This week’s edition of Americana on Radio 4 will be presented by regular MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe. His political leanings are so obvious that earlier this week Craig Ferguson mocked him on his talk show (via Newsbusters) :
CRAIG FERGUSON: You’re a Democrat, aren’t you?
RICHARD WOLFFE: I am a journalist.
FERGUSON: A journalist? Much the same thing, isn’t it?
A Democratic Party supporter and a journalist – well, they’re certainly one and the same thing at BBC America.
Just yesterday Wolffe was on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews attacking Sarah Palin. He even once had a spell as leftie nutjob Keith Olbermann’s stand-in (until conflict of interest issues arose). And now he’s a guest host for the BBC. An effortless transition from one left-leaning news organisation to another. (You can be damn sure nobody at the Beeb ever considered asking a right-wing contributor from Fox News to present Americana.)
As if the choice of Wolffe isn’t bad enough, his main interviewee is foil-hatted fruitcake Gore Vidal. Ooh, I wonder if he’ll say something outrageous and controversial. Yawn.
How low can the BBC sink ?
Lower still, I’m sure. Guest host Keith Olbermann? Ed Schultz? Rachel Maddow? Michael Moore?
Actually, Olbermann might be too anti-Obama at the moment for BBC tastes.
‘How low can the BBC sink ?’
What, with rampant, unashamed lack of impartiality (h/t: Helen B)?
Well, there’s the bottom of the barrel achieved near hourly by the ‘editorial’ that ensures any narrative first gets enhanced.
Then, drilling through this there is wheeling in on-call ‘guests’ from the barracks next door, such as Polly or Kevin, to ‘commentate’.
Having now reached gutter journalism levels one then gets the stealth editing and backtracking that can only be managed using the hole-digging expertise of the JCB-deploying complaints departments. With props to the vast array of ‘I work for the BBC but what I say isn’t anything to do with the fact I work for the BBC’ @BBCtwitterbozos.
And then, for good measure, zipping straight past the void left (in hearts… and budgets) by the Chilean miners, they can bore all the way to China where, doubtless, the Trust board has a suite on permanent standby as a small ‘thank you’ for not making a fuss around the Olympics and stuff.
About that low, I’d say.
And if they can swing a flight on Virgin Galactic to gush about carbon reduction, I’m sure they’d hop aboard and keep on going lowe… well as far as their hypocrisy can manage… uniquely.
I went to school with this left-wing tw@t, and trust me, he was a left-wing tw@t then. What annoyed me the most was his and his whole family’s hypocracy; big Labour supporters but happy to send their three sons to a fee-paying independent school in Birmingham. Nothing like left-wing double standards, are there?
Nice bit of background colour there, Phil. I see he and Matt Frei both went to Oxford. Help a brother out, eh Matt?
My school clearly bred left-wing bbc hypocracy – another ex-alumnus is none other than Tim Franks.
You went to school with whom?
The Windows Mail screen hasn’t been forthcoming.
I see that Richard Wolffe’s Wiki page fails to mention that he attended a fee-payng independent school or name the school involved. I’m sure Richard would appreciate it if someone edited the Wiki page to correct this oversight.
Allow me to point out he went to King Edward VI School, Birmingham. Consider it done
Good catch, DB. Just one more in the endless stream of Left-wing ideologues the BBC keeps hiring to inform you about the US.
Matt Frei famously said that the the BBC wants to “create a connection, an understanding, a rapport between the world’s most powerful country and everyone else.” This is how he thinks they should do it.
And I guess hiring Wolffe is also the BBC’s attempt to create the value Katty Kay was talking about as lacking in the US?
Yes indeed. Beeboids like to claim the high moral ground over US news/opinion broadcasters but they’re happy to choose a left-wing stand-in host from MSNBC.
Just clicked through to Wolffe’s tweet there. Why would he need to ask during the interview? Couldn’t he simply look it up? Some journalist. Maybe he can take the BBC’s Social Media training course, well worth it at a cost to the license fee-payer of a mere £100 per.