Robert Peston: 'I'm learning how to do the business'

"I'm not an arrogant person who believes that, just because I have had a reasonable record in print journalism, I can pitch up on screen and be as effective as a Nick Robinson or an Evan Davis," says Robert Peston, without the hint of a stammer. "I've had to acquire craft-skills, and I have to say it's still a learning process. I'm better than I was but... do I feel that I'm yet where I want to be? No."

A year and a half into his job as the BBC's business editor, Peston, who has rarely been known to be short of self-confidence, admits he still has a fair amount to learn about the role. At least he has disappointed those who claimed that a minor speech impediment might degenerate into a fully fledged stutter as soon as the former print journalist was required to cover a breaking story live on air. Richard Kay, the Daily Mail diarist, sardonically reflected on the BBC business editor's "nervous stammer", while gleefully pointing out that, when the corporation's chairman Michael Grade defected to ITV, "the hapless Peston" was scooped to the news by The Daily Telegraph's Jeff Randall, the man who preceded him and who is believed to have recommended him for the job.

But Peston, 46, would not have expected an easy ride. The BBC's appointment of another Grub Street journalist was interpreted by some as a snub to its own stable of business correspondents, even though Peston's record as a story-getter is impeccable. A former financial editor and political editor of the Financial Times, he has been the City editor of both The Sunday Telegraph and The Independent on Sunday and his exclusives have been honoured by the What the Papers Say and London Press Club awards.

He enjoys being close to the pulse of the Square Mile, and was less than happy when, during his days at The Sunday Telegraph, his City team was summoned back to work at head office in Canary Wharf. These days he is even further adrift, covering the markets from the other side of the capital, and although he oversees a pool of journalistic talent that would be the envy of rival media, he still faces a cultural battle at the world's largest broadcaster.

Reclining in his office, where pictures on the wall of Paul Weller reveal interests beyond the movement in share prices, he explains his problem. "A lot of people come here straight from university and never leave. As a licence-fee-funded operation, they, just in terms of their daily lives, have less contact with the private sector," he says, sounding slightly frustrated.

"There is no doubt that the level of knowledge within the organisation at a quite senior level about business would not be quite as deep as you'd find in a typical newspaper. You expect the editor of a newspaper these days to know some business people and know quite a lot about business. Their equivalents here would not know as many business people and would have, historically, taken less interest."

He acknowledges changes introduced by Randall in tackling the vehemently "anti-business" elements within the BBC. "I think a lot of those people have either been shamed into keeping their mouth shut or they have gone, because the issue for me has not been hostility to business. It has more been a lack of interest, a bit of a yawn every now and then."

Remarkably, this ambivalence towards business exists even within the very department that is assigned to cover the subject. "It is one thing to get the BBC to a stage where no one there is literally anti-business; it's another stage to get them incredibly excited the way that I am excited about some of these stories, " he says, demanding the same passion that the BBC more readily directs towards politics and sport. "There are people who are top-class business journalists, but there are also other people around the place who plainly think they are passing through and are not quite as enthusiastic about the subject matter as one would like to think. There are a lot of people who think that they are here because it's a stepping stone. In sport and politics they go there because they love it, and I would like to see a few more people around here not because it is a career move."

What he has also detected is "sophistication", a simplistic approach that he thinks is detrimental to the BBC's news judgement on business stories. On the morning of this interview, the BBC has given over large amounts of airtime to covering the latest reports of Tesco profits. One might expect Peston to be pleased to see a business story so high on the corporation's news lists, yet he seems irritated by the coverage. "If I am honest, I am a bit amused this morning about our coverage of Tesco, which has basically said, 'look, there's a very big company out there', which I felt had a slightly 'so what?' aspect to it. I mean, we know Tesco is really big, so what exactly is your point here? I think every now and then with certain household names we are still slightly prone just to say, 'if it's Tesco it's got to be a big news story,' without working out, 'well actually, is it a big news story on this occasion?'. To be perfectly frank I'm not sure if it is a particularly interesting news story." To emphasise his point, he gets up from his chair and fishes a copy of The Daily Telegraph from a rack in his office. Turning to the City pages he announces: "Tesco isn't in the top 10 of British companies at the moment. It's currently 12th."

Instead of just concentrating on the most obvious names, Peston, who is known for his fierce ambition, would like the BBC to test itself a little more by taking a closer look at those who pull the strings of business, the murky figures behind the private-equity and hedge funds. "I want to take the BBC into what I regard as more challenging areas. Hedge funds are having a profound impact on the way people save for their retirement and a profound impact on the way companies prepare for their future," he says, stressing the public-service value in simplifying the more arcane workings of the markets.

He has had business ambitions of his own. After Balliol College, Oxford, Peston worked briefly as a stockbroker before turning to journalism. At the FT he was close friends with Roland Rudd, who has gone on to make a small fortune in City PR at Finsbury. Peston left the FT in 2002 to become a senior figure at the online financial-analysis company Quest, only to return to newspapers two years later - in doing so losing some valuable share options. "You don't want to know. It was a lot of money and I still slightly wince," he says.

Peston has attempted to exert influence within the BBC by sending colleagues a daily e-mail with his assessment of the latest business news. Called "Peston's Picks", it has evolved into a blog on the BBC website. He has been impressed by the knowledge of some of the respondents to his online contributions, though it is a mixed mailbag. "You'r (sic) a great man in Journalism," writes one admirer called Charles. Gina from Mexico posts: "Mr Peston, you look so handsome on this page!!! Why just men have to look pretty faces at the news???"

The business editor's influence in extending the profile of his department is limited to lobbying senior BBC programme editors, especially the likes of Craig Oliver, the editor of the 10 O'Clock News, and Ceri Thomas, the editor of Radio 4's Today.

"When you don't hold all the levers of control it's a much slower process. So there are times when you see the BBC doing something that you don't particularly think is the right way, or they're not doing enough of something, and I think it's frustrating. When I was running The Sunday Telegraph business section, I completely determined what was in it. I don't have that same ability to determine what's on the Today programme or the 10 O'Clock News."

He has been "rather impressed by the appetite" for business news of both these flagship programmes. "I don't sit here seething that they're not interested in business. I think they're pretty interested in business. If we have our disagreements it's because every now and then there is a story which I think is more important than they do." One such occasion was the coverage of Lord Brown's sudden departure from BP. "He is a hugely powerful business person, probably more powerful than all of the Cabinet bar the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. For whatever reason, the 10 O'Clock News didn't really do it properly."

But it is Peston's closeness to the other Brown, the prime minister in waiting, that adds an extra dimension to his reporting of Britain's economy. His book Brown's Britain brought new detail to the rivalry between the Chancellor and Tony Blair. Peston, notoriously, had a strained relationship with Blair's former press secretary, Alastair Campbell, who was convinced that the journalist was a committed enemy of New Labour.

The Downing Street spin-doctor never missed an opportunity to mock the reporter, whose father is the Labour peer and economist Maurice Peston, by publicly addressing him as "milud". The long-lasting enmity began on a plane journey to America that Peston, newly appointed as political editor of the Financial Times, took with Tony Blair when he was the Leader of the Opposition. "It was an ordinary scheduled flight and I was just having a chat," recalls Peston, who was new to the political reporting lobby and was promptly told by veteran colleagues from other media outlets that all information on such trips was to be shared.

Peston interpreted some of Blair's comments as meaning "the extent to which [New Labour] was not likely to raise the rate of income tax". The other reporters, hearing the same quotes relayed by Peston, "spun it completely the opposite from the way the story was". When the headlines emerged in other papers, Campbell "went berserk" and held Peston responsible. From then on, he could not appear at a Blair press conference without being greeted with the words: "Peston, are you still spinning for the Tories?" The journalist regards it now as part of the rough and tumble of political reporting. "I had endless run-ins with Alastair because his interests were the opposite of mine. As a brilliant propagandist, his job was to spin for Labour to the best of his ability. Mine was to write the truth." Peston was a little less magnanimous when he landed a scoop that the late Chelsea chairman and entrepreneur Matthew Harding was making a major donation to New Labour. Peston says he called Campbell out of courtesy only for Labour to give his exclusive to the Daily Mirror. This time Peston went berserk.

His scoops have not dried up. He won the prestigious Harold Wincott Senior Financial Journalist of the Year award in 2005 and, the same year, was part of a Sunday Telegraph team that won the London Press Club's Scoop of the Year for exposing David Blunkett's visa arrangements for his nanny.

Since arriving at the BBC, he has tried to continue that record, despite having a broader role. He cites his report on the Spanish takeover of Scottish Power, though complains of limited coverage by the BBC. "I broke it on the website and I think I broke it on Radio 4 news, but there was absolutely no interest in it from television at all." He remains upbeat, saying that BBC Online gives him opportunities to break "lots of mini-scoops". "One thing I have done since being here is to break a lot of stories. Historically that's not something the BBC has done in its business area, obviously," he says.

His introduction to broadcasting has taught him the considerable production demands in compiling reports, a burden that limits opportunities to wine and dine contacts. Peston is still on a learning curve, as he admits, but he is getting there. "I've spoken to Jeff Randall and Andy Marr about it. They both said to me that it took them a hell of a long time, well over a year, to get comfortable with the medium," he says. "The thing that gives me a degree of comfort is the extent to which I'm making progress."