It seems to be hand wringing day on the financial crisis. The Treasury has admitted mistakes. The Bank of England is not, and yet we learn this morning that for the second year running that a banker - in this case Sir Mervyn King of the Bank of England - is to give the BBC Today Programme lecture, on 2 May. He follows Bob Diamond.
And that seems an apposite moment to introduce a comment made on the blog this morning by 'npt3' that said:
The BBC likewise should have its own internal investigation on its dealing with the financial crisis.
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Sadly I agree with this.
A staunch defender of the BBC while the Right was squealing about bias, I’ve been flabbergasted by the sheer incompetence in its coverage of the financial crisis as a whole.
I’ve noted how Peter Allen (and he’s not the only culprit just one that stands out) on Radio 5 Live for example promotes the idea there is no alternative to cuts. Whenever a non coalition politician is on the station criticising the latest dire GDP or borrowing figures they are met with “well you would have to make cuts too…” line of questioning.
Richard,
Did you not watch this one-hour documentary broadcast on BBC2 last December? http://www.ianfraser.org/rbs-inside-the-bank-that-ran-out-of-money-one-hour-documentary/ and
Have you not been reading the blogs or watching the programmes of Adam Curtis, e.g. this one? http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/09/the_curse_of_tina.html
I am sure there has been plenty of other enlightening post-crisis coverage from the BBC – will email you if I remember it!
Ian
Ian
I agree – and I too noted an exception – but if we look at the mainstream output there is no such awareness and that taints debate
Best
Richard
it dosent help when the labour representatives on Question Time are so poor though……….
During the recent protests against ‘Workfare’, no lesser an economic expert than Emily Maitlis boldy, totally impartially and knowing her limits as a journalist (irony) told a spokesperson from ‘Right to Work’ on ‘Newsnight’ words to the effect that the government ‘can’t afford to spend any money’.
Exactly the sort of mindless parrotting of the mantra I am referring to
The BBC is trying to blame Unite the Union for the fact that a woman has received 40% burns by decanting petrol in her kitchen. Truly the British Brainwashing Corporation.
Surely not?
Impossible!
That would be outrageous
I’m not even blaming Maude for that
Though he was reckless
There was an interview on TV and radio with a woman representing Unite; the interviewer started off by reference to the ghastly accident.Why would she do that? So the Unite rep had to respond by sympathising.
Let’s not forget Robert Peston’s wildly misleading documentary about the causes of the credit crunch.The danger of a progammme like that is that people knowing nothing of the subject will watch it and come away from it convinced they’re conversant with the issues. In reality they’ve been to a large degree misinformed.
There was also the appalling John Humphreys “documentary” about benefit scroungers which presented the sickening spectacle of a well-paid upper-middle class man in a safe job bashing people less fortunate than himself. Basically prime time exposure for an extreme right wing Tory perspective, from a member of BBC staff!
My recommendation to people of a left-wing disposition who are going on to BBC interviews – particularly when the interview is live, and so can’t be edited later – is to dispute obviously biased questioning and use the interview to raise the wider point that much of the BBC’s news output is biased. The main thing is not to let interviewers get away with it.
I tend to watch Channel 4 News most these days because it’s a lot better than any of the news on the BBC.
I have directly challenged BBC bias on air – they don’t like it!
RegardIng R4, Jonnty Bloom is stupidly biased to the right. This is the man who described the CoL as “the brightest & best of our country”.
Stephanie Flanders we all know about.
In fairness, I think Robert Peston tries to be neutral.