I was irked this morning by the way the BBC Radio 4 Today programme was reporting the changes in pesticide regulations. It was the way that the report was phrased that particularly annoyed me, it was as if only British farmers would be affected by these changes in regulations, rather than farmers across the whole EU. This struck me that this sort of biased reporting by the British media that is driving a lot of the narrow minded xenophobic attitudes which appear to be becoming more prevalent in this country.

Maybe I am being over pedantic, but had they reported this change in regulations as being something that will have an impact across the whole EU (which they will) and then go on to look at a local example of how it would affect a British farmer, it would have come across as a far less biased and anti European. It is also notable that there has been very little discussion or analysis of why the regulations are changing, it is merely reported as a random decision made by some distant “EU bureaucrats” with no input from people across Europe.

This is far from the truth, these changes in the regulations on pesticides have not been driven by some monolithic super state bureaucracy, but (rightly or wrongly) by a grass roots campaign across Europe, run largely by Greenpeace. Therefore, they are due to democratic pressure from across Europe, with the agreement of elected representatives from across Europe, and yes our Government did have a say in it. Whether there has truly been an open, honest and fully informed debate over the issue around the use of pesticide, is another matter (and one for another blog post).

The point is that words matter, and clear unbiased reporting matters in a democracy. Here in is the strength and the weakness of democracy, in order for democracy to work it is needs and informed and engaged citizens. For citizens to be well informed they need to be educated and have access to enough information to be able to have a have an informed debate on the issues before decisions are made.

In the EU in order to have a common market there is a need to have a uniform set of regulations across the whole market. Without a common set of regulations there can be no common market. There are those who will insist that there should be no regulation of markets, but the evidence shows that unregulated markets are less efficient and frequently crash, as fraud takes over.

Ultimately Britain has benefited from being a part of the EU and having access to the rest of Europe. However, if Britain is to remain a part of the EU, British citizens need to be better informed about what is happening in the rest of Europe, and what their Government is doing in their name. For this to happen we need clear unbiased reporting and sadly that is something which we getting less and less from the British media.