The Beeb Bites Back!

 A couple of days ago I posted a quick piece on my disquiet about the BBC offering members of parliament anonymity to discuss government policy. 

Today I got a reply, and I have to say that both the speed and the content are unsatisfactory: I don't think that a serious issue of policy and journalistic ethics can be discussed and decided within such a short time. Even more annoying is the use of a no-reply email address - the issue is clearly closed as far as the BBC is concerned, and dialogue is not invited. 

This is what the BBC had to say:

Thank you for contacting us regarding Radio 4’s ‘The World at One’ which was broadcast on 15 September.

We note your unhappiness that the item on the cut to Universal Credit featured a contribution from a Conservative MP who agreed to speak to the programme off the record.

Choosing the individuals to interview for the reports on the programme is a subjective matter and one which we know not every member of our audience will feel we get right every time.

Sarah Montague did make clear to listeners that the team at ‘The World at One’ had attempted to contact both the minister and several backbench Conservatives before one MP had agreed to speak anonymously.

In an ideal world, politicians or their representatives might only speak on the record; however, in politics as in life, people are often more candid in private.

While our journalists always prefer on the record quotes, it is important to talk to unnamed sources to get a greater sense of what is going on in Westminster, which can then be relayed back to our audiences.

Without doing this, there is a risk that information coming out of Parliament would be restricted, which could impact our journalism and ability to hold politicians to account.

Nevertheless, we do value your feedback about this. All complaints are sent to senior management and we have included your points in our overnight report.

These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the company and ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.

Thank you once again for getting in touch.

Kind regards

Terry Hughes 

BBC Complaints Team 
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints 
 
Please note: this email is sent from an unmonitored address so please don’t reply. If necessary please contact us through our webform (please include your case reference number).

I don't think this is satisfactory. The core issue is that the source was not providing any kind of insight beyond what had already been reported: he or she was simply stating support for his or her party's decision without risking any electoral unpopularity. 

Terry's summary of my complaint is a little slippery: WATO didn't 'speak to' a politician 'off the record': it accepted a statement, anonymised it then read it out without any opportunity to challenge its basis. The statement was not 'candid': it consisted of a Conservative Member of Parliament repeating the government's view that the benefit uplift is no longer affordable. Nothing more. 

It seems ironic that the BBC feels that anonymity allows it to 'hold politicians to account' when providing secrecy to an elected representative prevents the electorate from holding it to account, while simply reading a statement rather than interviewing the MP concerned means that there's no possibility of the BBC doing so either. 

The Right to Know?

Amidst everything going on at the moment - graduations, preparing for a whole new semester of in-person teaching, examining a PhD, writing a chapter, reviewing a book and being part of an AHRC project, I found time to write a complaining letter to the BBC about its news coverage. I know, I felt my own heart sinking as I realised I've become that kind of pompous bore-cum-conspiracist. 

In my defence, I did write to The World At One first hoping to discuss the issue with them rather than make a formal complaint, but there was no reply, so off I went to the dispute service. What was I complaining about? Well, on this show, the presenters discussed the upcoming withdrawal of the emergency £20 per week benefit uplift, which is raising widespread concern on both sides of the political divide. WATO tried to get some Conservative MPs to comment on air, but none would - draw your own conclusions. 

If the piece had ended there, I'd have been satisfied. But WATO found a Conservative MP to give them a statement in support of the government's policy, on condition that he remain anonymous - they went so far as to have it read out by a member of the production team. 

A Conservative MP, yesterday

Now there's definitely a place for anonymity in news broadcasts: if the BBC were talking to an Afghan in Kabul who'd worked for UK forces, someone in hiding from an abusive partner, or a whistleblower, I think we'd all agree that anonymity was essential for their personal safety. The BBC has rules about protecting contributors:

We should consider whether a contributor/contestant might be regarded as being at risk of significant harm as a result of taking part in BBC content. We should conduct a “contributor due care” risk assessment to identify any risk of significant harm to the contributor, unless it is justified in the public interest not to do so. 

This guidance does not apply to individuals who appear in our news coverage when they are caught up in current events. 

It is concerned with contributors to BBC content where we owe due care to contributors or potential contributors who may be caused harm or distress as a result of their contribution, including in News and Current Affairs and Factual content where the BBC has approached someone to be a contributor in situations where there may be a significant risk of harm.

I can't see that any 'significant harm' ensues from an elected representative endorsing the government s/he supports. A member of parliament is different from a vulnerable source because s/he has power and privilege. They're elected by a specific group of people on the basis of their views, specific or general. There's no expectation of privacy when it comes to political opinion. Constituents are entitled to know what their MP thinks so they can take it into consideration when the next election comes round. 

The BBC is pretty clear on what counts as a 'vulnerable' person - here's one definition:

they are not used to being in the public eye

whereas 

We must judge this taking into account the editorial content, the nature and degree of the individual’s involvement and their public position

There's no question that this MP was in danger of nothing more than reduced popularity and perhaps some stiff emails. S/he was clearly too cowardly to openly support a policy he believes in being put into action by the government he put in power. I know this sounds really pompous, but I genuinely believe that the BBC affording anonymity to an elected representative in no meaningful danger to promote government policy is a distortion of the democratic process. MPs are rightly held to greater standards of openness than - to pick a random example - a pseudonymous blogger because they have real power. If the state broadcaster allows elected representatives to hide behind anonymity to support or oppose mainstream decisions and views, the electorate is denied the chance to make an informed decision. 

The BBC has some guidance for producers about anonymity, and it doesn't feel like they were followed when this article was put together. 

The decision to grant anonymity should be taken with great care. The programme maker must consider why the person wishes to remain anonymous.  

The most important question to pose to someone requesting anonymity is “Whom do you want to be anonymous from - from the general public or from people who know you well?

On the whole they're not keen on it: 

Sources and contributors should speak on the record whenever practicable and their identities and credentials made known to the audience so that they can judge the source’s credibility, reliability and whether or not they are in a position to have sufficient knowledge of the subject or events.  

The decision to grant anonymity should be taken with great care. The programme maker must consider why the person wishes to remain anonymous. Do they have something to hide beyond their identity?  

When it is not self-evident to the audience we should explain to them the reasons why the production granted anonymity to a source. The strongest rationale for granting anonymity is simply to protect the contributor from illegitimate retaliation, harassment or undesirable consequences for providing information.

I don't think this case is justified at all, and no explanation was given on air, but it seems to me that the bar was set too low. How are we to know if the next MP to be given this treatment on some public issue doesn't have a monetary interest in the outcome, for instance? It could have been my MP, Stuart Anderson, a man with legal and moral issues of his own in a marginal constituency. Knowing his view might tip the balance in either direction, but we'll never know whether it was him or not. 

The BBC guidance is far more focussed on the protection of justifiably anonymised contributors - people with social or psychological vulnerabilities or potentially open to persecution: there's nothing in the guidelines about the public interest, which is deeply concerning. 

A member of parliament is elected by a specific group of people on the basis of their views, specific or general. Constituents are entitled to know what their MP thinks so they can take it into consideration when the next election comes round. There's no question that this MP was in danger of nothing more than reduced popularity and perhaps some stiff emails. S/he was clearly too cowardly to openly support a policy he believes in being put into action by the government s/he put in power. I know this sounds really pompous, but I genuinely believe that the BBC affording anonymity to an elected representative in no meaningful danger to promote government policy is a distortion of the democratic process. MPs are rightly held to greater standards of openness than - to pick a random example - a pseudonymous blogger because they have real power. If the state broadcaster allows elected representatives to hide behind anonymity to support or oppose mainstream decisions and views, the electorate is denied the chance to make an informed decision. How are we to know, for instance, if the next MP to be given this treatment on some public issue doesn't have a monetary interest in the outcome, for instance? 

An MP too ashamed to support his/her own party's policy or government's decisions should take a long look at her/himself, not demand and be given protection from public opinion. For the MP to ask for this is shameless enough, but for a broadcaster with legal responsibilities of impartiality and ethical behaviour is a serious dereliction of duty. The BBC's responsibilities include this stirring statement:

We must always scrutinise arguments, question consensus and hold power to account with consistency and due impartiality. 

4.3.14 Contributors expressing contentious views, either through an interview or other means, must be challenged while being given a fair chance to set out their response to questions. 

4.3.20 We should ensure that appropriate scrutiny is applied to those who are in government, or otherwise hold power and responsibility

How can this happen if an elected member of parliament is allowed to hide behind the protections ordinarily afforded to whistleblowers to endorse something as mainstream as a government decision, and is allowed to provide a statement rather than face scrutiny in the form of questioning? 

Maybe this is a very small hill to die on, but I really do think that if you want to exercise real democratic power, you should put your name to your beliefs, and you shouldn't be aided and abetted by the most powerful media organisation in the country when you want to avoid public scrutiny. 

Back to the paper mines

Hi all. I've been on holiday in Ireland for the first time in two years, where the shelves are groaning with food and coronavirus appears not to have led to a collective nervous breakdown unlike certain countries I could mention. It was great: several swims in the Atlantic, a bit of walking, fine restaurants, a homecoming parade for the local Olympic rowers and a lot of good reading. I started with Ariosto's absolutely bonkers 1516/32 Italian epic Orlando Furioso, a poem that mixes obsequiousness, total contempt for the peasantry, sexy times, history (particularly the wars between the French and the Spanish Moors), Arthurian legend, ultra-violence, religion, romance, a trip to the moon on a hippogriff with St John the Evangelist to collect a lump of brains, and shaggy dog stories, all tied together by a hugely endearing narrator who can never resist a fork in the narrative road. 

Funnily enough, I then read Jo Walton's Lent which was also set in Renaissance Italy - the central protagonist is Savonarola. She specialises in fantasy novels that engage with Classical and late medieval/ earlyRenaissance philosophy, especially neo-Platonism, and Lent manages to explore these themes, demonstrate her incredible historical knowledge while also working brilliantly as fantasy - similar in some structural ways to Adam Roberts's The Thing Itself, Christopher Brookmyre's Pandaemonium and Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game. It's the first work I've read that humanises Savonarole, which is ironic given the plot reveal. That said, the only other novel about him I've read is George Eliot's Romola in which Savonarola is a forbidding but ultimately altruistic and inspirational figure for the eponymous heroine. Highly recommended, by the way - if you only stop at Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss you're missing some of Eliot's best work. 

After that I read the final volume of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. Despite having absolutely zero interest in the Tudors, her grasp of psychology, power, the slow creep of corruption, group dynamics and politics in an essentially lawless and permanently unstable polity, just as hereditary officers were jockeying with talented commoners for position was absolutely gripping - it deserves all the plaudits it received. After all that time in the 15th-16th centuries, I cleansed my palate with Josephine Tey's clever 1934 murder mystery The Man in the Queue (recommended on Twitter by Aberystwyth University's @Tasha_Alden), before heading back to Italy for Sally Vickers' more contemporary Miss Garnet's Angel. I'm still reading it and am enjoying the quality of the writing while rather resenting the implication that socialist teachers are dried up old sticks requiring a Forsterian revelation in Venice to show them the error of their ways and give them feelings…But then she is a Liverpudlian 'red diaper baby' (as the Americans put it) like Alexei Sayle, who is rather less repentant about his communist heritage. 

The holiday was wonderful and much-needed. Now I'm back for a very different kind of year. Plenty of teaching this semester, lots of it in-person for the first time in ages, and no new modules for the first time in at least a decade, so less hurried cobbling, more mature reflection (in theory). After 8 years I've given up my course leadership to the mutual relief of myself and my colleagues. The role was unpaid, and involved responsibility for programme management but not (thankfully) line management, and managed to be both essential and unrewarding, onerous and yet unchallenging on any level. I'll miss being the students' first port of call, but not stream of unexamined initiatives from the army of non-teaching 'experts' who've colonised universities. 

The idea is to fill my time with research and writing rather than forms, but we'll see. I have an AHRC project to be getting on with, a PhD dissertation to turn into a book, my book on politicians' novels to write, a PhD to examine and much much else! But at least I'll never have to think of the phrase Continuous Monitoring Touchpoint 4 again. 

 Here are a few of my favourite photos from the break: the rest are here. 

Vintage MG at Knightstown, Valentia Island

Rosaries left at the Valentia slate quarry grotto

Valentia slate quarry grotto, perched high above the ground

The Sceiligs (now even more famous thanks to Star Wars)

The farmer was herding cows by driving along, banging on his bonnet with a pipe

Our new album is taking a rock direction…

At the Olympic homecoming for rowers Monika Dukarska and Aileen Crowley

Cromane beach