IMPARTIALITY REVIEW OF BUSINESS NEWS 1. TERMS OF REFERENCE “To assess the impartiality of BBC news and factual coverage of business with particular regard to accuracy, context, independence and bias, actual or perceived; to assess whether the BBC portrays a fair and balanced picture of the world of business and of its impact on society more generally; to focus primarily on business coverage in mainstream output though specialist business programming should also be considered; and to make recommendations to the BBC Trust for improvements where necessary.” 2. SCOPE Primarily news programming – selected television, radio and online output with the main focus on business reporting in mainstream news. However, there will also be some reference to the BBC’s specialist business news programmes and other factual programmes devoted to business. 3. THE PANEL Sir Alan Budd (Chair) Alan Budd has been Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford since 1999. Before that he was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. From 1991 to 1997 he was Chief Economic Adviser to H M Treasury and Head of the Government Economic Service. He was a member of the Securities and Investments Board and was Group Economic Adviser to Barclays Bank. He was Deputy Chairman of the Economic Policy Committee of the OECD. He was a founder member of the UK-Japan 2000 Group. He is currently a Senior Adviser to Credit-Suisse, a member of the Advisory Board of London Economics, a consultant to the G8 Group, New York, an executive editor of World Economics and a governor of the National Institute. Stephen Jukes Stephen Jukes is head of Bournemouth University's Media School. Before taking up his appointment in February 2005 he was a visiting scholar at Green College, Oxford. Stephen Jukes has spent much of his working career as a foreign correspondent at the international news agency Reuters, specialising in foreign policy, business and international monetary affairs. In his final position there he oversaw news operations worldwide and was also responsible for legal, regulatory and ethical affairs. He also ran Reuters book publishing programme, producing more than 10 titles on finance and current affairs. Christopher Bones Chris Bones was appointed Principal of Henley Management College on 1st January 2005. Chris was previously Group Organisation Effectiveness and Development Director for Cadbury Schweppes, taking responsibility for Executive Education and Development Culture, Communications, Change, Knowledge Management and Capability Development. In his 22 years in business Chris has worked for Shell, Diageo (both in GrandMet and Guinness) and Cadbury Schweppes. He started in industrial relations, working on the UK’s largest oil refinery and progressing through management teams in brewing, retailing and property to Board roles covering Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific. He has significant international business experience and a reputation as a leading practitioner in executive education and development, change and HR strategy. He is a Board member of the Skills for Government, the sector skills council for the Civil Service. Barbara Stocking Barbara Stocking has been Director of Oxfam GB since May 2001. During the last 4 years, Barbara has led Oxfam’s response to humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, for the Tsunami and the Pakistan Earthquake. Previously a member of the top management team of the National Health Service, in her eight years with the NHS, Barbara worked as regional director and most recently as Director of the Modernisation Agency, charged with modernising the NHS. Barbara has broad experience of healthcare systems, policy and practice, including periods at the National Academy of Sciences in the USA and with the World Health Organisation in West Africa. Professor John Naughton John Naughton is Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University and Director of the Faculty of Technology's Relevant Knowledge project. He also is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge where he is Director of the College’s Press Fellowship Programme. He has been a weekly columnist on the Observer since 1987 and is now the paper’s Internet commentator. He was for nine years the paper's Television Critic, and won the Critic of the Year Award three times during his tenure. He was for many years the non-executive chairman of One World International, and the Director of the Ndiyo Project, a not-for-profit enterprise which has devised a nonproprietary IT infrastructure for small organisations and developing countries. He is a member of the Public Advisory Board of iCreative Commons UK and was a member of the working group which drafted the Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property. A Brief History of the Future, his best-selling book on the development and significance of the Internet, is published in the UK by Phoenix and in the US by Overlook Press. Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson Tanni Grey-Thompson is Britain’s best-known Paralympic athlete, having performed at world-class level in distances ranging from 100m to the marathon. She has 16 Paralympic medals including 11 golds. Tanni has been active in the administration, management and politics of sport. She gives talks on motivation to business leaders and has occasionally presented radio and television programmes. The panel will review output, invite written submissions from interested organisations and call witnesses who may include BBC staff. It will study commissioned research when results become available. It will also take account of complaints and comments from licence-payers. 4. RESEARCH Content Analysis Research Analysis of content research was put out to tender to institutions with proven track records of media research. Leeds University was selected to carry out this research. Content analysis for news began in September 2006. It will review news output from September 2006 to January 2007. It will review current affairs output from January to December 2006. Audience Research Audience research was also put out to tender to market research organisations. The Blinc Partnership was selected to carry out this work. Audience attitudes and perceptions will be assessed through focus groups and a telephone survey to be carried out in the autumn of 2006. 5. TIMING The panel will begin work at the end of November 2006. The news coverage it will review is likely to cover the period from November 2006 to March 2007. Research results will be available for the panel in February 2007. The final report will be delivered to the Trust in the spring of 2007. 6. WRITTEN SUBMISSIONS The panel will welcome written submissions from any organisation or individual. The deadline for submissions is proposed to be 12th January 2007. In addition, to ensure a wide cross-section of opinion is considered by the panel, some representative organisations will be contacted and actively invited to submit their views by giving written evidence, or oral evidence over two days in February 2007. These will include organisations representing the interests of a wide range of businesses, individual CEOs of large, medium and small businesses, trade unions and other organisations concerned with workplace issues, consumer groups and business schools.