Andy Whittles

The Saturday 11th October edition of Today carried an article about the California election.

Margaret Doyle introduced an American author called Jonathan Franzen. Franzen was introduced as a ‘liberal’, which a spot of googling certainly confirms to be the case (though the BBC shows progress here in introducing the standpoint of a speaker who would be unknown to most listeners).

Franzen’s interview was really a monologue. Naturally, the result of the California election was down to the stupidity of the electors. According to Franzen, there are a lot of angry people in America who have no right to be angry. The electorate couldn’t understand the issues etc etc. The failures of previous Governor Mr Davies were not mentioned.

All of Franzen’s comments were accepted without comment by a fawning Doyle. The real question was why this article was included at all. Franzen certainly was not a witty speaker (rather dull actually), and he had nothing fresh to say on the subject. Was it because has was, from a BBC point of view, ‘on message’?