After Guido revealed that Verify managed to decrease its staff while increasing the cost of employing the ones it had left, the BBC’s crack fact-checking team is expanding again. Oh boy…
The BBC has put up a new ad for an “Impact Producer” on the Verify team – you’ll need a “proven track record of producing on-the-day and impactful journalism for TV and Digital output.” Or at least one as impressive as Marianna Spring’s…
For a salary of up to £62,000 – well above the £29-39,000 that other junior hires at the BBC can expect – the corporation is “happy to discuss flexible working” with its new producer. Seeing as the 61-strong team with combined salary costs of £3.2 million has only managed to produce four stories in the last week you’d think they’d want their new hire in the office. Don’t count on the reporting getting any better…
Back in April Guido revealed that the BBC’s beleaguered “fact-checking” service Verify employed a whopping 63 people with combined salary of £3.2 million. As Guido calculated in the summer its staff were therefore being paid approximately £13,675 per article produced. Nice for some…
It can now be revealed that after months of debunked reporting and observed decreases in article production BBC Verify has actually managed to increase its staff costs by £100,000. Despite the fact that two members of staff have been dropped…
A Guido FOI has established that 61 people with costs of £3.3 million now form the Verify team. Meanwhile, the BBC stoutly refuses to reveal any details of expense costs claimed by its Verify employees, like gratuitous trips to the USA, on the grounds that it has dispensation to protect information relating to “art, journalism or literature.” In many ways Verify does look like some kind of bizarre art project…
BBC Verify is out defending itself after its pro-farm tax bias and poor reporting quality attracted ridicule. The main post on its website is a long justification for its reporting on the IHT changes. Funnily enough it’s not promoting this one on social media…
The article goes through various differing positions held by stakeholders – the government and farming groups. The very first think tank the Verify team consults for comment happens to be one CenTax. Co-conspirators will remember that one…
“The CenTax think tank has studied the impact of APR and BPR reliefs.
CenTax’s co-director Arun Advani argues that the government’s estimates of the number of agricultural estates likely to be affected by the capping of both reliefs at £1m combined – up to 520 estates a year – seems reasonable.”
Advani is then extensively quoted. What Verify makes no mention of is that his reports on APR and inheritance tax have formed the basis of Reeves’ policy. This has been admitted by the Treasury…
There is no mention of the fact that Advani has pushed for state expropriation of farmland that is sold as a result of APR’s removal. Readers are unaware from the article that Advani, along with CenTax co-director Andy Summers, is one of three “wealth tax commissioners” who consistently push for huge tax hikes. Using CenTax and think tanks like the IFS as vehicles to do so…
Advani is close to the government – he has boasted that Labour is “genuinely listening” to him and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray was the keynote speaker at a parliamentary reception to officially launch CenTax. No mention of that from the BBC either…
Verify fronted an “independent” expert who is actually senior Labour activist to defend the Treasury in its previous coverage of the Farm Tax and quietly changed its article once under scrutiny. Seeing as their team confuses hectares for acres they probably aren’t the place to go to for reasoned coverage of this policy…
Starmer used BBC Verify last night to support the government’s claim that only 500 estates annually will be affected by Labour’s farm tax:
“All of you can check out what that means in terms of impact, I think the BBC has already done it…It means the vast majority of farms are unaffected by this, and I think it’s just important we keep making that clear.”
In its video yesterday BBC Verify said that for 70,000 farms to be hit, as the CLA claims, “is almost certainly an overestimate” and the “true share of farms affected going forward is likely to be much closer to the Treasury estimates.” Making the same error as the Treasury – using old figures and only accounting for one half of the capped threshold…
Guido noticed that Verify has also been quietly making changes to its main farm tax “fact-check.” It gets worse than confusing hectares for acres…
After Guido pointed out that Verify refers to senior Labour activist Dan Neidle an “independent tax expert” the article has been quietly changed to call him “founder of the independent Tax Policy Associates.” More egregiously Verify has completely cut Neidle’s outlandish claim that “the number of actual farms affected is likely to be below 500 per year” – which just links to one of his tweets. No notification of the update – and still no reference to Neidle’s partisan activism…
BBC Verify’s main ‘fact-checking’ article on Reeves’ new farm tax this month deployed typical balance by quoting “independent tax expert” and senior Labour activist Dan Neidle to cast aspersions on claims the tax will be highly damaging to a high number of family farms. Turns out the Verify team can’t even get the very basics of farming right…
Verify has been forced to update its fact-check after it confused hectares for acres. One acre is 0.4 hectares, as anyone with any countryside experience would know…
By calculating with hectares and not acres the BBC Verify would be wildly inaccurate with its statistics. 63 people with combined salary costs of a whopping £3.2 million…
Mail commentator Dan Hodges – who was kind to Burnham during the Makerfield campaign – now concludes: “The truth is Andy Burnham doesn’t have a 10 year plan. He’s barely got a 10 week plan.“
