🚨 BBC impartiality review 🚨
The BBC has published its thematic review into taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt.
Here are our top 10 findings from the review... 🧵
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1⃣ Journalists "lack understanding of basic economics or lack confidence reporting it".
The review found that this was particularly the case with debt, with several journalists seeming "to feel instinctively that debt is simply bad" when the reality is much more nuanced.
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2⃣ The BBC sometimes fails to make it clear that policy decisions are political choices, not inevitable outcomes.
"The language of necessity takes subtle forms; if the BBC adopts it, it can sound perilously close to policy endorsement."
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3⃣ Economies and states shouldn't be compared to households.
Household debt metaphors are found to be "dangerous territory, intensely contested, and can easily mislead". The analogy fails because, for e.g. "states don’t tend to retire or die, or pay off their debts entirely".
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4⃣ Politics shouldn’t dominate over economics when determining whether or how a story is covered.
“We think the BBC could look beyond the politically salient framings more often”
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5⃣ The BBC doesn't always represent a variety of interests, particularly regionally.
"A striking example is VAT. In Wales, more VAT is paid than income tax, ditto North East England". Failure to account for this means "the tax interest of the better-off gets more attention".
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6⃣ The language of 'fiscal rules' is misleading.
"The phrase ‘fiscal rule’ might likewise convey necessity. But fiscal rules are only rules because the government of the day chooses to call them that... they’re not rules because some natural law dictates it."
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7⃣ Similarly, phrases such as 'headroom', 'wiggle room' and asking if numbers "add up" were also found to be misleading as they can suggest that policies are the result of natural laws rather than political decisions.
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8⃣ The BBC must interview a wider range of contributors...
The BBC shouldn't "feel it can subcontract judgement about what’s reasonable or impartial to a few established names like the Bank of England, the OBR, the IFS or the Resolution Foundation, however respected."
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9⃣ … and be aware that balance isn’t just both sides of politics, it means exploring different angles on an issues with “a broader definition of impartiality between different interests, in addition to the balance between the front benches”
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🔟 Finally, accessibility is an issue.
"In our audience research, most had no comment about impartiality on fiscal policy because they didn’t know what the stories meant" meaning the BBC should "mix more engaging explanation into its coverage of economics".
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There is a lot more in there, and much of it applies to other media organisations not just the BBC.
But overall this is a big step towards a more informed and informative public economic debate in the UK.
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