14 April 2016
Panorama – The Cameron Coverage
The BBC has a duty to put things fairly.
by John Watson
Those who read my piece Tax Havens and Panorama in Shaw Sheet last week may remember that it ended with three questions about Panorama’s coverage of Ian Cameron’s offshore funds. They were:
- did they now realise that the fact that Ian Cameron set up his funds in Panama was not an indicator of tax avoidance? They would do, of course, if they had read the article;
- did they realised that when they put together their programme? and,
- if so, why didn’t they tell the viewers?
Interesting questions really, and as they go to the integrity of their reporting, it seemed only fair that Panorama should have the opportunity to comment. Getting in touch with Panorama isn’t easy. There is no telephone number on their contacts page and the BBC switchboard cannot put you through and claims that it can only communicate with them by email. So in the end I sent a copy of the article and an invitation to comment, marked for the attention of Richard Bilton, both by email and by post, recorded delivery. The hard copy was received by their man Ricky at 6:54 a.m. last Friday and I sat by my front door next day awaiting their reply. That (the awaiting that is, not the sitting by the front door) is still the position and I have begun to realise that the reply will never come.
What conclusions should one draw from that? Well, we know what conclusions Panorama themselves would have drawn because their party piece is to stick a microphone in the face of the person they are investigating and ask difficult questions of just this sort. Close your eyes and you will be able to hear it.
“Just one question. Just one question. Did you or did you not know the truth when you prepared your story?”
We know what happens then, too. The reply is “no comment” and you are left with the impression that that is because the person asked has been caught out, yet another shifty victim of the forensic abilities of Panorama. Sometimes of course the victim says that he has put his answer in a letter but you are not told what he said in it. The failure to reply to the question in the street says it all.
If I were to use a similar technique, Panorama would themselves stand convicted at the bar of innuendo. After all, they failed to comment when asked to do so. In fact I am not going to take that approach because, however much Panorama may regard themselves as being too important to answer questions, I don’t really believe that they would deliberately mislead the public by distorting a story for political ends. A failure to do proper research is far more likely.
If that is the case, it must have been a slightly awkward moment when they realised that their innuendos against Ian Cameron were off the mark. Only slightly awkward, of course, because the story was about Ian Cameron, who is dead, and dead men can neither reply nor sue. Still, they must have gone just a little pink as commentators began to point out that funds of this type were always structured offshore and that that did not indicate any tax avoidance by UK investors (yes, that’s right: “no tax avoidance” not “only legal tax avoidance”; if you find yourself wondering about that, read my article from last week which explains the technical position).
So what did our heroes at Panorama do then? Fess up? Admit they got it wrong? Abandon political commentary and go off to pick fruit? Reckon that if they shut up no one would call them to account? Well I’m not even going to give you the answer to that because in your heart of hearts you know it already.
Actually no one comes particularly well out of this affair. Mr Cameron’s statements building up to the acknowledgement that he had owned shares in Blairmore, were maladroit in the extreme and reinforced suspicion of a perfectly innocent investment. Attempts by his political enemies to criticise a gift he received from his mother are a transparent attempt to tap into the politics of envy which can only backfire before a public who, being much better people than their political representatives give them credit for, simply don’t care for that sort of thing. That leaves a shrieking, jabbering media circus demanding sight of tax returns, and of course suggesting that something must be done: a group of hyperactive terriers trying desperately to unearth lucrative rats.
It is all very 21st century, and the twitter-storm it has created has the smell of hysteria which pervades the cyber abuse visited on anyone who shows weakness or stands up for an unpopular point of view. “There is no smoke without fire, so post it”, “I don’t know quite what the facts are but I don’t like him/her, so post it”, “That’s what everyone else thinks, so I must post it too”. The debate in the social media is often closer to the witchhunts of the Zulu king, Chaka[i],than an attempt to communicate a reasoned analysis of the facts. So what can we take away from all this?
Twitter and Facebook are both relatively new and we are still learning how to deal with them. For the moment, however, it is fairly easy to start a media storm with a little innuendo and, once started, that storm will run and run as everyone jumps to the worst conclusions. It is therefore doubly important that the media do not throw petrol on the flames unfairly and are careful about the quality of their reporting. That means proper research and that when they get things wrong they diffuse the issue by correcting the impression they have given. A particularly high standard needs to be set by the BBC which, through its World Service, is the only source of relatively unbiased news for many struggling with oppression. If the well of truth is polluted there, what chance of light is there in the dark places of the earth?
Well, enough said, I suppose, but perhaps there is a final point to be made. When Mr Cameron disclosed his stake in Blairmore he chose to do so on ITV. Perhaps then he did not trust the BBC to handle the program fairly. The really sad thing is that, judging from Panorama’s performance in all this, he may have been right.
[i] For a sparkling, albeit fictional, account of one of these try “Nada The Lily” by Sir Henry Rider Haggard.
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