Post by Teddy Bear on Dec 28, 2008 0:39:29 GMT
An excellent article examining an all too prevalent attitude by the Beeb.
Pontificating Mr Peston, self-indulgent bloggers, and why the BBC should stop putting opinion before facts
The BBC's Panorama was once the most respected current affairs programme in Britain, if not the world. It provided in-depth analysis of all manner of subjects. In recent years it has been cut back to half an hour, and somewhat sensationalised.
The programme is, nonetheless, sometimes still interesting. This week, however, it disgraced itself with an introspective piece of BBC self-promotion. The question the programme asked was: does Robert Peston, the BBC's tireless and ubiquitous business editor, have too much power? It is a good question. The trouble is that, having asked it, Panorama did not attempt an answer.
What was billed as an objective investigation turned into a celebration of Mr Peston and the BBC, with pictures of the young genius at school and university. We were even shown his audition tape before he joined the Corporation nearly three years ago, and invited to cluck and coo as he demonstrated his peculiar staccato delivery.
He interviewed the deputy governor of the Bank of England, who seemed remarkably friendly, possibly having been a valued source. The message was that Mr Peston has come up with one scoop after another during the credit crunch, and reported our financial tribulations with remarkable prescience.
If any of us worried that Mr Peston had stopped merely reporting the story, and had become the story itself, here was all the evidence we needed. There was no attempt to inquire as to whether he or the BBC has exercised potentially destructive power throughout the crisis.
Nor did Panorama ask the most important question of all: should BBC reporters be as free as they are with their opinions? Should they be expressing their opinions at all?
Mr Peston is undoubtedly a very fine reporter, and has come up with some cracking scoops over the past year or so, the most notorious being his revelation that Northern Rock was on the skids. I am not one of those who chide him - or any other journalist - for coming up with news that may be inconvenient to the powers that be. That is their job. My problem is with Mr Peston, and other BBC reporters, increasingly presenting themselves as pundits and opinion formers. This increasingly takes place on the blogs which he and a bevy of other reporters write on the BBC's website. The point about these blogs is that they are not simply opinionated. The opinions they offer are often Leftist or bien pensant.
In recent years BBC reporters have been giving us the news on screen or on the radio, and then regularly providing their own 'take'. When they come to writing their own blogs, which generally are subjected to the most cursory editing, if any at all, they become freer still in disclosing what they believe.
A couple of months ago, for example, Mr Peston announced in his blog that Thatcherism was dead. He may he right, or he may be wrong, but in either event the BBC business editor should not be making contentious judgments of this sort. It is the type of opinion one expects from a newspaper columnist, which Mr Peston quite recently was, not a reporter on the BBC. In a recent blog, he handed out bossy advice to Lord Mandelson about Land Rover and Jaguar.
The old distinction between reporters and pundits has widely broken down. Nowhere is this more regrettable than at the BBC, which is enjoined by its charter to provide objective and neutral coverage. The danger of blogs is that they encourage reporters to let down their hair. Indeed, it is impossible to write a half-readable blog without peppering it with opinions.
Repeatedly over recent months Mr Peston has given his verdict on the financial crisis, and it has often been an apocalyptic one. My objection is not only that it is not his proper role as a BBC business editor to stray so far into punditry. I also cannot help reflecting that, brilliant scoop merchant though he may be, there are other financial analysts whose views of the British economy are just as expert - dare one say sometimes more so? - as his.
And yet, such is the power of the BBC, and its fondness for its newfound star, that these other voices (some of which might be inclined to paint a less dark picture of the economy) are scarcely heard on our airwaves, while Mr Peston is invited to pontificate morning, noon and night. The virtual demise of ITV News as a serious alternative to the BBC makes his dominance all the greater.
Mr Peston is only the most prominent of many BBC bloggers who tend to take a predictably progressive line on all manner of subjects. When, three weeks ago, the Lancet magazine published some dubious research about child abuse, the BBC's home editor Mark Easton accepted the report's findings without subjecting it to much critical examination.
'Politicians should be reacting with vigour to the findings contained in today's Lancet report,' he intoned. 'These figures paint a thoroughly depressing picture of the way we routinely treat children in our society.' He did not question the report's extraordinary contention that at least 15 per cent of girls are subjected to some sort of sexual abuse by the age of 16. Nor did the BBC point out that its much quoted figure of one in ten children in high-income countries being maltreated was not actually mentioned in the Lancet report.
Justin Webb has been an excellent U.S. editor for the BBC, sharing none of the anti-Americanism of some of his colleagues and predecessors. Yet even he loses his sense of even-handedness when writing his blog, displaying a devotion to President-Elect Barack Obama. 'The Obama years will stretch America,' he enthused in one recent blog. 'The nation will think differently about itself.'
Maybe he's right. But I question the wisdom of BBC reporters giving any opinion in their blogs even when I agree with it. Even if it is not tinged with political correctness, even if it does not reflect fashionable opinion, it is still an affront to the values of the BBC for reporters to proffer their opinions in public.
The crucial point is that a reporter who indulges a passion for punditry will forfeit our trust as a reporter, and undermine his calling. We will think we know where he or she is coming from.
Moreover, hard-pressed journalists are not using their time well if they spend hours penning blogs when they could be talking to sources, and getting out and about. The BBC's man in Australia may be blamelessly employed in writing a blog since there are few other outlets available to him, but I wonder how busy reporters can find the time.
Are BBC bosses aware of what is going on? In allowing the proliferation of blogs they are disregarding the Corporation's duty to be impartial. Mark Thompson,
director-general of the BBC, might care to wile away some hours over the Christmas holiday by taking a critical look over its ever burgeoning blogosphere.
Blogs are further corrupting the distinction between news and views which is supposed to be sacrosanct at the BBC. They pander to the egos of reporters who are no longer content to report what is going on, but want their opinions to be part of the debate.
No one has succumbed to this temptation more than Robert Peston, who was cast by Monday's Panorama as virtually the central figure in the credit crunch. The BBC has encouraged him to become the figure around whom the action moves rather than the person who simply reports the action.
The BBC's Panorama was once the most respected current affairs programme in Britain, if not the world. It provided in-depth analysis of all manner of subjects. In recent years it has been cut back to half an hour, and somewhat sensationalised.
The programme is, nonetheless, sometimes still interesting. This week, however, it disgraced itself with an introspective piece of BBC self-promotion. The question the programme asked was: does Robert Peston, the BBC's tireless and ubiquitous business editor, have too much power? It is a good question. The trouble is that, having asked it, Panorama did not attempt an answer.
What was billed as an objective investigation turned into a celebration of Mr Peston and the BBC, with pictures of the young genius at school and university. We were even shown his audition tape before he joined the Corporation nearly three years ago, and invited to cluck and coo as he demonstrated his peculiar staccato delivery.
He interviewed the deputy governor of the Bank of England, who seemed remarkably friendly, possibly having been a valued source. The message was that Mr Peston has come up with one scoop after another during the credit crunch, and reported our financial tribulations with remarkable prescience.
If any of us worried that Mr Peston had stopped merely reporting the story, and had become the story itself, here was all the evidence we needed. There was no attempt to inquire as to whether he or the BBC has exercised potentially destructive power throughout the crisis.
Nor did Panorama ask the most important question of all: should BBC reporters be as free as they are with their opinions? Should they be expressing their opinions at all?
Mr Peston is undoubtedly a very fine reporter, and has come up with some cracking scoops over the past year or so, the most notorious being his revelation that Northern Rock was on the skids. I am not one of those who chide him - or any other journalist - for coming up with news that may be inconvenient to the powers that be. That is their job. My problem is with Mr Peston, and other BBC reporters, increasingly presenting themselves as pundits and opinion formers. This increasingly takes place on the blogs which he and a bevy of other reporters write on the BBC's website. The point about these blogs is that they are not simply opinionated. The opinions they offer are often Leftist or bien pensant.
In recent years BBC reporters have been giving us the news on screen or on the radio, and then regularly providing their own 'take'. When they come to writing their own blogs, which generally are subjected to the most cursory editing, if any at all, they become freer still in disclosing what they believe.
A couple of months ago, for example, Mr Peston announced in his blog that Thatcherism was dead. He may he right, or he may be wrong, but in either event the BBC business editor should not be making contentious judgments of this sort. It is the type of opinion one expects from a newspaper columnist, which Mr Peston quite recently was, not a reporter on the BBC. In a recent blog, he handed out bossy advice to Lord Mandelson about Land Rover and Jaguar.
The old distinction between reporters and pundits has widely broken down. Nowhere is this more regrettable than at the BBC, which is enjoined by its charter to provide objective and neutral coverage. The danger of blogs is that they encourage reporters to let down their hair. Indeed, it is impossible to write a half-readable blog without peppering it with opinions.
Repeatedly over recent months Mr Peston has given his verdict on the financial crisis, and it has often been an apocalyptic one. My objection is not only that it is not his proper role as a BBC business editor to stray so far into punditry. I also cannot help reflecting that, brilliant scoop merchant though he may be, there are other financial analysts whose views of the British economy are just as expert - dare one say sometimes more so? - as his.
And yet, such is the power of the BBC, and its fondness for its newfound star, that these other voices (some of which might be inclined to paint a less dark picture of the economy) are scarcely heard on our airwaves, while Mr Peston is invited to pontificate morning, noon and night. The virtual demise of ITV News as a serious alternative to the BBC makes his dominance all the greater.
Mr Peston is only the most prominent of many BBC bloggers who tend to take a predictably progressive line on all manner of subjects. When, three weeks ago, the Lancet magazine published some dubious research about child abuse, the BBC's home editor Mark Easton accepted the report's findings without subjecting it to much critical examination.
'Politicians should be reacting with vigour to the findings contained in today's Lancet report,' he intoned. 'These figures paint a thoroughly depressing picture of the way we routinely treat children in our society.' He did not question the report's extraordinary contention that at least 15 per cent of girls are subjected to some sort of sexual abuse by the age of 16. Nor did the BBC point out that its much quoted figure of one in ten children in high-income countries being maltreated was not actually mentioned in the Lancet report.
Justin Webb has been an excellent U.S. editor for the BBC, sharing none of the anti-Americanism of some of his colleagues and predecessors. Yet even he loses his sense of even-handedness when writing his blog, displaying a devotion to President-Elect Barack Obama. 'The Obama years will stretch America,' he enthused in one recent blog. 'The nation will think differently about itself.'
Maybe he's right. But I question the wisdom of BBC reporters giving any opinion in their blogs even when I agree with it. Even if it is not tinged with political correctness, even if it does not reflect fashionable opinion, it is still an affront to the values of the BBC for reporters to proffer their opinions in public.
The crucial point is that a reporter who indulges a passion for punditry will forfeit our trust as a reporter, and undermine his calling. We will think we know where he or she is coming from.
Moreover, hard-pressed journalists are not using their time well if they spend hours penning blogs when they could be talking to sources, and getting out and about. The BBC's man in Australia may be blamelessly employed in writing a blog since there are few other outlets available to him, but I wonder how busy reporters can find the time.
Are BBC bosses aware of what is going on? In allowing the proliferation of blogs they are disregarding the Corporation's duty to be impartial. Mark Thompson,
director-general of the BBC, might care to wile away some hours over the Christmas holiday by taking a critical look over its ever burgeoning blogosphere.
Blogs are further corrupting the distinction between news and views which is supposed to be sacrosanct at the BBC. They pander to the egos of reporters who are no longer content to report what is going on, but want their opinions to be part of the debate.
No one has succumbed to this temptation more than Robert Peston, who was cast by Monday's Panorama as virtually the central figure in the credit crunch. The BBC has encouraged him to become the figure around whom the action moves rather than the person who simply reports the action.
