Mushroom v BBC Continues

I feel as though I am beating my head against a brick wall and I intend to take matters further with Ofcom. Meantime, here is my draft reply to the BBC Executive Complaints Unit - any suggestions from readers would be very welcome?

BBC NEWS (10PM) 14 FEBRUARY 2018

Thank you for your letter dated 18 June 2018. Your summary rejection of my complaint was expected and I now intend to refer my case to Ofcom.

I am grateful that you have not returned to the red herring of the Foreign Secretary’s remarks but surprised you still relate back to the “is 40% the same as nearly half” argument which you have previously conceded. Allow me, therefore, a similar indulgence to point out that you could have said, with equal precision, “nearly 60% of our exports go to non-EU countries,” but you chose not to make your point this way. The impartial will draw their own inference.

You admit that your intention was to elucidate a current trend of comparative economic performance. You then used your “current trend” to leave the viewer with the impression that, in future, the UK’s economic performance would continue to diverge, negatively, from that of the EU. You now claim that your choice of data points to support your conclusion “seems to you an eminently reasonable choice.”  Unfortunately, believing something to be reasonable does not, necessarily, make it so, as I argue below.

My case is, which you appear unwilling to address, is that the economic facts did not support your conclusion.  Indeed, in your desire to create an editorial impression, you deceptively manipulated data and graphical representations. Specifically, by ignoring contrary information (which must have been available to you) and exaggerating the scale of your graphical representation, to “elucidate your current trend,” you left your viewers with the misleading impression that leaving the EU would result in an increasing disparity of economic growth over future years. The facts do not support this scare-mongering generalisation.  Firstly, the economic truth is that the recent (last year or two) outperformance of the rest of the EU over the UK in isolation is insignificant in the larger picture of the UK’s outperformance of the rest of the EU during the whole period since 2007/8 – the “eminently reasonable” period you chose to make your editorial point. Secondly, there are clear but temporary reasons for the recent apparent EU surge. The Bank of England has done a great deal to tighten money and credit since 2017, attempting to return to more normal conditions, and it is not surprising that the UK economy has slowed accordingly. Similar action is not being pursued in the Eurozone where zero interest rates and vast tranches of quantitative easing continue to provide a temporary, but unsustainable, stimulus to those economies. You did not mention this vital caveat.  Moreover, German growth forecasts have just been slashed by about 25% - a trend which was already apparent to those who wished to see it at the time of your broadcast. Finally, Ahmed resorted to exaggerating the scale of the graphic to inflate the impression of divergence. In sum, neither your argument nor your visual aids justified the impression gave.

As I have said, believing something to be reasonable does not make it so, no matter how much the BBC would wish it to be compatible with their mental model of the circumstances.  Herein, it seems to me, lies the BBC problem of being objective in debates where an unconscious bias has already decided the “right” answer.