Getting business right
Are we at the 91Èȱ¬ a little too prone to present business stories from the consumers' perspective, as opposed to that of the employer, employee or owner and investor? I think so, as did a review chaired by the economist Sir Alan Budd for the 91Èȱ¬ Trust - and last weekend I appeared on the 91Èȱ¬'s Newswatch programme to talk about it.
An edited version of the interview went out on the show, but if you missed it, or you'd like to know more, you can watch the full interview by clicking here. I'd be interested to know your thoughts.
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You're lucky you don't live in Scotland. If any business issues are mentioned at all on 91Èȱ¬ TV Scotland News at 18.30 it's usually bad news. The rest is about either football or murder or both!
I thought your response to the questions in that interview were good and I agree with what you said. However, I also think the 91Èȱ¬ has a duty to report on and investigate broader issues. For example earlier this year the DG of the CBI Richard Lambert said this recently:
"In today's rapidly changing economic world order, we must create more global enterprises if we want the UK to remain in the top tier of world economies. Yet in the past 20 years the number we have built from scratch has been low."
That's an important observation and is something that should be explained to the public.
That might indeed be true, but on the other hand the 91Èȱ¬s main audience is the general public, and part of what the general public expects from the 91Èȱ¬ as far as business coverage goes is an intelligible explanation of the events at hand in a way that business publications can't achieve (because they don't address the same audience). One way to achieve intelligibility is to present news in a way the audience feels involved, and what better way to do this than to draw out the relationships between the events and the reader? (This is also what business publications do, except the relationships are different as the readership may have different interests). So that sense, it's natural for coverage to be presented from the consumer's point of view.
Of course I wouldn't want that to be at the expense of fairness and neutrality; part of a balanced coverage would include the impact of events on the business community, and as a member of the general public, understanding that impact is a close second for me as understanding how the events might affect me personally (because understanding the wider context also helps me understand how the events might affect me). The 91Èȱ¬ may indeed be a little short is that area; perhaps that's why I find myself buying the FT more and more often, despite having very few business interests.
Having now watched the interview, I'd like to go back a bit on my previous comment. When you mentioned the consumers' perspective above, I had taken it to mean "how will this news affect me" from the consumers' perspective. From the interview however, I get the impression that the consumers' perspective refers to shrill comments about "fat cats" or the absolute extent of profits (not relative to investment). When that's the case, coverage is certainly unbalanced, and unhelpful to consumers, insofar as it doesn't help us understand how an event going to affect us. I'd definitely want the 91Èȱ¬ to avoid that type of coverage.
Audience for the 91Èȱ¬ means licence fee payer which is pretty much the whole country. It's absolutely right to represent consumers and business in proportion, which will appear to be consumer oriented. Anyway, business has its own trusted news sources and plenty of representation.
Without being patronising, this blog is one of the best areas of business coverage on the 91Èȱ¬ website.
For the 91Èȱ¬, all too often finance means personal finance. Rising crude prices only mean petrol prices. Interest rates are always viewed through the prism of mortgage rates and the residential property market.
In other words, I feel so many issues are reduced to a consumer and personal finance perspective. There's nothing wrong with relating what can be a complicated subject to everyday examples but the coverage ends up being "lite" or dumbed down.
This blog is an example of where you can take interesting stories from the world of business and finance and clearly explain them to a wider audience. If only Today and 91Èȱ¬ TV could do this more often; Newsnight hasn't done one feature on business, finance or economics this month.
You and Evan Davis have your work cut out!
Robert - perception is 91Èȱ¬ still serves mid 1980(s) lower class convert to middle class after Marget Thacher's radical economic reforms. it sounds sometime too emotional with feel of protectionism. 91Èȱ¬ like to tease successful people / policies !!
The 91Èȱ¬ has the balance about right. Robert, on the other hand, is leaning over in a particular direction. He leans towards making excuses for business.
My own view is that business exists to benefit the people of this country. People do not only exist to benefit business.
Where a business disproportionately benefits a small subset of people, or disbenefits a relatively large set of people, via various externalities (such as carbon pollution) then we should expect that business to improve.
This is the rational and impartial way to view business, especially in view of the challenges of climate change, and the 91Èȱ¬ should promote it more.
Budd's report is concerned that the 91Èȱ¬ doesn't stress the importance of the capitalist system to its victims...
This is a weird view - the 91Èȱ¬ effectively puts across the bosses view as normative and rarely mentions workers' rights, pay and conditions, as a factor in having a successful economy. That's because in a capitalist economy, success is measured for the capitalist class, not the working class.
I watch World Business Report which is focused on what matters to investors, but where is the World Labour Report to focus on what matters to workers?
But then, what else should I expect from a state broadcaster in a capitalist country?
Spot on Robert - I would like to add my voice to those above and say that this blog is the best thing on bbc.co.uk and required reading for anyone with an interest (professional or otherwise) in the business world.
I also agree that business coverage elsewhere on the 91Èȱ¬ is as poor as this blog is excellent.
On a related point, can I suggest that Declan Curry be taken off the air?
Jacques says that his 'own view is that business exists to benefit the people of this country'.
That's similar to my view, but the way Jacques expresses it reflects a hostility to - and, I'd respectfully suggest, a misunderstanding of - business. It's an attitude that's common in the UK and that colours much 91Èȱ¬ reporting.
The mistake lies in the belief that business is a necessary evil that, if it must insist on existing, should do so solely for the benefit of other people.
Problems arise when that attitude finds its way into legislation.
Most of the new business legislation of the past decade was supposed to benefit ordinary people at the expense of large business.
What, in fact, it has done is cause huge problems for hundreds of thousands of small businesses - the ones which are run by a substantial fraction of 'the people of this country' and employ a further two million 'people of this country'.
Adam Smith reminds us that businesses should exist for the benefit of nobody but themselves. It is as a side-effect of their self-interest that society benefits.
(Some would say that it is as a side-effect of business self-interest that society *exists*.)
So I think Robert's approach is as useful as it is timely.
I think that the perspective is less important than getting the facts and explanation right. This probably means talking more to specialists, but that is OK as long as the 91Èȱ¬ has the expertise to ask them informed and challenging questions. That said, I do think the 91Èȱ¬ lacks journalists with that expertise. As someone who used to be involved in financial markets (on a not for profit basis), to me some of the reporting does seem naive or imprecise. Try to recruit some managers, traders, economists etc that have turned to journalism.
One problem that the 91Èȱ¬ in particular may have is that some reporters are more interested in developing their careers as media personalities than covering events in their specialist area. During the present market turmoil, Robert Peston has been consistently on the ball and informative, but Evan Davis seems to be too busy becoming a general presenter.
"On a related point, can I suggest that Declan Curry be taken off the air?"
Pah, Martin, Declan is comedy value.
Name me one other presenter that is expected to talk about the Markets on weekdays and then has to step in to fill Gloria Hunniford's boots on a Sunday morning to front the Heaven and Earth?
From Indices to Imams!