Hey Pesto! BBC’s biz ed confronts his north east critics

Did Robert Peston’s reporting of Northern Rock actually create the conditions for the crisis to get worse? That was the charge levelled against the BBC’s business editor when he travelled to Newcastle to meet people who lost jobs and investments as NR unravelled.

An item on last night’s Newsnight showed Peston’s obvious discomfort taking questions about it on regional TV and radio. He was accused of putting his ego over the public interest and causing the run on the Rock that saw people queuing up outside branches to withdraw savings.

While it’s often said that media commentators can talk us into recession, you have to feel sorry for the journalist here. No one can dispute the anxiety and stress caused to worried savers and staff of NR, but it wasn’t a single reporter who was responsible. NR failed because institutions stopped lending to it and the government was forced into a bailout. That itself led to anxiety, sure. But in the heat of reporting a fast moving story, you can’t withhold information because people might be anxious about it.

Peston made a good point. Whatever the government was going to do over the future of NR, the BBC reports and blogs were not ever going to be the deciding factor. A classic case of ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’.