Some of you wrote in yesterday with good illustrations of areas other than the conduct of inflation and bond policy by the Bank which are not properly exposed by BBC interviews. There is a similar lack of interest in or awareness of other views on climate change, public spending, human rights laws, the administration of justice and other topics. I dwell on these points because the BBC still has a substantial audience for its one sided news and comment, and because its future and the renewal of the license fee is a hot topic with the government consulting on changes.
The interview with the Governor of the Bank predictably failed to put to him any of the points of failure in the last five years of Bank policy. No Opposition party or private sector company would have got away with that. No question about the big inflation overrun, nothing about vast Bank of England losses, no question on why UK state debt borrowing rates are the highest in the advanced world.
I was left wondering does the BBC not know about the huge losses and about the better performance of some overseas Central banks on inflation? Do they not know other countries borrow more cheaply despite having large debts? Or did they deliberately give the Governor a soft interview to promote the alleged benefits of a 0.25% interest rate cut ahead of Christmas? Did they not think of representing all the 35 million or so savers who will soon suffer a loss of interest income, rather than just the 1.5 million with variable rate mortgages who will get a benefit?
The alternative explanation is their experts do know about these inconvenient truths and decide to shield the establishment from inconvenient questions. They make such a bad job of it. They ended up asking the Governor for views on what would happen to the share prices of US technology companies. Why ask him, as he presides over one of the world’s worst bond traders, buying too many bonds at very high prices, then selling many of them at depressed prices. Why the interest in valuations of US companies when they should be concentrating on UK inflation, UK rates, UK fiscal problems intensified by bond losses? Why no concerns over the big build up of debts in the EU and especially in France if they want a meaningful comparison to the UK? Why no questions about how Switzerland, Japan and China got through covid and the Ukraine war with inflation around 2%?
Every day on the BBC is promote net zero day. Its woven into the fabric of so many broadcasts. Most commentary assumes public services need more money, and accepts lack of money as an excuse for most public sector failures. They love anti Brexit stories especially when they rely on bogus forecasts and out of date research. There is a refusal to do the kind of hatchet jobs they do on US Republicans on the ruling elites of the EU and its leading member states. There is a lot of comment on the US but relative silence on France, Germany and Italy, let alone the EU itself.
As the government embarks on its review it needs to consider why and how the BBC is losing so much of its audience for news and commentary. I have written before about the way the license fee model has prevented the BBC from competing in the huge entertainment market, now dominated by US giants with subscription and advert based models. The review also needs to ask what a proper public information service with truly balanced news and commentary would be like, with better analysis and more balanced choice of guests for interviews.