Better news

[About three-quarters of UK adults used a BBC service for news in 2021/22, according to communications regulator Ofcom © Bloomberg]

Today's puff is for the article in the Financial Times at reference 1. Nominally about the need for impartiality at the BBC - whatever exactly that might, could or should be - but also about the pressing need for our media to give more time to careful presentation of economic news, more time to exploring different views about important political choices and exploring the trade-offs between them. All this fuelled by the report commissioned by the BBC at references 2 and 3.

I have only got about a third of the way through this (very accessible) report, but the impression so far is that the BBC does pretty well, but could do better. That it would be helpful if more journalists were economically and statistically literate, rather than, like our late fat leader, having spent far too much quality time on the Latin and Greek classics. That it would be good if journalists avoided using language which suggested that there were simple, obvious answers to complex problems. That it is all too easy for the news to be dominated by the interests of those who live in the rich south east. And lastly, that the BBC would do well to keep an eye on the tendency of all news rooms to go for flashy headlines and easy-to-digest human interest stories, rather than getting down to serious business.

Not covered in in any of this is the probable lack of interest in any of this at Murdoch's NewsCorp. All they care about is circulation, clicks and revenue. The country can look after itself.

Impressed that the BBC should commission and publish such a report.

References

Reference 1: How to make the BBC a fair arena for UK election fight: Hiding economic trade-offs risks breaching corporation’s aims on broad impartiality, finds a new review - Stephen Bush, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: Review of the impartiality of BBC coverage of taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt - Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot - 2022.

Reference 3: https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/thematic-review-taxation-public-spending-govt-borrowing-debt.pdf. The home of reference 2.