News

The Warden, Andrew Dilnot, chaired a review of BBC content with journalist and former More or Less colleague Michael Blastland, as part of the organisation’s 10-point impartiality plan.

The full report is now available to read online: Review of the impartiality of BBC coverage of taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt.

A summary of key findings from the report:

“We found widespread appreciation for BBC coverage of tax, public spending,
government borrowing and debt, and plenty to applaud. But against a test of
broad impartiality, we also had concerns – about gaps and assumptions that put
impartiality at risk.
These weaknesses can lead to output that appears to favour particular political
positions, but curiously these lean left and right. That makes a charge of
systematic political bias in this area hard to sustain. So while the risks to
impartiality may look political, we think they need a better explanation, which is
that they’re really journalistic.”

The report has been widely covered in the media including in The Financial Times (by Visiting Fellow Stephen Bush), The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph as well as on the BBC website.