Pots, kettles and bankers

CASTING AROUND for people to blame, some MPs, bankers and others have accused journalists of irresponsibility, of talking down share prices and hastening the collapse of the banks.

Righteously, journalists protest that it is their civic duty to tell the truth, which it is, but there is a much better defence than that.

When the BBC’s Robert Peston or his like report that a bank is teetering on the brink, this is not news to the City. The bank knows, the other banks know, the traders know, the Bank of England knows, the Treasury knows and the government knows. The people who don’t know are the public, notably those with savings in the institutions concerned.

The information is said to be market-sensitive. Of course it is: all information purveyed by financial reporters is market-sensitive.

Nothing in the world is as sensitive as the price of shares or other financial commodities. Markets shoot up and down on the most flimsy of rumours. How dare these reckless speculators accuse journalists of irresponsibility? Keep at it Brother Peston!

Slandering workers is back in fashion

THE BBC was caught out in February with some dodgy editing to make the striking construction workers in Lincolnshire look racist when they weren’t.

The 10 o’clock news had political editor Nick Robinson saying: “Beneath the anger, ministers fear, lies straightforward xenophobia.” The report cut to a worker saying: “These Portuguese and Eyeties? We can’t work alongside of them.”

Half an hour later Newsnight had the same clip, with the same man quoted, this time in full: “These Portuguese and Eyeties? We can’t work alongside of them. We’re segregated from them. They’re coming in in full companies.”

This month (March) is the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike. In one of the most bitter clashes of that year-long dispute the BBC was — yes — caught out with some dodgy editing. They showed strikers attacking the police, then police attacking the miners, when in fact the clashes had been the other way round.

I have been sceptical of talk about the return of the old left-wing union days, but if the BBC is resorting to the old tricks to discredit industrial action, perhaps there’s something in it.

The BBC said it wouldn’t run the Gaza appeal because it had to be publicly seen as impartial. So why did it also ban a fund-raising event for Gaza planned by staff members in the BBC bar that no-one outside would have known about? “They have many outside fundraisers in the bar,” says my friend at the news centre. The event will now take place elsewhere.