Finally someone takes the fight to the BBC's Stephanie '2 Eds' Flanders

The Mail reports that:

'A major row erupted after a Cabinet Minister accused BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders of showing a pro-Labour bias by undermining the Government’s jobs claims. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has made a formal complaint to the BBC about its ‘carping and moaning’. He singled out Ms Flanders over her coverage of figures that showed unemployment and welfare handouts are falling in spite of the slump. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, he claimed that the BBC backs the economic stance of Labour leader Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and seizes every chance to ‘dump on the Government’. And he accused influential Ms Flanders of ‘pouring cold water’ over the rise in employment and ‘peeing all over’ British business. He said the BBC had ‘set up’ an interview with a self-employed nurse who agreed when Ms Flanders suggested that she was among the ‘hidden unemployed’. Last week’s recession-defying leap in jobs in the three months to June surprised experts. Mr Duncan Smith claimed it was evidence that Government policies are working. He was furious when Ms Flanders questioned the figures in the BBC Six O’Clock and Ten O’Clock TV news on Wednesday – and did not screen an interview with him proclaiming the Coalition’s success. On screen, she said: ‘Britain’s jobs numbers are a puzzle which keeps getting harder to solve. Of course it’s good news .  .  . but it is not necessarily good news for us or the Chancellor if we are needing more people as a country to make less stuff.’ Ms Flanders claimed ‘hidden unemployment’ could be ‘lurking behind the statistics’. She interviewed nurse Jacqui Connell, who was made redundant last year and is now self-employed, taking her off the dole register. Ms Connell agreed: ‘I do think I’m a hidden figure.’ Ms Flanders added that ‘many in the City’ expected dole queues to rise over the coming months.'

The Mail report the BBC's defence, which is what you would expect. The Mail also report some background on Stephanie Flanders:

'Ms Flanders, 44, is the daughter of British actor and comic singer Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann fame. She attended the fee-paying St Paul’s Girls’ School in London and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. She lives with long-term partner John Arlidge and their two children in a £1 million West London home.'

Oddly they omit some rather relevant information about Stephanie Flanders' background. Some information that I have reported before:

'Stephanie Flanders earned her nickname as Wikipedia delicately put it 'She previously dated Ed Balls and Ed Miliband who went on to become Shadow Chancellor and leader of the Labour Party respectively.' What is less well known about the BBC's economics editor is that she also worked as a speechwriter and adviser to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers in 1997. You will not be surprised to learn that Mr Summers was the United States Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton. So in summary Stephanie Flanders previously dated two men who went on to be the two leading figures in the Labour party and then went on to work for a US Democrat administration.'

As I blogged only last week:

'I am not saying that Stephanie Flanders is biased in favour of the British Labour party and against the British Conservative party. I am not saying that Stephanie Flanders is biased in favour of the US Democrat party and against the US Republican party. Many would say that she is guilty of both these types of bias, what do you think? However I do think that the BBC, if they insist on presenting Stephanie Flanders as their unbiased economics editor should at least subtitle her reports with a health warning as to her background.'