REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT PANEL FOR THE BBC TRUST ON 
IMPARTIALITY OF BBC BUSINESS COVERAGE 
BBC MANAGEMENT RESPONSE 

 
Introduction 

 

Sir Alan Budd's report was published on 25th May and at the time we promised a 
considered response by July. We have now carefully evaluated the report and its 
appendices; this document sets out BBC Management’s response and explains how we 
intend to carry out the recommendations where appropriate. 

 

Summary 



 

We welcome the report which we believe to be a serious and constructive piece of work. 
The Panel has consulted widely, commissioned insightful research and monitored hours of 
output. We are pleased that it finds no evidence of systematic bias and that overall it finds 
that most of the BBC's business output meets the required standards of impartiality. 

 

We particularly welcome the audience research and content analysis, which contain much 
that is genuinely encouraging. The research shows that audiences do not believe that 
impartiality is in jeopardy and the content monitoring shows that the BBC has a pre-
eminent position as a business broadcaster and takes business seriously in terms of 
airtime and resources. 

 

We agree with the broad thrust of the Panel's recommendations - about the need to raise 
the business awareness and knowledge of journalists across the BBC and we agree that 
some of the coverage has a tendency to be too consumer focused at the expense of other 
angles. We also acknowledge that there have been breaches of our standards for 
impartiality and will work hard to prevent these happening in future. However, we regard 
them as undesirable mistakes and misjudgements rather than indicative of a general 
approach by our journalists. Indeed the Panel’s research showing that the BBC is 
considered to provide the most impartial reporting of any business news provider is a 
pleasing endorsement of BBC journalism and we must ensure that that public trust 
continues to be well earned. 

 

We recognise there is a real opportunity to improve further the quality and depth of our 
business journalism by responding effectively to relevant recommendations in the report – 
building the training and learning of our staff through the College of Journalism; ensuring 
broader perspectives are brought to our business coverage; improving the website’s 
navigation and connection with the rest of the BBC’s news site. 

 

Responses to Recommendations 



 

The panel made recommendations for improving coverage in three main areas and our 
specific responses below address each area in turn. 

 

1. Addressing the lack of knowledge of business issues 
2. Widening the range of editorial ideas and programming about business 
3. Ensuring compliance in business coverage with standards of impartiality 


 




1. Recommendation: Addressing the lack of knowledge of business issues 




 

Developing new initiatives to improve the level of business knowledge 

The Panel cleared the BBC of any suggestion of systematic bias but it added that it does 
believe that the BBC is, at times, unconsciously partial and unbalanced in its coverage of 
business issues. It says this may be a result of a lack of awareness of the business world 
and what it terms a preoccupation with taking the consumer perspective. Some of the 
external submissions to the Panel questioned the level of knowledge of some of the BBC’s 
researchers who contact them. The Panel believes this is part of a wider problem of a lack 
of business experience and knowledge in general programming. It acknowledged that 
some good initiatives were in place to address this, such as the business secondment 
scheme for editors to spend time in the heart of a company, but suggests more should be 
done. 

 

We broadly accept this analysis and we are committed to raising the business knowledge 
levels of our journalists and programme makers. In our submission to the Panel we had 
already acknowledged that, currently, business was not the strongest knowledge area for 
many BBC journalists. We fully accept the Panel’s recommendation to increase knowledge 
levels across big and small business, unions and workplace. 

 

Ensuring the College of Journalism’s programme on business training is effective 

The Panel welcomed the College of Journalism’s efforts in introducing some business 
modules and recommended that it develop a more extensive business and workplace 
programme. The BBC agrees that it is important to ensure that training and information 
reaches the right people with the right depth of learning. There is already a system in place 
for monitoring take-up of key training modules and this will be extended to the business 
programme. 

 

Key steps: 

 

• The College of Journalism will work closely with the BBC’s Business specialists to 
devise new comprehensive training programmes which will be delivered through 
online modules, face to face sessions and through films. It is also proposing to 
address the language of business and economics and set up a wiki for key 
business facts and definitions. A core training programme will be compulsory. 
• The new training modules are being devised now by the Director of College of 
Journalism and are planned to be launched from Winter 2007. 
• All journalists who make editorial decisions will be prioritised and all the training 
opportunities will be available to all staff but especially to those in News, Nations 
and Regions, Global News and Factual and Learning. 


 

 

2. Recommendation: Widening the range of editorial ideas and programming about 
business 




 

Making systematic efforts to reflect more of the ways in which audiences interact 
with the world of business 

The Panel observes that the focus on the consumer means that other important elements 
are secondary and recommends that BBC correspondents and editors should be 


encouraged to pursue innovative ways of treating the audiences as employees, citizens 
and investors (direct and indirect) as well as consumers. It particularly highlights the 
coverage of the worker perspective as sometimes missing from national news, especially 
on television, and calls for more coverage of workplace and union issues. 

 

In response, as the Panel is aware, we have now created a new Workplace reporting role 
following the retirement of the BBC’s specialist industrial affairs correspondent whose brief 
encompassed some of these issues. This will be a tri-media role that gets to some of the 
broader issues of equality in the workplace, health and safety and equal opportunity as 
well as reporting of workplace disputes. 

 

Expanding the coverage of the role of business in society 

As well as workplace issues, the Panel asked that we include more on the role of business 
in society and on the international context. We endorse this recommendation. In the 
modern world, coverage of global factors in business and economic stories in the UK 
should clearly be part of mainstream broadcast news. With regard to global business news 
stories, the BBC has a network of business reporters around the world, in New York, 
Brussels, Mumbai, Singapore and Dubai, who appear, at present, principally on our 
international TV and radio services and on News 24. There is also very comprehensive 
international business coverage on the BBC’s news website. 

 

What is important is that audiences get a rounded picture, illuminated by developments at 
home and abroad. Even if the audience is drawn into the story with a consumer view, other 
perspectives do then need to be played in – audiences are also investors, savers, 
business owners and employees. The Panel said that the challenge for the BBC as a 
public service broadcaster was to deliver coverage that can appeal to a broad audience. 
The BBC would argue that the best of its programming does do that (although it is always 
looking to improve) and that it remains strongly committed to filling the gap in the market 
for broadcast business news for general audiences. 

 

In this context, it is worth noting that the BBC produces a very wide range of business 
coverage across its national networks including News 24, on its extensive Nations and 
Regions output, and its website is the market leader in the UK. In addition to the news 
output that the panel focused on, there is significant specialist business coverage on radio 
and TV designed to be accessible to generalists as well as appealing to specialist 
audiences – around five hours of daily output for the UK. Five Live has two specialist 
business programmes, Wake up to Money and Weekend Business. Radio 4 has In 
Business, Nice Work and the Bottom Line and BBC 2, Working Lunch. 

 

 

Broadening the range of interviewees/commentators on business issues 

The Panel questioned how expert contributors are selected. Some witnesses thought the 
range was too narrow and that market commentators could be compromised by being too 
close to the events they are asked to comment on. 

 

The Economics and Business Unit has an extensive database of commentators. The 
people who appear most are those who are regarded as the best informed and most trust-
worthy in their analysis as well as those with excellent communication skills. The Today 
Programme, for example, has a relatively small team of regular market commentators but 
that is not necessarily a negative. Nevertheless we will review our use of experts to ensure 
a broad range of commentators and perspectives are sought. 

 

 




 

Improving online business news 

The Panel pointed to criticism of the business website in the Leeds University content 
analysis. Our reading of this is that the issues were around the quality of search and 
navigation and the connectedness to the broader output more than specific editorial 
problems. We acknowledge these issues and they are now being addressed as part of the 
BBC’s current work in upgrading the news website. It is gratifying that the audience 
research and some of the external submissions praise specifically the editorial content of 
the website. 

 

We note but do not agree with the criticism of a blog by the Business Editor where he 
described his personal experience of installing the new Microsoft Vista software. The 
Panel called this a ‘scathing attack’ on the new operating system. While Robert Peston 
was certainly critical, we believe that the audience is easily able to distinguish between a 
piece written by him as a user, from personal experience, and his impartial and fair 
approach to journalism, for example his reporting on Microsoft’s strategy and business 
performance. Moreover it was balanced elsewhere on the site with straightforward and 
factual reporting of Vista and a streamed video which set out in very simple terms how to 
load it. 

 

Key steps: 

 

• The College of Journalism will work with the business team including the Business 
Editor, Robert Peston, and the Editor of the Economics & Business Unit, Daniel 
Dodd, to host discussion events around the country about widening editorial ideas 
and promoting creativity and innovation in our work which can be videoed for 
training purposes. There will be quick turn-round seminars on key stories and 
broader dissemination of Robert Peston’s daily business analysis, “Peston’s Picks”. 


 

• Audience focus group sessions will also be videoed and streamed through the 
College website. 


 

• The College will make a series of films from different perspectives – framing one 
story from the point of view of four different players: a) employees’ b) investors’ c) 
citizens’ d) consumers’. This to be backed up by an online interactive scenario. 


 

• Creative workshops will be led by senior editors and the Economics Editor, Evan 
Davis. 


 

• The Panel noted the introduction of a new role to report on the workplace. We 
anticipate that this will increase the number of stories around labour and workplace 
issues that bulletins run. 


 

• The BBC agrees to broaden the range of interviewees and commentators on 
business news and a review of contacts will help this. 
• The Panel recommended that the online business news site needed to feel more 
integrated with the overall offer. The BBC agrees with this. Development of the site 
architecture will help in enabling the hosting of more video and improving the 
audience experience in navigation, participation and personalisation. 





3. Recommendation: Ensuring compliance in business coverage with standards of 
impartiality 


 

Improving awareness of impartiality issues in business coverage among journalists 
at all levels 

In the section assessing whether business programmes and presenters consistently meet 
the BBC’s standards of impartiality, one of the Panel’s conclusions was that many of the 
BBC’s business news stories were framed through the consumer perspective and noted 
that the intention was to engage audiences by approaching stories in a way that had 
relevance for them. Certainly the BLINC audience research supports this consumer-led 
approach in terms of engaging viewers and listeners. The audience groups were looking 
for resonance and found the consumer angle easier to relate to than national or global 
causes. However, in our submission to the Panel BBC management has already 
acknowledged a tendency in some news programmes to concentrate too much on the 
consumer point of view and we agree with the Panel that as a public service broadcaster 
we have an obligation to provide rounded complete coverage. 

 

The Panel’s challenge to the BBC is to ensure that if audiences consume just one news 
programme or network that they get a full range of views over time on that one source. 
The management believe this to be right – we must aim for a rounded approach but clearly 
over the range of our output there will be different emphases. The BBC exists in a highly 
competitive media environment and it has a wide range of programming aimed at a very 
broad audience range, which means we cover stories in a different way for different 
audiences. We would not expect Breakfast on BBC 1 or Five Live necessarily to have the 
same approach in terms of style and tone as the Ten O’clock News or the Today 
programme. As the audience research revealed, the audience has a clear understanding 
that the BBC’s coverage is segmented across different programmes and networks with 
different styles and approaches. The Panel acknowledged that the audience had ‘little 
difficulty in deciding what approach is appropriate in each strand of output’. Therefore it is 
vital that journalists marry an awareness of the issues raised in the report with an 
understanding of their audiences and in a context that the BBC must be impartial. 


In addition to calling for all journalists to have an understanding of how impartiality applies 
to business news, the Panel recommends monitoring output for impartiality. We plan to 
monitor specific periods of mainstream output twice a year, under the auspices of the 
Senior Editorial Adviser for BBC News, with the findings discussed at the Journalism 
Board and the News Editorial Board and disseminated to the relevant editors. As with the 
monitoring we already carry out of Europe and of Middle East coverage, the focus would 
primarily be mainstream output, though specialist business programming would also be 
considered: Today; Radio 4 1800; Ten O’clock News; Newsnight; News 24 (1700-1800); 
Sky News (1700-1800); ITV Late News; BBC News Online; Business Daily (BBC World 
Service) and Working Lunch. As time goes on, the monitoring of the specialists 
programmes could be varied to include, for example, The Money Programme, In Business, 
Weekend Business or editions of File on Four or Analysis. 

 

Increasing the number of business specialists at a senior level 

The panel calls for an increase in the number of business specialists at a senior level. The 
BBC believes this is unnecessary and, rather, better use can be made of the existing 
senior team. 

 

 

 


Addressing on-air breaches of impartiality 

Turning to the role of presenters the Panel had two main concerns: 


1. Presenters giving their personal opinion of products and companies 
2. Sycophantic or aggressive interviewing 


 

The panel listened to a large amount of Five Live coverage and noted that occasionally 
some presenters and reporters gave their personal views and preferences for particular 
commercial products. Although these were occasional it is clearly a breach of the BBC’s 
guidelines which require an objective discussion of products, preferably in the context of 
the marketplace and what comparable products are available. 

 

Editors will be reminded of the guidelines and how delicate a line we tread between 
allowing presenters to appear well rounded and ‘just like us’ and erring into product 
endorsement. 

 

The Panel also picked out a couple of examples of what it felt to be overly aggressive 
interviews. While we acknowledge that there have been some lapses in tone, the audience 
research on this is interesting as it reveals that audiences expect the BBC to challenge. 
Indeed the value of Today is partly about ‘getting at the facts’ and robust interviewing is 
seen as essential to that. And part of the value of Five Live lies in being an advocate for 
the listener – being ‘on my side’; the audience appears to allow the network some latitude 
in language to aid the debate and does not regard this as undermining impartiality. But 
clearly presenters do need to be conscious of the BBC’s guidelines, uphold them, and 
understand their responsibilities. 

 

Finally, the Panel suggests that extra care needs to be taken with programmes which 
report on controversial commercial issues and which may be seen to take a campaigning 
line. In particular it criticises Bank Robbery, The Money Programme broadcast in 
December 2006, for lacking impartiality in this regard: 

 

“In our view this programme crossed the line when it actively intervened in the campaign 
on which it was reporting. For example, the programme arranged for an activist from one 
part of the country to address a meeting elsewhere. The programme’s website also 
appeared not just to report on events but actively sought to influence them by providing a 
sample letter of complaint to send to the banks.” 

 

It is a pity that the Panel did not wish to interview the editor of The Money Programme on 
this subject as we were not able to explain our view that this edition did not break 
guidelines on impartiality. Indeed, the programme was made in close consultation with 
Editorial Policy. Firstly when the programme took Stephen Hone to Bovingdon we were 
reporting on his campaign and it should also be remembered that his campaign was an 
internet one and therefore accessible nationwide; the fact he lived in Plymouth was not 
relevant. Secondly, The Money Programme put up the “how-to-claim” letters as a public 
service – again approved by Editorial Policy. Although there were other sites with similar 
templates many were charging 20-50% of the claim as a fee. The page received a million 
hits in the day after transmission and now five months later continues to get around 40,000 
hits a day. 

 

That said, the BBC agrees with the wider point of principle made by the Panel, that care 
needs to be taken in the coverage of controversial commercial issues not to jeopardise our 
credentials as an impartial broadcaster. 


Key steps: 

 

• The findings of the report and the BBC response will be distributed to all journalists. 


 

• There will be monitoring of key mainstream output twice a year, with the results 
discussed at Journalism Board and BBC News Editorial Board. 


 

• Presenters will be reminded of the editorial guidelines on product prominence and 
the need to avoid off-the-cuff remarks which appear to give personal endorsement 
of individual commercial products. 


 

 

 

Whilst not covered by the Panel directly, in discussion at the Executive Board it was also 
noted how important innovative programme formats on mainstream channels like “The 
Apprentice” and “Dragon’s Den” can be in engaging a wide audience in business issues 
and entrepreneurialism. 

 

We intend to report back to the Trust on progress about the implementation of the 
recommendations in six months time in January 2008. 

 

 

 

 

July 2007