The Institute of Economic Affairs has lost a two-year battle with LBC radio presenter James O’Brien over claims the registered charity is a politically motivated lobbying organisation funded by “dark money”.
The IEA complained to media regulator Ofcom that the radio station had made a series of inaccurate and unfair suggestions that the organisation is a professional lobby group of “questionable provenance, with dubious ideas and validity” staffed by people who are not proper experts on their topic.
The free market thinktank particularly objected to O’Brien’s dismissive description of an IEA representative as “some Herbert”, as well as guest Peter Geoghegan’s suggestion that the IEA was “politically biased” during a discussion on the funding of thinktanks.
O’Brien also described the organisation as a “hard-right lobby group for vested interests of big business, fossil fuels, tobacco, junk food” and urged newspapers to stop quoting from an organisation that is registered as “as an educational charity because they don’t reveal who funds them”.
The thinktank said that in reality it was the victim of smear campaign that is politically motivated, and any implication the organisation was engaged in illegal lobbying on behalf of corporations is false.
The IEA, which was founded in 1955 to promote free market ideology and oppose government regulation, has repeatedly failed to reveal its funders. During the negotiations over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU it received substantial attention for its interventions, with IEA boss Mark Littlewood filmed by an undercover reporter as saying it was “in the Brexit influencing game” and offering to arrange meetings with ministers.
In February 2019 the Charity Commission formally warned the IEA about using its resources to campaign for a hard Brexit. This warning was withdrawn several months later after the thinktank agreed to work with the Charity Commission to improve its processes after “a breach of charity law”.
After a lengthy investigation, the media regulator Ofcom has now cleared LBC of any wrongdoing over the discussions on O’Brien’s shows, which took place in early 2019. The regulator disagreed with the IEA’s interpretation of many of the comments and said that facts discussed on the programmes were not distorted.
The IEA complained that it had not been offered a right to respond to the allegations. However, Ofcom said this was not necessary given the programmes were not unfair to the IEA.
It also noted that O’Brien had indeed invited the organisation on air when he said: “I will be happy to offer a full right of reply to anybody who has just been mentioned. As long as they tell me who funds them.”
Ofcom concluded that no reasonable listener could consider the final line to be serious, so it constituted a serious offer.
