Harding Hard Of Hearing?

 

The BBC’s Director of BBC News and Current Affairs, James Harding, has launched a counter-blast to Conservative complaints of BBC bias. Harding’s response shows how quickly new recruits to the BBC absorb the dominant cultural and political orthodoxy of the organisation and so rapidly adopt the unquestioning obedience to the hand that feeds them.

Rather than admit what was a clear-cut case of bias and intemperate language by a BBC reporter Harding sets out to trivialise and sidestep the seriousness of the complaint.

He makes his case in the Telegraph starting off with this….

 Apparently the “Tories are at war with the BBC”. Rows between the BBC and the Government of the day are nothing new. They go back decades to the very birth of the BBC. And few would argue that a cozy relationship between the BBC and government – or indeed any news organisation – would be a good thing. Scrutiny and accountability can sometimes be a bumpy ride.

 

Immediately you can see he has no intention of genuinely dealing with the complaint instead dismissing it as ‘nothing new’, merely part of an age old game played by politicians….then trying to imply that taking the complaint seriously would be bowing to political pressure compromising BBC independence and integrity.

He goes on to say…

The economy is one of the key issues at the heart of the election. The BBC has played a leading role in covering the financial crisis and the return to economic growth. We have made huge efforts to give balanced coverage and reflect all sides of the argument from the fall in unemployment and the rise in private sector jobs, to the challenges caused by persistently downward pressure on wages and the resulting lower-than-expected tax receipts.

 

 

The economy is indeed one of, if not the most important, issues in the coming election which is why the BBC has a duty to report impartially with all the facts…something it has patently failed to do.

He tells us the BBC has played a leading role in reporting the economy in a balanced manner…is that true? No.

The BBC, as reported so often on this site, pushed Labour’s Plan B relentlessly, it pushed ‘Keynesian’ economics, it pushed the Occupy movement, it recruited Occupy acolytes like Giles Fraser. The BBC consistently reported we had a double dip recession, its journalists still do, despite the fact we had no double dip….the BBC reported with an all too evident eagerness that we were heading for a triple dip recession…the fallacy of that is all too obvious.

 

As for reporting the ‘the challenges caused by the persistent downward pressure on wages’ they certainly did report on that subject…but no-where near the truth….you will be hard pressed now to get a BBC journalist to link immigration to low wages and the subsequent fall in tax revenue and the increase in welfare payments.

The BBC repeatedly told us there was a puzzle as to why employment was increasing when productivity wasn’t increasing…but that fails to understand that wages are a part of productivity…..if wages fall and output stays the same then productivity, per pound not per worker, has gone up.

The BBC never bothered to knock on a factory door and ask why they were employing more people preferring instead to spin a tale of an economic mystery that apparently gave a lie to the face value facts of an improving economy. Let’s face it no employer would employ someone unless they had a reason to…they aren’t charities…and yet the BBC persistently insisted they were doing so, flying in the face of economic wisdom.

 

Harding defends the BBC by saying….

 In fact, it is not the BBC that pointed out that reductions in public spending proposed by the Chancellor on Wednesday amounted to a return to state spending on citizens last seen in the 1930s.

 

Indeed he is right…except the OBR referred to 1938 specifically not the ‘1930’s’ and definitely not the Depression era early 1930’s that the BBC decided to use as its comparison claiming this was the OBR’s reference…a blatant attempt to encourage a view that the Tories were going to lead us into an era where poverty and misery would be ‘stalking the land’, to coin a phrase.

 

He tells us that…

Through the course of the past week, we reported the run up to the Autumn statement as the Government made a series of announcements: a £2bn commitment to the NHS on Sunday, a package of infrastructure investments on Monday, a flood defences plan on Tuesday and the Autumn Statement on Wednesday.

 

Trouble is the plans were pretty much dismissed by the BBC as electioneering hype by the Tories and that once the election was over would be quietly shelved.

 

Here we get to the heart of the matter….

Just after 6am on Thursday morning, Norman Smith, the BBC’s Assistant Political Editor, was pointing out that while many headlines were around the changes to Stamp Duty – the big new news of the Autumn Statement – the issue that would dominate in the months ahead was the OBR’s prediction that Britain could face a return to 1930s public spending per capita. And if some people thought his reference to George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier was a tad strong, his editorial judgment was exactly right: spending cuts to reduce the deficit will be a central argument of the election. It’s clear it will be an issue irrespective of whichever party wins.

 

Note Harding makes no mention of Smith’s toxic reference to the economic outlook as ‘utterly terrible’ and dismisses his other comparison of the economy to an era of slump and depression, starvation, joblessness and misery.

He then helpfully and unintentionally spells out why the BBC’s biased reporting should not go unchallenged saying ‘spending cuts to reduce the deficit will be a central argument of the election.’…unwittingly admitting that by reporting in a biased manner Smith is misreporting one of the most important issues of the election.

And yet the BBC’s head of news’ trite, self-serving response to complaints of bias is to say ‘Well, look how clever my journalist is, he’s spotted that the deficit might play an important role in the election. He may well have spun a tale of doom and gloom that favours the Labour narrative but any Tory complaints are just the usual unfair criticisms we expect from politicians.’

This is a typical BBC response to criticism, brush it under the carpet, dismiss it paradoxically as other people’s bias and not the BBC’s, and to proclaim the BBC’s integrity and genius.

One day the Tories will have the guts to disembowel the BBC and bring it to heel. Until they do every election will be a battle not just against other parties’ political machines but also against the BBC’s hugely powerful and influential propaganda machine.