Monday, November 8, 2010

The Newsnight Two

Stephen Glover has a go at Newsnight's Paul Mason and Michael Crick in this morning's Indie
for their public support for the 48-hour NUJ strike.

No sensible journalist reporting on the Middle East would wish to join a demonstration outside the Israeli embassy if he or she wanted to retain a reputation for even-handedness. And no BBC journalist reporting on government cutbacks should risk under-mining the audience's expectations of independence by appearing as a militant activist. The BBC has been accused of presenting the cuts in a negative or even apocalyptic light. Now that one has seen how some of its journalists behave, it will be much more difficult to counter these accusations of bias.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson is moved to contribute a column for the Telegraph. He no longer habitually listens to Today or tunes in for Newsnight.


I simply observe from my own radically different news-absorbing habits that BBC news and current affairs no longer seem to occupy an automatically pivotal role in the life of the nation – and the strikers are therefore at risk of exposing the nudity of the emperor.They could have Graham Norton reading the news and they could replace Paxman with Fern Britton, and I am afraid it would be months before I even noticed.

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