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Join Gabby Logan every week as she speaks to some familiar faces about their relationship with money, the financial lessons they've learned on the road to professional success, and how they're investing for their family's future.
Visit ii.co.uk for more investing ideas and information.
Gabby Logan: Hi, I’m Gabby Logan and this is The ii Family Money Show. In each episode, I speak to a familiar face about the role money has played in their family life and professional success. This time, I’m joined by BBC journalist and presenter, Martine Croxall.
Since joining BBC News in 2001, Martine has covered almost all the major news stories that have happened since, including the Iraq war, the financial crash in 2008 and the death of Prince Philip. As well as her work covering the news, she’s also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Celebrity Mastermind champion. In our conversation, she tells me what she learned working in her parents’ textiles company, growing up in Leicestershire, how she overcame her childhood shyness to become a TV broadcaster and who she imagines she’s speaking to when she’s presenting the news.
Hi, Martine. It’s really good to see you, and thank you so much for coming on The ii Family Money podcast.
Martine Croxall: It’s a pleasure.
Gabby Logan: Let’s go right back to your childhood and what you learnt about money from your parents and family life, if anything. Were you aware of how wealthy they were or how things might have been challenging for them?
Martine Croxall: No, in the first few years I wasn’t aware. I only know now because of having talked about how difficult things were. My parents ran a textile factory for a very long time and they built it from very, very little, but there was just my mum and dad and I think my grandmother was with them from the beginning and probably my dad’s dad as well. So maternal grandmother, paternal grandfather, very much a family business, in a shed at the bottom of the garden with one machine, a counter and a little stove and £50, I think. That’s the story.
So when I was small and my sister was little, they didn’t have very much money at all, but we were blissfully unaware of that because we had a lovely life and we lived in a nice place and we lived in a village. So we had the run of the place. It was all a bit Enid Blyton, I suppose, and we had nice food and a comfy home and lots of attention. So nothing else really matters. We went to the village school and we all felt fairly similar to everybody else. So we weren’t aware of it, and my parents certainly didn’t discuss it.
Gabby Logan: So that little shed in the bottom of the garden and the one machine, did that grow into a bigger factory and a bigger business for them?
Martine Croxall: Yes, but it was next door. So they never really seemed to switch off. The phone was always switched through from the factory to the house in the evenings and weekends, and it always felt like they were always on duty. They would be up in the morning to open it up and then they’d be working all night and sometimes, before my dad could afford a mechanic, he’d have to do all of the repairs to keep things going. Sometimes he would be going to bed when my grandmother came to open up the factory the next morning.
So it was really hard work. They were absolute grafters and I think that’s where I get my work ethic from, but yes, at its height, either in the factory or out of the factory – because some people would do out-work at home – they employed over 150 people at times.
Gabby Logan: Wow.
Martine Croxall: So it was quite a big endeavour, and what was really lovely is that a lot of people stayed for a very long time and worked for them for decades, right to the very end when they finally retired in their early-60s when the textile market kind of – when the bottom dropped out of it really.
Gabby Logan: This was in Leicestershire, wasn’t it?
Martine Croxall: Yes, in Leicestershire, in a village called Stoke Golding.
Gabby Logan: Because Leicester’s got quite a reputation hasn’t it for textiles obviously, and clothing manufacturing even now.
Martine Croxall: Yes, and Hinckley, the local town to where I was born – I was born and brought up in Stoke Golding – Hinckley at one point in the 1800s was one of the richest towns in Europe because of textiles. There was textiles, there was printing and then boot and shoe as well, which was the other big industry.
Gabby Logan: Down the road in Northampton, that was where … shoes and boots manufacturers, wasn’t it? So this was never a business that you were expected to take over. They never thought – no. No.
Martine Croxall: Oh, no.
Gabby Logan: In fact, the opposite? Were they hoping you definitely wouldn’t?
Martine Croxall: Yes, very much so. My dad felt like a square peg in a round hole. He had been an indentured apprentice at the local newspaper, The Hinckley Times where –
Gabby Logan: Ah, the journalism starts.
Martine Croxall: A few years later, I wrote the weddings page when I did a wedding. I did a little internship with them and really enjoyed it. Then his mum was dying of cancer and my grandfather was trying to run his previous incarnation of a sock factory. In the end, he had to give that up, but my dad had given up his indentured apprenticeship to work with my grandfather who was trying to nurse my grandmother. So she died and my parents set up their own business, not even out of the ashes of my grandfather’s business, but he just couldn’t hold everything together.
So my dad sort of fell into textiles in a permanent way and had never intended to. He intended to be a typographic designer in the newspaper industry. So he was quite keen that my sister and I did not go into the family business, and the only bit of advice he ever gave me, and my apologies to accountants out there, is, “Don’t be an accountant because you’ll die from the inside out and you’ll hate it.” He was always very glad of a good accountant, but he couldn’t see me doing it.
So they didn’t have a huge amount of money. So they had to be quite prudent with it, and I’d learnt quite a lot of lessons early on about debt and don’t spend what you haven’t got. That was the message, and I’ve always done that.
Gabby Logan: Obviously, they were entrepreneurs. You know, they were running their own business. That entrepreneurial spirit, was that something that you ever toyed with the idea of setting up your own endeavour or doing something that was off your own back or was journalism always the thing?
Martine Croxall: No, I wanted to be a vet, and then I realised I was not going to get the grades to be a vet, and then I thought, “Gosh, what do I want to do?” Around the age of 15, I realised that humanities and languages were my thing. So I did those for A level and thought, “Well, what do I like doing? What am I good at?” I thought, “Well, I quite like writing. I like project work. I like creative things,” and then I thought, “Actually, working in radio might be a really nice thing to do,” and I never intended to be on air ever. No. No, no. The idea appalled me because I was relatively shy.
I mean people at school kind of remember me being quite sort of forthright, but also quite shy. So if I had to answer a question in class, I’d blush crimson and I’d look like a beetroot for the rest of the day, and I would get the mick taken out of me for it. So when I became a TV newsreader, presenter, a lot of the people I was at school with were like, “How have you gone on to do that? You were the girl who used to blush like a radish."
Gabby Logan: And how did you get rid of the blushing then? A lot of people who perhaps aren’t very good at public speaking and don’t enjoy that would love to know how you overcame that feeling of fear.
Martine Croxall: Well, growing up I think. I mean my parents used to say, “You’ll grow out of it,” and I never believed them. I never believed them, and you do, and I think it was because the BBC, when I worked for local radio, at BBC Radio Leicester, they kind of gave me the authority to go and do it. In fact, they gave me no choice but to go and do it.
Gabby Logan: So you didn’t feel like an imposter in that industry. You felt very much that you were meant to be there?
Martine Croxall: No, I didn’t feel like it was me really doing it.
Gabby Logan: You were acting [laughs].
Martine Croxall: It felt like it was the BBC giving me a shove, a permission to go and do it. Again, it’s practice.
Gabby Logan: You had to do it because they told you to?
Martine Croxall: Yes, yes, “Somebody needs to go and interview this man dressed as a tree down in the centre of Leicester to launch a charity to plant a National Forest, and it has to be you because there’s no-one else in the newsroom,” and I said, “But I don’t want to do that. That’s not how I see myself,” and they said, “Well tough, you’re going to have to do it.” I did it and I did it well and off it went.
Gabby Logan: You enjoyed it and off you went, yes.
Martine Croxall: Yes.
Gabby Logan: So when you then became the journalist that you are now and you started moving up your career ladder and getting better and better and then you worked for the BBC and BBC News channel, you’re entrenched every day in big stories. Some of those stories can be distressing and some of them can be emotional. How do you as a person deal with that part of the job, where you’re surrounded by things that not everybody gets to know the bottom of, the detail of?
Martine Croxall: I was talking to some journalism apprentices today and they were asking me a similar sort of question, “How do you not get affected by it?” and I think the answer is you don’t not get affected. You do get affected, and I think the older I’ve got and having had children, you’re acutely aware of how precious life is. I know this might sound like a bit of a cliché, but I think if you don’t think deeply about some of the stories that you’re covering and you don’t think deeply about the people who are affected, how are you going to ask the right questions and where’s your humanity, because without that, you’re just reading words out.
You don’t have to show people how you feel, but you need to have the right sort of questions at your fingertips that are the ones that your viewers or your listeners will want you to ask, and it’s about people in the end. All of it is about people.
Gabby Logan: All the stories that you do ultimately come down to that, don’t they?
Martine Croxall: Ultimately, yes.
Gabby Logan: Even the most economic/financial stories, and we are living in a time with the cost of living crisis, that it all comes down to people. So do you think about what that person sat on the sofa or chopping up vegetables in their kitchen who’s got the telly on in the corner, do you think about them, how you’re communicating to them? Do you have a person that you broadcast to?
Martine Croxall: Definitely, and I remember one of the first things I was ever taught when I worked in radio is you are talking to one person at a time, and it’s a really good thing to remember, I think. It informs how you speak. It informs how you write. So I would never say, “Hello, everyone,” but I’m only talking to one person at a time. So I tend to think of not a specific person, but I think of an intelligent acquaintance. So somebody who’s switched on, who’s engaged, who’s interested, or why would they be watching the news, and also someone who I probably don’t know that well but I’m on conversational terms with. I think that gives me the right tone, hopefully warm, not too formal, but also not assuming anything about them because then that becomes too familiar.
So I have like an informed acquaintance in mind when I speak to them. I’m also acutely aware that I’m very, very lucky. I’m very privileged to have come from the background that I came from where I had a family that cared about and that always promoted my best interests and who always cared about me. My dad died about 18 months ago and he was 6ft 8 and he always said that he was my biggest fan, and he was. He could also be my biggest critic. You know, he could do it in the right way, and my mum still watches me whenever she can.
So that, having that background, is a huge advantage and I never forget that and I know that I’m lucky to do a job that is interesting and well-paid for a respected organisation. I know it has its detractors too, but I’m immensely fortunate, and I never forget that. I’m acutely aware of how difficult life is for a lot of people, and I think that helps remind you of the questions you need to be asking. So somebody if they’re going to lose that extra £20 Universal Credit that they were given every week during COVID means a huge amount to that person. The consequences of them not having it anymore because the government’s decided that’s what they’re going to do, there are consequences to that.
Gabby Logan: When you started out then at the BBC, your biggest fan, your dad, or maybe it was your mum, did they sit down and say to you, “Right, Martine, we haven’t told you too much about family finances so far, but this is what you need to be doing. This is where you need to be, you know, putting some money aside,” or did they let you get on with it?
Martine Croxall: Well, my mum was quite canny. When I was about 15, she decided that she was going to give me the family allowance that was mine each week, and I can’t remember how much it was. It might have been £6, £7, something like that, which was quite a lot of money when I was 15 and then she used to top it up to about £10 a week, which again was a lot of money, but she said, “That’s it. Unless it’s education-related, like going on a school trip to the theatre or something like that, we don’t want to hear from you.” She wasn’t that rude actually. She was never rude. She just said, “It’s really important that we learn to budget, but to budget, you have to have some money, and to make it easy and predictable for you, you're going to have this amount of money every week, and that’s got to cover everything. If you want clothes, if you want to go out with friends, if you want to buy a gift for a friend for a birthday, that’s yours, and there’s no more.”
So quite quickly, I learnt to make clever decisions and choices about things. Also – and it might not even have been legitimate at the time, and certainly wouldn’t be now – I worked in my parents’ factory from the age of 12.
Gabby Logan: Oh, wow.
Martine Croxall: Yes, in the holidays.
Gabby Logan: Yes, not before school, they weren’t that cruel [laughs].
Martine Croxall: Not before school, no. It was only in the holidays. Usually in the summer holidays, and I used to work from 8:00 in the morning until about 4:30 in the afternoon, half days on a Friday, which was a good day because all factories closed on a Friday afternoon. I did really dull things, like packing tights and decorating tights. In the 80s, there was this phase of fashion –
Gabby Logan: Those diamante things.
Martine Croxall: Diamantes and flocking on tights, yes, all of that, and my dad devised a mechanism, a heated arm that you put the tights on or the stockings onto and then you had to arrange the diamantes and then with the heat –
Gabby Logan: Oh my gosh, I had no idea that those were applied manually.
Martine Croxall: No, it was all done by hand. It was all done by hand. That’s why they’re expensive.
Gabby Logan: Yes. I didn’t have any, Martine [laughs].
Martine Croxall: I was always well-off for lingerie, Gabby, always well-off for lingerie.
Gabby Logan: Yes, and that’s what all your friends got for Christmas.
Martine Croxall: Well, yes, they were always very envious of the stockings and tights that I had. So I worked from the age of about 12 in the factory and I think I earned like £1.40 an hour or something like that when I first started, which wasn’t a huge amount of money, but you did 40 hours a week.
Gabby Logan: Yes. What were you doing with all this money then at that age?
Martine Croxall: I was very sensible with it, and I am very sensible. I’m terrified of debt. I have a mortgage larger than we’d like it to be, but it’s not like backing a horse, is it? There’s an asset behind it, but I used to take myself off in the October half-term and I used to drive my mum insane. We used to go to Oxford Street. We’d get the train and we’d go to Oxford Street and I would go to Miss Selfridge and I would buy myself my clothes for the winter.
Gabby Logan: For the season.
Martine Croxall: Yes, but I would agonise over how I was going to spend this money.
Gabby Logan: Because it’s your money and not hers.
Martine Croxall: Yes, because I’d earnt it. They weren’t daft. They weren’t daft at all, and I really made it go a long way and I really made it last, and I’d go to Chelsea Girl or you’d go to Topshop and Miss Selfridge and wander round and round and round eking out this money to make it stretch as far as possible. The biggest purchase I remember making was an ankle-length coat from Miss Selfridge when I was about 15 or 16 and it cost £53.
Gabby Logan: Wow.
Martine Croxall: It was about a quarter of what I’d earned over the summer.
Gabby Logan: Gosh. That was enormous.
Martine Croxall: Huge. It was a huge expenditure and I never regretted it because I loved this coat and I wore it and wore it and wore it.
Gabby Logan: I bet you had it for years. Did you wear it until you were a student?
Martine Croxall: I did, yes. Yes, and it then fell off me in the end. So I was very careful and frugal and my mum made a lot of our clothes when we were growing up. So, you know, you didn’t have a lot, but what you had was made with love, and anything you bought, you worked hard to earn the money for. So it was a really good lesson.
Gabby Logan: We’re building a real picture here, I think, of the kind of investments that you might have ventured into as an adult, and I’m guessing they’re ones that aren’t too risky. If you were to do a risk profile –
Martine Croxall: I’m very risk-averse. Very risk-averse. I wish I were more of a risk-taker and I’m just not because I always think it’s much nicer to have cash, and of course, cash isn’t a very sensible thing to do when inflation rates are high because the value of it erodes, but yes, if I could, I’d keep it in a shoebox under the bed. I don’t, by the way.
So it’s ISAs that I’m advised on really by somebody who knows more than me, because I just think you can’t – I don’t have enough money to dabble and lose it. It would feel like gambling to me. So I don’t do that sort of thing.
My ex-husband struggled with money, so he used to listen to me a lot because he would say, “I don’t understand money like you understand it.” So we worked together very much and we shared everything and we split everything.
Gabby Logan: So he’s probably very grateful for your input then.
Martine Croxall: Yes, he says so. He says so, yes. So we kept out of debt, we didn’t run up credit card bills. If we used credit cards, we’d pay them off every month and you’d wait and wouldn’t be buying anything that you haven’t got the money for or wouldn’t have the money coming in in the next pay cheque. It sounds really boring, doesn’t it?
Gabby Logan: No. So your children, have they picked up these risk-averse vibes or do you sometimes look at them and think, “Gosh, why aren’t you more frugal?”
Martine Croxall: My son’s not as frugal as I am. My daughter is very good at budgeting and she’s paid for herself with a bit of help from us. She’s paid for herself to go off travelling and she worked. My son’s a real grafter but he likes to spend what he’s earned and he’s a student and I just think why not, you know?
Gabby Logan: Yes. So you quite like that? You don’t mind him going off and spending what he’s earned?
Martine Croxall: No, I just said to him, “If you didn’t spend as much, you wouldn’t need to work as hard.”
Gabby Logan: But he says, “I like it.”
Martine Croxall: Freddie has a work ethic. You know, he really works hard. He’ll work in a cinema or he’ll work in a restaurant alongside being a student, and he’s doing really well in his studies. So they’ve got the work ethic from both sides of the family.
Gabby Logan: Clearly. I mean it goes right down from the grandparents doesn’t it as well. They’ve inherited something enormously valuable in terms of their work ethic and their appreciation.
Martine Croxall: I hope so. I’m sure that they think that I’m a bit dull in approaching things like this, but I don’t want the worry. I would worry too much about having debt, and I have a really lovely life. As a consequence of being sensible, I don’t drive a fancy car, but I did treat myself to a little MGB GT.
Gabby Logan: Right. Did they think you were having a mid-life crisis [laughs]?
Martine Croxall: I think I’ve had so many of those. I’d always wanted one and it hadn’t seemed like a very sensible car to buy when I was a young reporter in local radio where you need a car that’s reliable and an old MG wasn’t going to be. So then I found one, but it was a bargain and the guy wanted a quick sale and so this was my –
Gabby Logan: Of course it was, Martine [laughs]. Everything you’ve told me so far, I can’t see you getting ripped off. I wouldn’t like to be the person selling you a second-hand car.
Martine Croxall: Well no, I made him an offer and he said yes. So I thought, “That’s it,” and it’s worth more than I bought it for already. I mean I knew it would hold its value, but it felt kind of reckless.
Gabby Logan: Go on then, what’s the worst thing? Even a second-hand car has gone up in value, right, because you knew it was going to hold its value, and you’ve clearly made some very good decisions about investing in things like ISAs. You described yourself as risk-averse. Is there anything you’ve done? Even as a child, you’re saving up all summer, is there anything you’ve done that you think, “That was a waste of cash. I shouldn’t have blown it on that,” or, “That investment wasn’t quite what I thought”?
Martine Croxall: No. I know, it’s awful, isn’t it? I must sound so boring. I spend my money on doing nice things like going out for dinner. So some people might look at that and think, “Why have you spent all that money on a meal?” but for me, it’s about who you’re dining with and that whole experience. I like holidays when I can afford them. I like to spend my money on doing things.
Gabby Logan: Your luxuries.
Martine Croxall: Yes. I did have one of those Icesave accounts back in the day, which they say if it looks too good to be true, it probably is –
Gabby Logan: Probably is.
Martine Croxall: And it was, and it was one of those ISAs that a lot of people – they were paying seven per cent or something stupid and it was based in Iceland and then the crash happened of 2008 and everybody lost their money. I was like, “Oh, dear,” but of course, there was a bailout. So you got your money back, but it did teach me that if it looks really generous and it’s out of keeping with everything else that’s on the market, you’re probably going to be had.
So the idea of cryptocurrencies terrifies me. Yes, because I don’t have enough information at my disposal and I don’t care enough about it to go and learn, so I steer clear.
Gabby Logan: I was about to say that actually. That it sounds like as well you want to know everything about what you're about to invest into and research it. So sitting there as a newsreader, when you’re hearing big global, macroeconomic stories, catastrophes and stories about banks as we have in the last couple of weeks, you know, there must be times where you’ve had good financial stories you’ve been able to deliver. Does that inform where you are?
Martine Croxall: Yes, definitely, and I think the thing that I can point to most readily is the interest rates were going up last year. I could see my mortgage deal coming to an end and I thought, “Do I pay a small penalty to get out of it to get into a new deal a few months before I really need to, or do I just sit tight?”
Gabby Logan: So you’re going to lock into something at that point, obviously, that was –
Martine Croxall: Yes, I was already locked in. I’d got a few months to go. I could get out by paying a small penalty and lock in quickly, and I was keeping an eye on the interest rates. Obviously, we report them every time they go up, down or stay the same, whenever the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England meets, and I just thought, “I need to go now. I need to do it now.”
So I had my mortgage broker on standby, “Paul, do it now,” and we beat an interest rate rise, I think it was last October, and I was thinking. I started to see that the inflation rate seemed to be coming down. I was thinking, “I went too soon and now I’ve locked myself in for something that I could probably have avoided.” And now the inflation rate’s gone up again, and then again, the interest rate went up again by a quarter of one per cent didn’t it, the other day.
So I thought on balance, I’ve probably done the right thing, but what I’ve given myself is peace of mind and certainty that I know how much I’ve got to pay every month. It’s really dull, isn’t it?
Gabby Logan: No, no. When you have a win on a mortgage like that or a situation where it comes off, I think it’s such a satisfying thing isn’t it, I think. It can go the other way as well, you know, where you decide that you're going to go variable and then things get really low for a while. So I think it’s very sensible, but obviously to be admired. A lot of people would probably not have gone when you did. So do you ever go, “Oh, I’ve saved this much. I’m going to invest it in this now,” or would you just keep it in the bank?
Martine Croxall: I like things being in the bank. I’ve got this silly habit, I suppose, of if you save £100, you don’t want to go below that £100. If you save £500, you don’t want to spend the £500, and there comes a point when you just think, “When is enough enough?”
Gabby Logan: Hmm, in your savings.
Martine Croxall: Yes, you can be a slave to it can’t you, and the point is, you're supposed to be saving for a rainy day and I would go, “Yes, but it’s not raining enough yet. I’ll just wait.” It’d have to be a torrential downpour before I would dip into it really. I mean it is slightly different now because I’ve got obviously children that are university age. So they need supporting through that and I’m trying to avoid them having as much debt as they could have. I mean they have to take out some loans because that’s the way it is these days, but it is a stick to beat myself with, that you reach a certain level of savings and you think, “But it can’t go below that by even a penny.”
Gabby Logan: If they start seeing you going mad and frivolous with money though, then they’ll be thinking, “Hang on a second, she’s taught us all these lessons and now she’s spending the inheritance. What’s she doing? We can’t have her spending all the –”
Martine Croxall: I know, and I can’t imagine it happening. I can’t imagine it happening. Like you said, I do my research. When I’m buying anything that might be a little bit costly, I will do my research. I will try and make sure that I get the best bargain, the best deal, the best value for money. I think that’s part of that journalism thing isn’t it, that you're always asking questions, and also you know where to look. I’m not afraid of picking up the phone and asking somebody who knows more than I do. I think that what’s the great thing about being a journalist is that you always know somebody who knows more than you, then take advantage of their knowledge.
Gabby Logan: Can we talk a bit about the BBC?
Martine Croxall: If you want to.
Gabby Logan: One of the things I want to talk about is how salaries of presenters are publicised every year. Often, they’re just focussing on the Gary Linekers and the Graham Nortons and the Claudia Winklemans. But anybody can see what we earn from the BBC as part of their policy to be more open and transparent –
Martine Croxall: Which the government asked them to do, to be fair.
Gabby Logan: Yes. How do you feel about having people know what you earn?
Martine Croxall: Well, they don’t know what I earn because I’m not on the high-pay list. So to be honest about it, I’m quite close to being on the high-pay list, but I’m not. I’m paid very well for what I do and part of that is because the BBC’s addressed equal pay issues, let’s say, over time and I’ve been involved in encouraging them to do that.
I think transparency is a good thing, especially in an organisation that’s funded publicly, which my part of the BBC is. I work for the publicly-funded bit and I think that if we don’t do that in publicly-funded organisations, we’re not going to see it in other places. I realise there’s an argument that it’s an intrusion of people’s private affairs, but I also think that it means that we have to be accountable to the people who are paying our salaries.
I know that a lot of my colleagues, certainly women especially, believe that transparency across the board, if everybody knows what everybody earns, it doesn’t matter. So I think there’s a merit to it, but I –
Gabby Logan: Has it helped, do you think, redress the balance, that transparency between the genders?
Martine Croxall: Higher levels, yes, because that’s where the transparency is. Anyone who earns over £150,000, and you’re part of the publicly-funded bit of the licence fee rather than BBC Studios, which is the commercial arm, they’re not subject to the same scrutiny. I think it helped get the conversation going. It was a very difficult conversation. I think it’s made people aware that pay discrepancies, pay inequalities do exist and some of my colleagues would like to see complete transparency from entry level all the way up to Graham Norton and Gary Lineker. I wouldn’t mind that at all.
Gabby Logan: To go every level of the BBC to have transparency?
Martine Croxall: No, I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind because it’s the same for everybody.
Gabby Logan: And that would help further the gender redress and get people a bit more parity?
Martine Croxall: Yes. I mean there is an argument that it means that the BBC’s competitors then know what they’ve got to spend to poach the talent, if that’s what you want to call it, but then the BBC can always develop its new talent. That’s what the BBC’s done. There are lots of very talented people in the BBC and a queue of others lining up to come in and learn their craft. So on balance, I think it’s a good thing.
Gabby Logan: Now, a couple of weeks ago, there was the big Gary Lineker weekend, let’s call it, and obviously that was all to do with impartiality, something that has affected you as well in terms of on-air comments. When you look at that situation, do you think there’s work to be done in terms of getting that right across the board? It’s yet at a place where perhaps everybody is fully aware of what can be said, should be said, and the public perhaps haven’t got quite the full story on that?
Martine Croxall: I think everyone should read editorial guidelines that the BBC has put together over the last 100 years of best practice. You’ll be familiar with it, I’m familiar with it. I do think there are different degrees of commitment to impartiality, depending on whether you are in news or not. I think an organisation like the BBC will be criticised from every direction at times.
Gabby Logan: Whatever, yes.
Martine Croxall: You know, I get accused of being left wing, being right wing, being non-committal. You know, nobody knows what my views are. I promise you nobody knows because I’ve never expressed them.
Gabby Logan: Well, I know from hosting shows on 5 Live like breakfast, when you see the text console coming through – and as you say, accusations come in from all sides of the political spectrum, which as Nicky Campbell regularly says when he’s doing his phone-ins, we must be doing this OK because actually, we’re being accused of all these different political standpoints. You can’t live your life by that, can you? You have to be able to do your job in a way that you know you’re delivering news in an impartial way, and not being reactive to what people say.
Martine Croxall: I’ve got really good friends I’ve known my whole life who don’t know what my politics are, because I’m really careful about who I talk to about this stuff. Even to my own children I’ve found it difficult, and there’s that moment where I want to discuss politics with them because I think it’s important, but I’m so wary of telling them how I vote, what my views are.
So the thing that you’re referring to is to do with an impartiality issue last year in the papers when I was presenting, hosting an edition of The Papers in October last year. We did a programme and it was on the night of Boris Johnson deciding to pull out of running for the leadership of the Conservative party. It was all happening so last minute. It’s really nice to actually have the opportunity to set the record straight on this because it’s very difficult when you’re exposed and isolated and accused of all sorts of stuff that you know that you didn’t do. But sometimes trying to correct it on the public record without the might of the BBC’s comms department behind you, it’s very hard as that lone voice.
So in a nutshell, we went on air to present the paper review with no papers, and my excitement was, this is a breaking story, we haven’t got any papers to do a paper review. I didn’t mention a politician. I didn’t mention a contest. I didn’t mention a political party. We had a lively exchange of views as the papers is supposed to be about. I mean otherwise, what are you meant to do? You invite people on, they express an opinion and you shut them down? I mean I’m not there to be the buzz kill. You know, let’s not do a paper view if people can’t come on and express an opinion. I recognise that as the presenter, your job is to ensure balance and provide challenge.
Anyway, a clip was circulated online that had 12 minutes of that programme removed. So it made it look like two things I said were continuous when they weren’t, and that was what generated the brouhaha. It was not what we transmitted, but a claim of something that people said we had said and we hadn’t.
So in the end, the investigation said that on balance, there was a risk of a perception of bias about a political contest. So it was a very sort of dilute concern in the end, but it generated a lot more hot air than it should have done. I do keep saying to people, “Please don’t keep repeating these claims about what you think I said, because actually it’s defamatory and you really need to stop doing that.”
Gabby Logan: Yes, and as you say, the danger of piecing together clips like that. When you’re in the middle of that kind of storm, it’s a horrible place to be, but it also then, I imagine afterwards, has given you even greater awareness and even more acute sensory perception to what goes on on those kinds of – you know, that clickbait world that we’re living in when you’re reading other people’s stories.
Martine Croxall: Yes, you need to go back to the original source because if you look at the original source and the context of it, it will often be very different. So some people have said I either applauded or I didn’t agree with what you said, and I said, “What do you think I said?” They tell me what they think I said and I said, “You watched the edited clip online, didn’t you? You didn’t watch the whole programme,” and they went, “What do you mean?” and I go, “Go and watch the programme,” and they watch the programme and they go, “Oh, that’s not what you said,” and I go, “No, I didn’t. I didn’t at all.”
I’m not making light of it at all. I am steeped in BBC values. Cut me in half and I’m like a stick of rock. You know, it will say BBC News in the middle of me and I’m really proud of what we do. I know we don’t always get it right, but we try really – you know. We try really hard. We agonise over things. The number of meetings that the BBC has in the course of a day to get everything right, and we don’t always get it right. I think the transparency that we’re trying to bring to our reporting is a really good thing because we’re trying to explain the nuts and bolts of what we do and why we do it. A lot of the stuff that we do as journalists goes on in our heads and it’s not visible to people and I think that’s a good thing to try and explain.
I’m always keen to point out that we are required to be duly impartial. It’s not the same as being impartial. There’s a big difference, and it’s to do with weighing up the weight of one argument against another. A bit like climate change. You know, for a long time, we used to always balance –
Gabby Logan: Alleged, alleged climate change, yes.
Martine Croxall: Yes, or you’d try and find a climate denier –
Gabby Logan: A detractor to give – yes.
Martine Croxall: To go against a climate scientist, even though 90-odd-per cent of the scientist –
Gabby Logan: The science was there.
Martine Croxall: Was there. So in the end, we stopped doing that. So it’s about not offering false equivalence as well. There’s a lot to think about.
Gabby Logan: Well, thank you. Thank you for talking about it.
Martine Croxall: That’s all right. I hope I’ve not got myself into any bother again.
Gabby Logan: No, you haven’t. Don’t worry, The ii Family Money Show would never ever be party to that, Martine.
Martine Croxall: No, thank you.
Gabby Logan: Thank you so much for your time today and, yes, you’ve made me think a little bit more about –
Martine Croxall: Have I?
Gabby Logan: Being a bit more sensible, yes. I try. I try, but I love the work ethic that’s been kind of bled through the whole family as well, going through. I think it’s so true, isn’t it? My daughter and son, they’re real grafters, and I think they see us working hard and, you know, [cross-talking 00:37:15].
Martine Croxall: Yes, but you have to remember, I think what my ex-husband taught me was it’s OK to have some fun with your money as well, and if you want to buy that nice bottle of wine every now and again …
Gabby Logan: Absolutely.
Martine Croxall: … really enjoy it because otherwise you’re working a long time aren’t you for what?
Gabby Logan: Thanks for listening. If you have time, please like and follow The ii Family Money Show and leave us a review or rating in your podcast app. You can find loads of ideas on how to plan for you and your family’s future at ii.co.uk. I’ll see you next time.