Beeb’s 4-year obsession with cuts
OVER the past four years, the BBC has repeatedly enraged Tory ministers with its anti-cuts bias. Here ALASDAIR GLENNIE and JAMES SLACK give some of the most egregious examples:
NOVEMBER 2010
The BBC website published an anti-cuts story based on an unpublished academic report for the housing pressure group Shelter, suggesting most two-bedroom flats in central London would become unaffordable to welfare claimants because of benefit cuts. In fact the full report said up to a quarter of homes would be affordable and its author stressed the study ‘does not indicate anything about what the effects of the measures on tenants might be’.
JANUARY 2011
The BBC was accused of ‘outrageous scaremongering’ after commissioning a documentary titled The Street That Cut Everything, fronted by political editor Nick Robinson, in which a neighbourhood has all its council services taken away. Bin collections were stopped, street lights switched off and residents were left to clean up dog mess. An aide to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles reported the BBC to Ofcom, branding the film ‘an unforgivable breach of editorial standards’.
MARCH 2011
The corporation was accused of siding with protesters in its coverage of anti-cuts demonstrations. Philip Davies, a Tory MP who sits on the culture, media and sport select committee, said: ‘There is an absolute legitimate concern that the BBC is giving undue priority to those people who are protesting about cuts and very limited coverage of exactly why the cuts are necessary ... They have this innate, institutional Left-wing bias and cannot help themselves.’
DECEMBER 2012
Downing Street complained to the BBC about the ‘unacceptably hostile’ tone of a Radio 4 Today programme interview with George Osborne. Presenter Evan Davis accused him of making a ‘desperate attempt’ to hide the true scale of the budget deficit but repeatedly cut across the Chancellor when he tried to respond.
AUGUST 2012
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith criticised coverage of unemployment figures, which had been unexpectedly favourable. He accused the then economics editor Stephanie Flanders of ‘peeing all over British industry’, adding: ‘She said: “Of course this is good news, but it could be because we aren’t productive enough.”’
MARCH 2013
Mr Duncan Smith wrote to the BBC to complain that it was confusing to call his key welfare reform a ‘bedroom tax’. He said the term was ‘innately political and indeed factually wrong’, adding: ‘In using the word tax, the BBC has helped to worry those not in social housing that they might be taxed. It is also a term continually used and promoted by the Labour Party.’ The corporation now refers to it correctly as the ‘spare room subsidy’.
JULY 2013
Miss Flanders dismissed optimism about an economic recovery after new research showed a surge in the UK’s services sector. In a blog on the BBC website, she said the UK was experiencing the ‘wrong kind’ of growth, adding: ‘What people really want to know is are we finally seeing the “proper” recovery we’ve been waiting for. Right now, I’m afraid the answer to that question is no.’
JULY 2013
The BBC Trust was accused of ‘blatant Leftwing bias’ after censuring the corporation’s own John Humphrys for a documentary and accompanying newspaper article about the bloated welfare state. Mr Duncan Smith said the programme had been ‘thoughtful’ and ‘intelligent’.
NOVEMBER 2013
The BBC buried a positive report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which said the UK economy would grow by 1.4 per cent in a year. Instead, the website led on news that the global economy as a whole would grow less than expected.
DECEMBER 2013
Presenter Jane Hill attacked the scale of the Government cuts while interviewing a guest on BBC News, and suggested they are driven by ‘ideology’. She said: ‘There won’t be any libraries, will there? There won’t be any schemes for older people, for younger children.’
JUNE 2014
A documentary on police spending cuts was accused of anti-government bias after it failed to mention big reductions in recorded crime. BBC2’s Police Under Pressure was made by production firm Rare Day, whose founder Peter Dale has close links to the Institute for Public Policy Research, a Left-wing think-tank.