The negatives of 'Impartial' Reporting

Ok, so in a previous blog I mentioned in passing that the BBC's commitment to impartial reporting sometimes leads to a lower quality of reporting. I said this was because they have to take into account the views of all conflicting groups, regardless of the plausibility of their claims.

Well, I now have a concrete example of this.

The BBC reported that Ukrainian troops were retreating from Debaltseve. The use of the word 'retreat' in the title implied that they had somehow 'lost' the military conflict but the article, which you can read here, gave a very unclear account of the statements made by the Ukrainian politicians and President Putin.

In other words, it did not explicitly say whether it was a forced retreat, or a voluntary retreat aimed at creating goodwill to help the progress of the Minsk Agreement.

Contrast the BBC's style with this far more direct article from the Guardian. The subtitle of the article reads 'Retreat from contested railway hub connecting Donetsk and Luhansk marks strategic victory for rebels'. Given the evidence presented in the Guardian article and, interestingly, even in the BBC article, it is clear that the Ukrainians did indeed suffer a military defeat.

Now, it could be argued that the evidence presented in the BBC article allows people to reach their own conclusions given the evidence presented before them. However, the reality is that a lot of people do not have the time, inclination or knowledge necessary to undergo this type of analysis.

This isn't a case of the media giving its opinion on the quality of different parties' environmental policies, in which case the BBC should rightly remain impartial. This is a case of the media giving people correct information that they otherwise would not have.

The BBC needs to stop promoting impartiality at all costs and implement a policy of what I shall term 'informed impartiality'.

p.s. I promise my next post won't be about the BBC...