
The BBC Today Programme. Image, BBC.
Dr Mike Berry, a Lecturer at Cardiff
University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, co-wrote Bad News From Israel (2004) and More Bad News From Israel (2011) with
Professor Greg Philo.
In recent years Dr Berry has turned his attention to the BBC’s coverage of the
2008 financial crisis. I asked him about his findings and why they are
important for British democracy.
Ian Sinclair: In the last few years you have published two journal articles
studying the BBC’s coverage of the 2008 financial crisis – one analysing BBC
Radio 4 Today programme’s output on the banking crisis in September and October
2008 and the other looking at the coverage by BBC News at Ten of the debate
around the need to reduce the public deficit in the first seven months of 2009.
What were the main findings of these two studies?
Mike Berry: Before answering that question directly I'd like to backtrack a
little and provide some context to these events and explain why they are intimately
linked. After 1979 the Conservatives introduced policies which fundamentally
changed the nature and composition of the British economy. The withdrawal of
the state from intervention in industry, the lifting of exchange controls and
the deregulation of finance strengthened the power of capital at the expense of
labour. The effects of what the Oxford historian Andrew Glyn described as, 'Capitalism
Unleashed', was a shift towards an economy dominated by the service sector,
a dramatic polarization in regional economic activity and sharp rise in income
and wealth inequality. However this rise in inequality had a deflationary
impact on the economy which was only compensated for by a steep rise in
household debt. When New Labour came to power they largely accepted the
Thatcherite settlement – the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector would
continue to be the principal private motor of the economy whilst manufacturing
was allowed to continue its long decline. However Labour did introduce record
increases in social spending in areas such as health and education which in
large part were paid for by tax receipts drawn from the City and the property
boom. This meant that public spending increasingly took on the role of an 'undisclosed
regional policy' by boosting state and para-state employment in areas
outside the South-East where private sector job creation was 'weak or failing'.
However this unbalanced growth model, based on asset price inflation and ever
expanding household debt financed by an outsized, reckless financial services
sector was unsustainable and exploded spectacularly in 2008.
This is the point at which my research picked up the story and I was interested
primarily in how the crisis was explained, how the bank rescue plans were
discussed and the range of debate on how the finance sector could be reformed. Would
the key role of the banks in creating such an unbalanced economic model be
unpacked and would there be any voices featured who called for more democratic control
of finance and restrictions on the free market? When I looked at the coverage
on the Today programme it was clear that the people who had caused the crisis –
the bankers and the politicians – were overwhelmingly the voices charged with
defining the problem and putting forward solutions. This meant that that on the
question of what to do with the banks there was strong support for the
government bailouts and the idea that the banks should be re-privatised as soon
as possible. It also meant that arguments in favour of long term public stake
in banking which could be used to support long
term productive investment – rather than real estate speculation – never appeared
in coverage. In a similar vein, major reforms such as
heavier regulation of the shadow banking sector, the introduction
of a financial transaction tax, the
regulation or even banning
of certain derivative classes, a clampdown
on tax havens or restrictions
on the revolving door between politicians, regulators and major banks, were
also invisible. It was remarkable that in the midst of the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression, which was precipitated by extraordinarily irresponsible
behaviour by the banks, the Today programme featured a variety of City sources
warning about the dangers of too much regulation.
The banking crisis led to a major recession which shrunk the tax base and
sharply increased the public deficit (the gap between the tax take and public
spending). It also precipitated a major debate about how to respond to the
increase in public debt. At the heart of these debates were three interlinked
questions: How serious a problems was the deficit? How quickly should it be
eliminated? and how should it be reduced? Some leading
economists
were sceptical that the deficit represented an economy emergency and believed
that deficit reduction needed to wait until the recovery was well established.
There were also many
voices
calling for the burden of deficit reduction to be primarily borne by those who
had most benefitted from the sharp increases in asset wealth seen over the
previous thirty years. However these voices didn't appear in coverage. Instead
the dominant perspectives in BBC News at Ten reporting were that the deficit
was highly dangerous and needed to be dealt with quickly by sharp cuts to public
spending and increases in regressive forms of taxation. These perspectives were
mostly expressed by politicians, think tanks and City sources but on occasion
they were directly endorsed by leading journalists. So, for instance on 10 June
2009 a reporter commented that ‘What will be cut, by how much and when? As the
government’s coffers grow ever more empty, those are questions that can no
longer be avoided.'
IS: Is this coverage a step change in
the BBC’s coverage of finance and economics news, or is it a continuation of
previous output?
MB: In many ways this is a continuation of previous output. There is a long
history of research stretching back to the mid 1970s which has found that BBC
economic news tends to reproduce free market perspectives on the economy whilst
marginalising left wing views.
For instance research
on BBC reporting of Britain's industrial malaise in the 1970s tended to blame industrial action by trade unions whilst
sidelining the culpability of management and very low levels of investment in
plant and capital, which meant that the average Japanese car production worker
was using equipment worth ten times that of their British counterpart. In the 1980s, research
noted that BBC reporting of the Conservatives' privatisation of state assets
was heavily influenced by the governments' PR campaigns with the consequence
that most coverage focused on the potential profits to shareholders while
excluding those who argued that 80% of the population would no longer have a
stake in the newly private industries.
However, there are two key trends since the 1980s that have narrowed the range
of opinion even further. The first was the decision by the Labour party to abandon
contestation of economic policy following a series of election defeats in
the 1980s. By the time New Labour was elected in 1997 the party had
wholeheartedly embraced neoliberalism and the primacy of finance sector in the
economy. Since the BBC tends to reproduce the spectrum of opinion at
Westminster it meant that the major voice which had traditionally argued for an
interventionist state and controls on the free market disappeared from
coverage. The second factor was changes in the sociology of journalism. The
1980s saw the disappearance
of the industrial news beat which had provided a platform for the views of
the trade unions and a space where left-wing collectivist opinion could be
articulated. At the same time financial and City news became a much more
prominent feature of BBC reporting which provided much greater space for City
experts and their apparently neutral opinions on the latest financial and
economic news stories.
IS: How does the BBC’s coverage of the
financial crisis compare to that of other British news organisations?
MB: The BBC, due to its statutory duty to maintain impartiality, doesn't
employ the kind of aggressive editorialising that you see in parts of the
national press. Nevertheless the range of opinion is similar.
So during the banking crisis both the Today programme and most national
newspapers overwhelmingly viewed the part-nationalisation as the only option and
featured commentators who argued against full nationalisation and public
ownership of banks. In a similar vein both Today and the national press – with
the notable exception of the Guardian – featured little information about
serious structural reforms to the finance sector. If anything Today coverage,
due to its exceptionally heavy reliance on City sources, tended to feature less
criticism of the finance sector and more arguments against further regulation
than any national newspaper.
In a similar vein, when I looked at the coverage of the debates around the
public deficit what was remarkable was the degree of similarity in broadcast
and press coverage with the key differences being in tone and tenor. So both
the press and the BBC tended to treat the deficit as an economic crisis which
threatened serious consequences such as currency depreciation, interest rate
rises, bond strikes and even national bankruptcy whilst sidelining voices who
questioned these claims. Similarly both the BBC and the right-wing press
overwhelming presented sharp cuts to public spending and increases in
regressive taxation as the only possible solutions to the 'crisis'. The
argument made by some on the left that some of the burden should be borne by
the most wealthy just doesn't appear in BBC coverage and even in the left of
centre press it is largely absent except for the Guardian.
IS: The BBC prides itself on the
principle of impartiality, and is even seen as left-wing by many commentators.
Why, then, were the parameters of the coverage of the financial crisis on two
of the BBC’s flagship programmes so narrow and City-friendly, and so dominated
by elite, often City-based sources?
MB: If you ask journalists this question they will tell you that in comparison
to academic economists City sources are invariably 'available' and 'up to date'
on the latest events. Journalists also argue that you can rely on such sources
to give clear concise arguments within the constraints of a brief news item and
that they are the sources with the expertise needed to understand the
intricacies and complexities of the financial crisis. All those are valid
explanations but I think these sourcing patterns also reflect the fact that
journalists internalise strong assumptions about who is qualified to speak on
the economy or finance sector and this usually means a front bench politician, specific
think tanks or a City source. These voices are then routinely over accessed and
serve to sharply delineate the boundaries of what is said about how the economy
can be managed. But of course there are always alternative sources who could be
accessed to broaden the parameters of debate.
IS: Why are your findings about the
BBC’s coverage of the financial crisis important?
MB: Broadcast news remains a key information source for most citizens and
so what appears has significant implications for the construction of public
belief and attitudes. In my research in addition to analysing the content of
media broadcasts I also run focus groups with members of the public in order to
examine how news accounts impact on what people think and believe. What was
clear from the focus groups was that most people were quite confused about key
aspects of the financial crisis – for instance what a derivative was or the
difference between the public debt and deficit. However what they had picked up
tended to be very heavily influenced by what they had seen in the press or
broadcasting. So most people knew about the 'fat cats' and the bonuses but
nobody I spoke to had heard of the financial transactions tax or knew about the
'revolving door'. When I asked people about how the public deficit could be
reduced they overwhelmingly pointed to solutions they had picked up from press
and television accounts such as reductions in quangos, public sector pension
provision, benefit payments or immigrants. Nobody mentioned clamping down on
tax avoidance or introducing progressive wealth or income taxes. However when I
brought these up as potential solutions in focus groups they were received very
well, reflecting the findings of large
scale surveys
in this area.
The press and television thus plays a key
role in framing how we understand the economy and the range of possibilities as
to how it can be managed. If the great bulk of the press argue that the public
deficit represents a national emergency which can only be solved by cuts to a
'bloated' and 'inefficient' public sector – and crucially if such views are
reinforced (in rather more temperate language) in public broadcasting then it
is hardly surprising that such views become widely accepted amongst the
public.
IS: What changes do you think the BBC
should make to provide a wider selection of voices and a broader debate when it
comes to financial and economic news?
MB: I think that the first thing that needs to happen is for the BBC to recognise
that its economic reporting should be more balanced. On the day that the bank
bailouts were finalised (13 October 2008) the discussion during one news
segment was conducted between Sir George Cox, described by a BBC journalist as
‘someone with a liberal, free-market economic background, Institute of
Directors and from perhaps the more right end of British politics’, and Patrick
Minford who was introduced as ‘one of Mrs Thatcher’s chief economist
supporters’. Such a narrow range of reporting was not uncommon and appears to
reflect a belief within BBC economic reporting that, as Mrs Thatcher famously
put it, 'there is no alternative' to the free market.
However, when even economists at the IMF, the organisation mostly closely
associated with the promotion of neoliberalism, are now publishing papers
explicitly linking the decline in labour bargaining power with debt increases,
financialisation and economic crises then surely it is time for BBC reporting
to widen the spectrum of opinion it features in its new programmes.
There are many alternative sources that the BBC could turn to to provide an
alternative to free market perspectives. Individual sources such as Ha Joon
Chang, Geoff Tily, Simon Wren-Lewis, James Meadway, Ann Pettifor,
Mariana Mazzucato, Mark Blyth or Graham Turner could
offer fresh perspectives. Institutionally the BBC could source from thinktanks
like the New Economics Foundation, the Tax Justice Network, PRIME or from
academics connected to the Manchester Business School or SPERI. Occasionally
such sources do appear, but to provide true balance they need to be featured
routinely as a counterpoint to the views of City economists who tend to
dominate reporting.
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