Comment on the BBC Trust seminar on impartiality and economic reporting

What is the most important issue facing Britain today?

Asked that question in September, over half of the participants in an Ipsos Mori survey named the economy. They put it well above unemployment, crime and law and order, housing, poverty, education, and a long list of other issues.

The importance that people attach to the economy has seen a huge increase in the last few years, according to the survey, an increase that can be traced back to 2006 when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit in the US. A poll for the Reuters Institute Digital News Survey this year showed a significant shift, too, in how often people seek out news about the economy online. Before the crash, most people were happy to keep up with financial matters about once a month, and 40 per cent never, or rarely. Now, one third are doing so daily and more than three quarters are doing so at least weekly, this survey shows.

This intense interest has important implications for BBC journalists. It’s all the more essential that the news the BBC provides about the economic situation is high quality, accurate, impartial, and above all explains what can often be extraordinarily complex stories in accessible ways. The BBC’s role is arguably more important than ever - asked in another recent survey where they would turn for news in a serious economic crisis, 55 per cent said the BBC would be their first port of call. That responsibility to audiences should never be underestimated and one of the jobs of the BBC Trust is to ensure that the BBC does everything it can to meet the expectations of its audiences, and is never complacent about doing so.

This context is why the BBC Trust chose economics for an impartiality seminar today, the first of this kind we have tried, bringing together economics experts, academics and economics correspondents from inside and outside the BBC, to discuss how the BBC can achieve impartiality when reporting economics issues in its news coverage. As both a BBC Trustee and an economist myself, I think the BBC’s journalists face a difficult challenge, given the many dimensions of the continuing economic and financial problems, and the fact that it is hard to disentangle technical, professional disagreement from political differences.

For the kind of news stories we are talking about here are often complex issues on which commentators have occasionally wildly divergent viewpoints. Some would say that economists themselves are sharply divided in their views on the Government’s austerity measures, for example. And the most authoritative economic growth forecasts can prove wrong - even the forecast from Office of Budget Responsibility, which said recently it had been caught out by the slowdown in the economy over the last two years.

The BBC does a great job of reporting on the economy on a range of stories and for different audiences, from market movements and business stories to personal finance and discoveries in microeconomics - from Paul Mason on the Greek crisis on Newsnight to Steph McGovern on food banks on BBC Breakfast and Jeremy Vine on how much of what we buy and wear is still ‘made in China’ - to pick just a few examples. So we didn’t hold this event today because we think there’s anything wrong with the approach BBC News is taking and has taken in recent years. The BBC already scores impressively highly on impartiality. Still, we must always be open to self-examination, to question whether we can do better – especially on a subject that we know is currently so important for BBC audiences. It’s just as important to have that discussion with people outside, as well as inside, the BBC.

Today’s event proved to be a constructive discussion, which highlighted the difficulties faced by all economic journalists across the media in explaining to the public the debates about the economy. Overall, participants in the discussion thought the BBC did a good job in meeting these challenges. For the BBC, the overarching theme that emerged was that questioning, challenge and explaining a lack of certainty was essential, as was ensuring that the BBC continues to reflect the span of opinion.

I hope that today’s event and the valuable perspectives that it brought, will pave the way for similar examinations of other areas of BBC output in future so that we can continue to ensure the BBC is delivering the very best for the people who pay for it.