Politics Live, BBC Two, 31 October 2024

Complaint

The programme included an interview with a speaker introduced as representing “the free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs”.   A listener complained that the programme failed to make clear that the IEA does not disclose the sources of its funding.  The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s guidelines on impartiality, which say of such organisations as think tanks “Appropriate information about their affiliations, funding and particular viewpoints should be made available to the audience, when relevant to the context”.


Outcome

The views expressed by the speaker were entirely consistent with what listeners would have been led to expect from the description “free market think tank”, and the ECU saw nothing in the context which would have made it relevant to mention that the IEA does not disclose the sources of its funding.

Not upheld