The BBC can’t help loving Obama, just as it can’t help encouraging recession

Observer

"In short: talk the economy up and it will begin to recover."

No it won't. These are real problems, quite independent of wishful thinking.

MikeF

I suspect Rod Liddle undeplays the degree to which a systemic 'left-liberal' bias informed the BBC's coverage of the US election. But that was a position shared with most of the other media. What was also noticeable, of course, was a near open contempt for George Bush, that was quite palpable and frankly shameful.

We will just have to see how they treat Barack Obama if and when they become disillusioned with him. The first downbeat headline about Obama is, in fact, in today's Independent.

The words of the Duke of Wellington seem apposite. He discouraged displays of adulation by his troops thus: "If you allow the men to cheer you one day, they will feel free to boo you on another." Now I'm sure the last thing the BBC, Channel 4 or The Guardian would want to do is vindicate the Iron Duke, but at some point they will.

Kenneth Perry

Excellent Rod! Excellent! When I was young we were taught (yes,we were) that our reaction to vivid newspaper stories should always be "Oh Yeah" & that the biggest crisis would be when the headlines were too big to print. Same goes for the Media today. Always

David Whitaker

The solution, as far as the bias of the BBC towards talking down the economy is concerned, would be to link the licence fee to an appropriate economic indicator - say, to the PSBR. There would then be an incentive to report in such a way that the economy improved, and a disincentive to the reverse.

Stephen Rothbart

Far be it for me to come to the aid of the media and the BBC which has been quite awful in its left wing anti-Semitic, anti Bush bias, but the story I think, was not that there were or were not 'green shoots' of recovery, but that it smacked of the old Labour trick of spinning their way out of a crisis.

First they blamed everyone but themselves for the crisis and now they have found that not so many people believe them, they are trying to say the crisis is beginning not to be such a big or long lasting one.

This is dangerous and wrong. People have no money and are in massive debt. Encouraging them to borrow even more to keep manufactures in business is a crazy policy.

For years and years the UK enjoyed a standard of living that was beyond their abiltity to pay for it.

Now the time has come to pay back the cost of that lifestyle, and neither this government nor I suspect, any other government, knows how to solve the mess.

But I suspect that cutting income taxes,and payroll taxes, and cutting back on a hugely bloated and largely useless public sector would go a long way to restoring confidence from international financiers that we at least understand the problem. Then they might start lending to us again.

Brown and Labour clearly don't understand this, and by trying to create optimism and encourage an already over borrowed nation to go out and borrow more, is frankly dangerous.

Zac Smith

The problem is that high finance is not smoke and mirrors. There were many people who foresaw the bursting of the bubble, and some who made a killing out of it. The economy is out of fuel.

There's a very useful note on UK house prices, predicting armageddon, written by RBS ABN Amro, which RBS would have done well to read. But there you go..

Zac Smith

The furore about Robert Peston was not that he had done wrong, but the banks and government had done wrong. It was clear that someone was leaking the details of the bail-out. If it were a city insider, it would have been to the FT. Only a politician or civil servant would think of the BBC. The Listing Rules compel companies to release announcements to the markets. The banks not only failed to announce, but lied to the market (a clear case of market abuse) and no action was taken by the FSA. One rule for the banks, another for everyone else.

Dwight Vandryver

The BBC was taught a lesson after the Hutton Enquiry, which resulted in the forced resignation of Greg Dyke. As history shows, Andrew Gilligan was right about the sexed-up dossier, but because Dyke backed Gilligan, both had to go. New management took over from Dyke, and it was made plain by Blair's government that "either support us, or forget the licence fee". So now, if the government implies that it prefers Obama to McCain, or that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, the BBC is going to amplify these views in order not to be confrontational again.
Yes, the economy is a matter of confidence, but now is not the time for "green shoots". For the first quarter of this year, the BBC, as Labour's mouthpiece, will be emphasizing the gloom. By summer, it will be saying that things have levelled off, and in the autumn, those "green shoots" will have reappeared. Thus by the time the election arrives, Labour will be seen to have saved Britain, if not the world. As always, politics is about perception management.

Andy

I'd forgive the appalling BBC their bias (I've long stopped watching it) if only I weren't forced to fund it in order to own a TV set to watch Channel 4 racing.

Edward

The other day I heard the presenter on "PM" saying "and now it's over to Niels for some more doom, gloom and misery". Typical of those in cushy, safe jobs (pace Ed Stourton) to find the whole thing wildly amusing.

John Thomas

Yes, the interesting and (only) hopeful thing on the horizon at the moment is the prospect of seeing the heaps of egg on the face of the Brazenly Biased Corporation (and the rest of the British/US media) when Obama begins to cease noticing banana skins, and the slips and slides become really serious - as they undoubtedly will. Will there be a sudden tipping-point when they ditch (and bitch) him? Or will they fall on their swords and go down with his ship [is that a mixed metaphor?], by defending him even more incredulously and hopelessly? If the latter, their total incredibility and bias will become undeniable and unavoidable, causing, in effect the demise of the wretched media as we (unfortunately) know it - and that would help us all.

Ian

If you think the BBC’s doomladen coverage of the downturn is bad Try the FT which is now edited by the Fourhorseman of the apocalypse. Funny none of these wise financial journalist predicted this catastrophe so the good news is that there is no reason to believe a word they say now. Also if Rod Little is fed up with ‘outright leftist bias’ on the BBC after the Obama inuagaration, I suggest he waits for the next Royal event to televised to check out BBC coverage so nauseating and sycophantic it would make the most hardened pro-monarchist UKIP supporter cringe.

Oliver Chettle

You argue that "if we think the economy is fine and display our belief through investment, then the economy will be pretty much fine in the end." But in recent years, when people thought the economy was fine they did not focus on investment, but on speculation and self-indulgence. The bubble had to burst: your approach would only have made it even bigger before it inevitably popped.

TDK

If, as you suggest, the BBC's false doom & gloom reporting is sufficient to keep the economy in recession then the corollary must also be true. When the economy was previously in boom, it was a bubble driven in large part by false reporting too.

TDK

"high finance is smoke and mirrors"

Well yes but it's not only smoke and mirrors. After the South Sea bubble burst no amount of talking it up would ever have recovered those share values. In other words there is difficulty in determining the exact value of an asset but that should blind us to recognising that there is a genuine value.

To take another example, a decade ago we saw the collapse of internet stocks. They had been vastly overvalued. That's the smoke and mirrors part. Upon collapse some still had worth. Amazon shares for example. However boo.com shares were rightly worthless.

How do you know that the BBC won't talk up today's equivalent of boo.com.

laura__fox

Rod, the recession is real, and will end only when property prices get back to a sustainable level. The sooner the better. In this case the best way the media could help is to tell property owners to accept it, and drop their asking prices fast, like 1% per week, until the sell it. This will bring new money into the economy (new mortgages).

Paul Worthington

How about a new law (New Labour can normally come up wíth these quite quickly.) Let's call it the "Accountability in the Casino Economy Act". Anybody professionally involved in the confidence building or dismantling that is vital to this economy who talks down the pound or property prices, or share prices, and who then buys low, and later sells high, should be convicted of robbery by maipulation and Economic Terrorism, and be sent to Guantanamo.

Owen

I'm amazed that no newspaper has established the very friendly relationship between Robert Peston and Ed Balls. Could this be where the "leaks" come from, one wonders?