BBC attacks John Humphrys for telling the TRUTH on welfare: Corporation bosses accused of Left-wing bias after criticising respected Today presenter

BBC Trust looks at TV show about Government’s welfare reforms



Written and fronted by Radio 4 Today presenter John Humphrys



Trust concludes it breached rules on impartiality and accuracy

Criticises programme for suggesting welfare state was in crisis

Iain Duncan Smith says show was 'thoughtful' and 'intelligent'



Ruling: The BBC Trust concluded that the TV show written and fronted by presenter John Humphrys, breached rules on impartiality and accuracy

The BBC was accused of ‘blatant Left-wing bias’ after bosses attacked one of their most respected journalists for a programme exposing the truth about the bloated welfare state.

The BBC Trust concluded that the TV show examining the Government’s welfare reforms, written and fronted by Radio 4 Today presenter John Humphrys, breached rules on impartiality and accuracy.

The ruling criticised the programme for suggesting the welfare state was in crisis and that there was a dependency culture in which some claimants preferred life on benefits to working.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith reacted angrily to the ruling, telling the Daily Mail last night that the programme had been ‘thoughtful’ and ‘intelligent’.

He contrasted it to most of the corporation’s ‘biased’ and negative coverage of his attempts to cut the benefits bill, the subject of frequent complaints by the Government.

The programme, The Future of the Welfare State, featured Mr Humphrys going back to his working-class birthplace in Cardiff, where one in four working-age people is on some form of welfare handout.

The BBC2 production suggested Britain was going through an ‘age of entitlement’, and featured claimants, including a couple on £1,600 of benefits a month, who thought ‘living on benefits an acceptable lifestyle’.

In a newspaper article to accompany the programme, Mr Humphrys wrote about evidence of a ‘dependency culture that has grown steadily over the past year’ and a ‘sense that the State owes us a living’.

But following a complaint from a poverty charity and an unnamed individual, the BBC Trust launched an inquiry into the documentary.

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Unimpressed: Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith reacted angrily to the ruling, telling the Daily Mail last night that the programme had been 'thoughtful' and 'intelligent'

The Trust, which governs the broadcaster, chided the programme-makers for not backing up assertions with statistics.

It complained that viewers would have concluded that the Government was targeting benefits that were responsible for leaving the ‘welfare state in crisis’ and creating the impression that ‘despite the anecdotal testimonies of jobseekers heard in the programme that there was [a] healthy supply of jobs’ that claimants could have taken.

COMMENT

This parody-defying ruling from the BBC Trust puts beyond question that it is unfit for its role of guarding against bias. More

The Trust warned that ‘judgments reached or observations made are still required to be based on the evidence and should not give the appearance of presenting a personal view on a controversial subject’.

Its report claimed that because of ‘the absence of sufficient complementary statistical information to underpin contributors’ accounts, viewers were left unable to reach an informed opinion and the accuracy guidelines had been breached’.

Broadcast: The Future of the Welfare State featured Mr Humphrys going back to his working-class birthplace in Cardiff, where one in four of working-age people are on some form of welfare handout

Probe: Following a complaint from a poverty charity and an unnamed individual, the BBC Trust launched an inquiry into the documentary presented by Mr Humphrys

Mr Duncan Smith condemned the ruling, complaining about the corporation’s coverage of a court ruling yesterday against opponents of cuts to housing benefit to people in social housing with spare bedrooms.

'I watched John’s programme and found it to be thoughtful, intelligent and quite clearly borne out of the real-life experience of the individuals he encountered' Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary

Coalition MPs were dismayed when the BBC devoted almost half an hour of a radio phone-in programme with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to complaints about what Labour has misleadingly called a ‘bedroom tax’.

Presenters read out messages from listeners saying Mr Clegg was ‘finished as an MP’ and condemning the coalition as a ‘betrayal’, and put through a caller who asked how he slept at night.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said: ‘We are now in the disappointing position where we are frequently compelled to complain to the BBC about the biased nature of their reporting of government reforms.

THE FIVE TRUSTEES WHO WERE QUICK TO CONDEMN

The editorial standards committee which condemned John Humphrys’ programme comprises five BBC trustees:

David Liddiment : Was head of BBC entertainment from 1993 to 1995 – overseeing the last 18 months of Jimmy Savile’s Jim’ll Fix It show. He went on to take a senior job at ITV before building his multi-million-pound fortune by establishing the UK’s largest independent TV production company All3Media, which turns over £500million a year thanks to programmes including The White Queen.

Richard Ayre : A long-term BBC man who started at the corporation as a news trainee and rose to become Deputy Chief Executive of News. Among his more controversial acts was his support for the 1995 Panorama programme in which Martin Bashir interviewed Princess Diana about the breakdown of her marriage. He went on to become a founder member of the Food Standards Agency.

Sonita Alleyne : Named as one of the ‘100 most powerful black Britons’, she has built up a multi-million-pound fortune through her role as a founder and director of the UK’s largest independent radio production firm Somethin’ Else. Appointed an OBE for services to broadcasting, she sat on the board of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as the 2012 Olympics bid was mounted.

Bill Matthews : With a background in both business and ‘public service’ rather than broadcasting, he is the BBC trustee for Scotland. Possibly best known for being chairman of NHS National Services Scotland, he is also on the boards of Network Rail, the Security Industry Authority and the Scottish Police Services Authority. Previously an executive in engineering firms.

Alison Hastings : A former editor of the Newcastle Chronicle evening newspaper, she has since established a media consultancy which has taken on roles including advising Liverpool’s Labour city council. She lives in Birkenhead, Merseyside, with her husband David Fleming, a museums director, and their five children. Pushed hard for the BBC’s controversial and costly move north to Salford.



‘Watching the reporting today about the Government winning a High Court judgment on the spare room subsidy has once again left me absolutely staggered at the blatant Left-wing bias within the coverage.



'It was as if the BBC thought the High Court had made a terrible decision, instead of effectively upholding the status quo. It’s almost an insult to the courts.

‘And yet here we have the BBC Trust criticising John Humphrys – one of the organisation’s most lauded and respected journalists.

'I watched John’s programme and found it to be thoughtful, intelligent and quite clearly borne out of the real-life experience of the individuals he encountered.

‘John is undoubtedly a robust broadcaster, as I have encountered many times myself, and I don’t know anybody who thinks he is in any way biased.’

Mr Humphrys was unavailable for comment.



But one BBC source said the ruling was a telling indication of how the corporation reacts ‘when one of its own dares to suggest this was not precisely what [founder of the welfare state William] Beveridge might have intended’.

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, which complained about the programme, said: ‘These are major issues of public interest deserving of robust debate and challenging media coverage but which, crucially, also require journalists to speak truth to power, rather than speak untruths about the powerless.

‘If they don’t, television audiences and the public at large will continue to be denied the debate they deserve.

‘This programme, like too many media stories, failed the public by swallowing wholesale the evidence-free myth of a “dependency culture” in which unemployment and rising benefit spending is the fault of the unemployed.’

A BBC Trust spokesman said: ‘A number of allegations were made about the programme, and we have not upheld all of these. We have not upheld a complaint suggesting John Humphrys was personally conflating opinion with objective facts.

‘The Trust considers each complaint with considerable care and on the basis of what was broadcast. In this case we found no evidence that The Future State of Welfare was advocating government reforms and we judged John Humphrys’ presentation to have been based on professional judgment, not personal opinion.

‘Although we found that the programme did include an appropriately wide range of voices, some statistics were omitted which we believed ought to have been included to help viewers to reach an informed opinion.’

The spokesman added: ‘We are satisfied that our coverage of today’s housing benefit ruling was fair, balanced and impartial.’

Bias? No, he was just telling the truth about welfare... and here's the proof



John Humphrys’ programme The Future State of Welfare - shown on BBC2 in October 2011 - would have seemed to most viewers a typically even-handed documentary about the vicious cycle of benefit dependency. Here is a taste of what it said:

Beginning with a visit to his native Wales, Humphrys said: ‘This is where I was brought up – Splott in Cardiff. Poor, working-class district. Respectable poor, I suppose you could say. This is the house where I was born.

‘In those days everybody, if they could, was expected to work. And they did. We knew only one family where the father did not work, never had a job, and he was regarded as a pariah. It was a mark of shame.



‘Today, one in four of the working-age people in this area is on some form of benefit.’



On the programme: Among the interviewees was Pat Dale (centre right) from Cardiff, who appeared resigned to a life on benefits, saying she would be 'working for nothing' if she took a job on the minimum wage

Later in the programme Humphrys spoke to benefit claimants who risked losing out under proposed reforms.



Among the interviewees was Pat Dale from Cardiff, who appeared resigned to a life on benefits, saying she would be ‘working for nothing’ if she took a job on the minimum wage.

Humphrys observed: ‘Obviously she sees herself as a victim, and maybe she’s right. A victim of the benefits system, the benefits culture that we have created over the decades.’

'This is where I was brought up – Splott in Cardiff. Poor, working-class district. Respectable poor, I suppose you could say' John Humphrys

In Middlesbrough he had the following exchange with benefit claimant Steve Brown:



Brown: ‘I wanna work but I can’t afford the minimum wage work.’



Humphrys: ‘You don’t think that working is better than not working, whatever the financial outcome?’



Brown: ‘No, no, no, no not at all, like, no. I don’t wanna be going out to work for 40 hours and missing my kids, if I’m only going to receive a few quid extra for it, do you understand? I’m missing my kids growing up. I can’t see how the minimum wage is, is good enough, that’s all.’



Humphrys: ‘Well, a lot of people do work for the minimum wage.’



Brown: ‘Well, the way it worked out for me, like I say, it was just not worth going to work for it.’

Humphrys (voice-over): ‘So what Steve Brown has done is make a straightforward calculation – go out to work for very little extra, or stay home and enjoy his children. He’s chosen the latter. And that presents politicians with a massive dilemma.’

Feature: Mr Humphrys went to Cardiff, where one in four working-age people is on a welfare handout

Humphrys then spoke to the Mayor of Middlesbrough.



The presenter said: ‘One in ten are out of work here, the highest unemployment rate in the country. You might think the reason for that is simple: no jobs. But talk to the Mayor of Middlesbrough, Ray Mallon, you get a very different explanation.



Mr Mallon: ‘When you look at Middlesbrough, out of an 88,000 working population, 18,000 people are on some form of benefit. I mean, 18,000 people out of an 88,000 working population on benefits, that’s a big issue.



'A lot of people are trapped on benefits. They’re worse off by going into work and that simply isn’t right' Gavin Pool, Centre for Social Justice



'At the moment you’ve got a large cohort of people that are not even applying for jobs.



‘This just isn’t on. It’s almost a lack of hope, it’s almost a lack of engagement – that the State have looked after us, and they’ll continue to do it.’



For balance, the programme featured a strong attack on welfare cutbacks, with Humphrys travelling to New York to meet Aine Duggan at the New York Food Bank, who talked of ‘the atrocity of welfare reform’.



Centre for Social Justice executive director Gavin Pool said: ‘I think there’s something wrong with a system that enables part of the population who could work, to choose the option to live life on benefits.



'A lot of people are trapped on benefits. They’re worse off by going into work and that simply isn’t right.’

Prof Paul Gregg of Bristol University said: ‘We are now in a situation where the support of a child, in terms of the cash payments received, is broadly equivalent to that for an adult.

