was also making on Radio 4) from George Osborne (and David Cameron). And, above all, he highlighted what he sees as "the problem" - having the same person supervising both the sale of the bank and the post-sale running of the bank. This, Paul continued, would create a "conflict of interest" because the new CEO would then be serving two sets of shareholders with very different interests - us, the taxpayers at the time of the sale, the new private shareholders after the sale. "It might have been better handled", he argued, if two different people had handled the two stages of privatisation. It was a point of view that's unlikely to have been appreciated by the Treasury.

Though you could argue that it was implicit in what he said (if you were sufficient wide-awake and up-to-speed with the story), nowhere did Paul Mason or Newsnight make it explicit that George Osborne and the board of RBS preferred someone who would guarantee to investors that he (or she) would be around for the long term - something Mr Hester was apparently unwilling to commit to.

To have that point made clearly would have given Newsnight viewers a much sharper set of perspectives on the story. As it is, that lack of clarity must have led most of them to have assumed that political interference, probably done because Mr Hester disagreed with Mr Osborne over the timing of the privatisation, was the sole cause of his departure. They made it sound as if he was given his car keys, his case and shown the door (as Paul put it) simply because of political pressure from the Treasury over this point. As I say, not an account then that would have been appreciated by George Osborne.

Robert Peston, in complete contrast, could not have made the government's reasoning more explicit (or given it a better gloss). He even began with it:

"Well, what's happened since is that the Chancellor and the board of RBS have decided they need somebody to run the bank who's prepared to commit not only to see it through privatisation but to run it for several years after that and it is the case, as I think you [Carolyn Quinn] pointed out to Lord McFall, that Stephen Hester, although he was keen to stay through privatisation, certainly wasn't ready to go, he wasn't prepared to say he was prepared to stay for many years after that and so, in the end by mutual agreement, because, as I say, he wasn't prepared to for the years that the Chancellor and the chairman Philip Hampton wanted, they've decided mutually to part company. I did ask the Treasury, you know, 'Was he sacked?'. No, they said he wasn't, and I think that's probably right, but it was perfectly clear when he wasn't prepared to make that commitment that he had to go."  

Robert then went on to discuss the interview he'd conducted earlier that evening with Mr Hester:

"Now the thing which I thought in my interview with Stephen Hester this evening, that I thought was most significant, was that Stephen Hester said to me that he thought that in this privatisation taxpayers would be able to get back all of the £45-46 billion that we'd invested in it when we semi-nationalised the bank in 2008. Now that is not only of enormous cheer, one would think, to many taxpayers but it's also of enormous political significance."

And yet Paul Mason on Newsnight drew the exact opposite conclusion to Robert Peston:

"But on top of that, the idea that it's a dead cert that this can be sold without losing money is something that I think in his statement tonight..he gave an interview to my colleague Robert Peston earlier..see what you think...I don't think he's as convinced as Osborne." [A clip followed, that didn't convince me that Paul's reading of it was correct at all. But as he says, see what you think]. 

If you're drawing the conclusion from their wildly differing interpretations of this story that Robert Peston's version casts the present government in a much better light that Paul Mason's then you are, I think, quite correct. Any assertions of party political bias you might make from that, however, are complicated by another sharp difference between their two accounts - a difference that points in the other direction.

Paul Mason stated as a fact that the Labour government "paid, therefore, over the odds for what it could have paid and it just seized the bank at its lowest ebb."

Robert Peston, however, said:

"There are lots of people around George Osborne urging him to flog the bank and not worry quite as much about what he gets for it because he can always blame the last Labour government for allegedly paying too much for these shares."

Not "allegedly" according to your colleague Paul Mason, Robert!

So, as you can see, there were several sharply contrasting points of interpretation between two senior BBC reporters here. This is what happens when BBC editors editorialise.

As for the interviews with the two senior Labour figures, Carolyn Quinn's interview with Lord McFall was a gentle one, with a couple of contrary points being put to him [he kept calling her 'Caroline', something I seem to recall he also used to do when he was a regular on Radio 4], whilst Jeremy Paxman's interview with Lord Myners contained a good deal of Paxmanesque political pantomime. At least, Paxo put a question to the highly party political Labour lord about Labour's responsibility for certain things at RBS. Carolyn didn't.

You can, of course, watch or listen again to both programmes for a while and form your own conclusions from all of this.