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Wintons week January 2004 Letter to the BBC Lee Rogers Editorial & Investigation Team BBC Information Television Centre Wood Lane London W12 7RJ Dear Lee, THE OECD IS NOT INDEPENDENT Lazy BBC reporters fell into government trap Your radio and TV news broadcast last week fell into a trap set by the government, although it didn’t have to try very hard to sucker your reporters. You will recall the report from the OECD, which included comment about the government’s handling of the economy in general, and its plan to introduce top-up fees for university education in particular. The government leapt on this little bonus in the propaganda war and said words to the effect – “look even the OECD, the independent think tank (or words to that effect) says that we are doing great things.” Your sleepy reporters on both radio and TV parroted that line. Even your economics correspondent Ewan wotsisname who should know better jumped in, swallowed the bait whole, and reported this good news from an apparent independent source about the British economy. But if anyone in your newsrooms did even the modicum of checking or engaging their brains, they would have discovered that the OECD is not independent. It is financed by the British government (and other governments). Its personnel are in reality on the government payroll. It is not by any stretch of the imagination independent. You did your viewers and listeners a disservice by this inept behaviour and let the government effectively pull the wool over our eyes. I telephone twice to point this out. You ignored me. Since I know your dopey reporters are too lazy to check out things like this, I’ve done it for them. I e mailed OECD press chief Nick Bray and he replied – a) the OECD is financed by its member countries from their public budgets b) its officials have to be nationals of the 30 member countries. They are recruited on a basis of merit. There are no national quotas, but the Organisation endeavours to maintain a roughly representative proportional ratio of nationalities. Employees are international civil servants, governed by the statutes set out in the OECD's founding Convention.... Maybe the next time you use OECD reports you can put the information into a context that makes clear that this is basically government information and in no way independent. Yours sincerely Neil Winton |