Banking on Peston...

There is one individual who has become synonymous with the banking crisis here in Britain, so much so that one politician has joked that in fact many people now think that he is the Governor of the Bank of England. Step aside Mervyn King, enter Mr Robert Peston.
Robert Peston is the BBC’s business editor and most definitely the face of Britain’s credit crunch. His profile has been raised so highly that it’s been asked has he actually become bigger than the BBC or ‘Aunty’ as the corporation is affectionately known.

This idea that individuals can become bigger than the organisation for which they work is something which has arisen in our guest lecture talks. Rick Waghorn, creator of MyFootballWriter.com believes he, to an extent, is an example of this. As the long standing and trusted news breaker of football news on the Norwich Evening News, he believes that since leaving the paper and creating the website he has managed to draw Norwich City supporters from the sports section of the newspaper and instead to access his website to get their teams latest football news.

During the financial meltdown Peston seemed to be on almost every BBC news bulletin. Love him or loathe him as a broadcaster with a rather excitable style of “ I have another extraordinary, exclusive” he was the man that everyone turned to in order to get the latest financial news. Overnight it seemed he had built up the trust of the people. Currently he has about six hundred and fifty thousand people reading his blog, which is another platform which Peston has successfully used to break stories. Although he is trusted and respected by his people, in no way can he be considered as being bigger than the BBC.

Indeed it can be argued that it is due to the reputation that the BBC has that Robert Peston managed to become such a success. If he was to up sticks and move to another channel I would hazard a guess that the BBC would find another suitable replacement, another personality that people would turn to and Robert Peston would become somewhat of a distant memory akin to the demise of Bradford & Bingley. It’s happened in the broadcasting world time and again, - Richard & Judy who!?

During his meteoric rise Peston has not escaped criticism.
Some have even gone as far as to say that he has taken the dangerous step from merely being a reporter and become an agent in the events that took place in the banking world. Peston’s reporting on Northern Rock caused the first run on a bank in 100 years. When he blogged the news that three of Britain’s biggest banks were in bail out talks with the government, a matter of the highest sensitivity, wasn’t he thinking about the impact his reporting might cause on Britain’s banking confidence? He was merely interested in savouring the opportunity to again show the world that he had the breaking news story.

When personalities get as big as Peston I think it becomes somewhat of a problem. In an interview in the Panorama Special: 'the year Britain’s bubble burst' it was interesting to see Peston admit that he had not anticipated the reaction to the story he broke on Northern Rock.

As a journalist should he not have considered the implications and the impact it would have on the public at large? I am in no way condemning him but do feel that this is verging on irresponsible journalism. On the flip side it is comforting to be reassured that Peston is not making these editorial judgements alone and that everything, blogs included are checked by a senior editor before being published. It probably is safe to say that within his own niche of financial news Robert Peston has managed to develop his own brand, if a brand is a name we associate instantly with something or someone. But this seems to me to be what inevitably happens. Jeremy Clarkson = the guru of British motoring or Jamie Oliver = school dinners. Branding shows success both for the individual and the corporation for which they work. I don’t believe it makes them bigger than the corporation it just gives them more authority to speak on their topic.

In the New Year the treasury select committee will be looking at the role the media played in the financial crisis. It’ll be interesting to see how much of the inquiry is centred upon ‘Aunty’s’ man of the moment - Mr Robert Peston.