Why does the BBC go to the bother of recruiting a new chair of the BBC Trust when in reality, it is apparent, they are just figureheads spouting the corporate line?  Have they still got that tub of lard in the props department from HIGNFY?

In her hearing with the Culture, Media and Sport Committee the latest recruit, Rona Fairhead,  comes over pretty much as you would expect, saying everything that you would expect in a job interview for the Chair of the Trust…nothing controversial and if anything far too complacent about the status quo….happy that the BBC is impartial, happy that the DG is taking it in the right direction and concerned about the competition from commercial ‘conglomerates’….Murdoch?  Seems very much on board and on message already.

Rona Fairhead, the new chair, or as good as, looked like having little to no political or media baggage and people were giving her the benefit of the doubt as to how she would stand up to the BBC machine.

People may have to reassess that when they see this clip, and it is interesting that the BBC chooses this particular clip:

Rona Fairhead: ‘Critical time for BBC’ as charter debate looms

Regardless of the headline the BBC gives it the main thrust of the clip is about BBC bias.  An MP asks Rona Fairhead if she thinks the BBC is biased…her first reaction is to evade the question by talking of the ‘role of the BBC to be impartial’ and only when pressed does she answer the point.

Her answer, and she’s obviously read the staff manual, is that yes, the BBC is broadly impartial, the data says that the public think it is…it’s impartiality must be clear, understood and unquestioned.

The Trust’s job is to ensure nobody questions the BBC’s impartiality?  Well they certainly do a good job of that now.  As she clearly thinks the BBC is impartial there can be little hope for the future if that is the status quo she is defending.

She was though more polite than Robert Preston:

“Bollocks.” As counter-arguments go, it was a succinct one. BBC economics editor Robert Peston had been asked whether former business editor Jeff Randall was correct to say the Beeb is institutionally biased to the left.

You can watch the hearing here…

Pre-Appointment Hearing for Chair of the BBC Trust
Witnesses

1. Rona Fairhead, the Government’s preferred candidate

Rona Fairhead stated her main principles would be:

1.  She would see her role as chair of the Trust as to represent the audience and to represent the British licence fee payers.

2.  She aims to defend rigorously the independence and impartiality of the BBC…that is critical.

3.  She will respect the different roles of the Trust and the BBC Executive.  The DG and his team have done a lot of work already and she says it is in absolutley the right direction….her role would be to ensure that it goes even further.

4.  She sees her role as to ensure that the BBC responds to the challenges in its environment, and they are very challenging…..user behaviour, the explosion of choice…and the emergence of new large media conglomerates….can she mean Murdoch?

The Parliamentary committee looks to have decided though that she is the one for the job:

We were impressed by the answers given by Mrs Fairhead and are of the view that she is well qualified to take on the role of Chair of the BBC Trust. We believe that her considerable management experience will be of great value. We note that she already has and will retain significant responsibilities as a non-executive director of HSBC and in other external roles. However, we welcome her assurance that her first priority will be Chair of the BBC Trust and that she will step down from her other positions if necessary.

 

 

More people think BBC has bias to left than bias to right – poll

Poll: The BBC and metropolitan bias

Public anger at BBC bias: Viewers hit out at lengthy coverage of poll tax and miners’ strike after Baroness Thatcher’s death

Nearly 80 percent of UK Jewish community sees BBC bias against Israel

Yougov show falling trust in the BBC

YouGov also repeated their semi-regular tracker about trust in various professions following the BBC’s recent troubles. The proportion of people saying they trusted BBC News journalists to tell the trust was down from 57% last month to 44% now, and for the first time marginally more people said they didn’t trust BBC journalists than said they did.

To put this in context, BBC News journalists are still more trusted than journalists on other channels or newspapers, but there has been a sharp decline in recent years.

Interesting to see this:

Fast track for TV licence revolution: Move to scrap jail threat for evaders ‘begins in days’

and this:

Ten staff covering baton handover proves BBC is too big, says Sajid Javid

(Remarkably when you Google ‘tub of lard’ the first and most frequent result is for HIGNFY)

Donnison is still desperately trying to back up his claim that Hamas had no part in the kidnapping of Israeli teens despite a Hamas spokesman saying they did:

Our goal was to ignite an intifada in the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as within the 1948 borders [Israel]. The activity of the people has broadened to include all the occupied land, reaching its peak in the heroic operation, carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades, in which three settlers were captured in Hebron. There has been a lot of confusion regarding this operation. Some said that this was a conspiracy of the occupation [Israel]. That’s not true. Your brothers in the Al-Qassam Brigades carried out this operation to support their imprisoned brothers who were on hunger strike.”

Donnison tweets this:

Unfortunately the impression he tries to impart, that this ‘family affair’ had nothing to do with Hamas, is somewhat undermined by reading the article………

On June 12, Hamas terrorists from Hebron kidnapped Gil-Ad Sha’er, 16, Naftali Frenkel 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, while the three were hitchhiking at Gush Etzion Junction, and shot them dead shortly thereafter when they realized that one of the teens had called the police.

Donnison thought he had a massive scoop undermining what he claimed was the Israeli justification for the launch of an assault on Hamas , but notably no other BBC journo has picked up on this and run with it….Donnison heard what he wanted to hear and interpreted it in a way that aligned with his own anti-Israel agenda.

Rather than admitting he was wrong he is still insists he was correct despite everything pointing the finger of blame at Hamas…including Hamas itself.

This is all about Donnison’s ego, nothing to do with journalism.

Someone responsible at the BBC should have a little word in Donnison’s ear perhaps.

The BBC is going to take a look at how the Media reports events in the Middle East…or at least investigate why so much attention is paid to the Middle East…a different take altogether really.

Media and the Middle East

The rockets and missiles fly, from Israel into Gaza, from Gaza into Israel. It’s the latest iteration of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours which has flared since the very founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

Why does this particular conflict, above all others, attract the attention it does? And why does it create such strong emotion, even among those with no connection to the region?

John Lloyd, a contributing editor at the Financial Times, examines the evolution of coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the founding of Israel to the present day.

With contributions from journalists and those who monitor them, Lloyd asks why there is such focus both on the conflict itself and on those who report it.

And he examines the challenges of reporting fairly and accurately on a conflict in which every assertion is contested.

It doesn’t actually seem to be looking at whether reporting is biased…the last sentence merely looks at the ‘challenges of reporting fairly and accurately‘…again a different emphasis altogether.

As the BBC already denies Hamas censored their reporting from Gaza how can we expect this to be anything other than a whitewash when we know that Hamas tries to control everything the media in Gaza reports?

A couple of years ago we heard a BBC reporter in Gaza being unceremoniously taken off air by his Hamas minder during a live feed to Victoria Derbyshire’s show….the BBC told us it was technical issues…no, it clearly wasn’t if you had ears to listen.

You can gauge for yourself just how truthful the BBC is about its own reporting Saturday night at 20:00 on R4.

However judging by the trail on R4 this morning when the two clips we heard were of the Arabs being expelled from Palestine and how a reporter admired the Israeli military efficiency and effectiveness you can see how this might turn out……Arabs victims of Israeli aggression and the BBC pro-Israeli.

A frothy little post nailing Victoria Coren’s ‘feminist’ hypocrisy which she berates us with courtesy of her privileged platform on the BBC, but it has a serious undertow….the usual BBC bias…as demonstrated year in year out by its approach to reporting on UKIP…originally trying hard to ignore UKIP even as it  wiped the board in local elections, then trying to ridicule it or denounce it as the nearest thing to the Nazi party we have in the UK. Failing to stem the ever growing popularity of UKIP and having to grudgingly start to give UKIP some airtime and a nodding acquaintance with ‘acceptability’ the BBC still manages to slip in the odd sly allusion to fascism and the far right into its reports but its last resort is its comedy shows where the oh so middle class comedians can’t get their heads around the fact that UKIP’s ideas on Europe and immigration are immensely popular…and therefore maligning them on TV or the radio might look like we have an elitist broadcasting organisation that is set up to serve the few who regard themselves not only the voice of the nation but its moral, ethical and intellectual guides who look down on the great unwashed that pays their inflated wages.

Is that democracy?

Peter Oborne fulminated on the death of democracy as it is apparently being bludgeoned to death by those unwilling to participate in the good natured political raillery epitomised by the likes of George Galloway.  Oborne raised the alarm that politicians are being physically intimidated from participating in the democratic process.

That may or may not be true though it certainly wasn’t a ‘political’ attack on Galloway, so democracy is safe yet.  However what Oborne didn’t investigate was a different sort of intimidation and subornment of the democratic political process….that of the Media seeking to destroy a political party.

When one political party outside the ‘Establishment’ such as UKIP, or indeed group such as the EDL, are singled out by the Media for an intensive barrage of lies, smears and innuendos with the intent of maligning their reputation and undermining their credibility and authority who can say that democracy is alive and well.

All the more so when the one source of news and information that the public should be able to rely on, the UK’s dominant news source, the BBC, is a full participant in the witch hunt.  Far from providing balanced, informative news the BBC descended to the same level as the highly partisan press in its contemptible, sustained and savage attacks on UKIP…not forgetting of course the BBC’s campaign against the EDL which it dubbed ’poisonous’, a group it claimed ’polluted’ people’s minds.  A group the BBC set out to destroy.  The trouble is the EDL were right in their attempt to highlight the downsides to Islam in a western progressive democracy….and even the self -proclaimed anti-racist Dan Hodges has finally had to take their line….Too many of Britain’s Muslims are failing to integrate. We need to find out why.  

‘We can’t carry on like this. We just can’t.  I don’t know why we have a specific problem of Muslim integration. I’m not sure anyone does. But I suspect one of the reasons is no one has really taken the time or effort to formally try and find out. And now we have to take time.
Because this I do know. The days when we could simply ignore the issue are over.
Britain’s Muslims are failing to integrate. We need to find out why.’

The BBC has kept up a relentless barrage against UKIP, everything from endless damaging news stories about UKIP members or councillors, or dragging up Nigel Farage’s supposed past….only a few days ago Newsnight’s editor, Ian Katz, was lauding LBC’s James O’Brien who conducted an interview with Farage seemingly, you’d have to assume, after O’Brien had consumed copious amounts of hallucinogenic drugs.  He was certainly tripping on something…though not over the truth.  The same James O’Brien who Newsnight now seeks to employ…guess we know where they are coming from.

The BBC continues its campaign via its current affairs programmes and into its ‘comedy’ shows such as the Now Show and the Brig Society, both of which, when the muse fails them, or just when they get the urge, indulge themselves with a  bit of gratuitous UKIP bashing…someone wants to loosen the gun laws?…oh that’ll be UKIP so they can shoot more immigrants….no really, that was a joke on the Now Show.

Have I got News For You is also in on the act and consistently drags UKIP’s name through  the mud.
Some may remember a particularly bad show when Godfrey Bloom braved the slings and arrows and put himself in the stocks.

One of the ‘comedians’ took a particular dislike to Godfrey and proceed to vilify him throughout the programme for his alleged sexist attitudes and abuse of women.

This particular comedian, Victoria Coren, took especial umbrage at a photograph of Bloom enjoying himself immensely at a party with his face buried in a stripper’s well padded chest, despite the girl,  having voluntarily taken up such a career, looking to be taking it all in her stride and laughing at the harmless, if juvenile, fun that it all is.

Not so Coren who berates poor old Godfrey, who could never have imagined that his boundless boyish good humour and playful partying could lead to a narrow minded dressing down by  a sharp tongued ‘comedian’ who appoints herself the guardian of British womanhood.

However Coren herself seems to think it is OK for her to act in a servile way…it’s OK…it’s Art:

Peter Hitchens said of her:

I would have ignored her indefinitely had she not decided to lecture me, from a very elevated position indeed,  on the subject of ‘addiction’. She did this here .

 

From a similar very elevated, and privileged, position she decided to lecture and scorn Godfrey Bloom for his antics.

Perhaps that wasn’t wise of Coren when you realise that she used to make pornographic films and admits that she sees nothing wrong with a good bit of heterosexual porn on the shelves at home…alongside the photo albums of holiday snaps no doubt…see later for reference relevance.

Here is her mea culpa:

Yes, I once made a porn movie. Which is why I feel qualified to share a few hot tips

My own porn days are long behind me. It was in 2001 that I struck out for Amsterdam with nothing but my best friend Charlie, two cheap home movie cameras (one of them without a working microphone) and a budget of £15,000 with which to make the greatest blue movie of all time.
The money had been fronted to us by a respectable publishing house, as part of an advance payment for which it received a book about our X-rated adventures called Once More, With Feeling.

In Once More, With Feeling, Victoria Coren worries whether people will think her “a nasty old tart”.

Coren believed there was a place for heterosexual porn in the home….but don’t you dare push your face into a stripper’s décolletage.

Curiously she isn’t averse to using her own charms to distract her fellow poker players…nor too fussy about the venue’s choice of entertainment…never mind the sinful ‘gambling’…..

Coren is forever trying to lecture people on how to live, and love, it seems.  No one is safe, not even an innocent tourist out enjoying a day trip to Las Vegas.  Coren decides they should be fully immersing themselves in the views and absorbing the memories. The tourists themselves prefer to take a few snaps to help preserve those memories.

 
Ironically Coren herself is not immersing herself in the views, concerned as she is with the tourist’s philistine behaviour….so much so that she spends her time taking photos of them taking photos (see above)…and then writing it all up in her own blog.

She declares…..

Come on, people! Put the camera down and look! What kind of film do you think you’ll have when you get home anyway? What kind of photograph? You’ll have a small, square frame of an astonishing view that your eyes could just take in whole! But you’re not actually seeing it, because you’re too busy creating a bad, blurry version of an aerial picture of Las Vegas that’s been taken a million times before, much better than you’re going to manage, and is all over the internet anyway. Here, look. Have this one.
You don’t need that photo you’re taking! Just have the experience! Just stand there and look at the thing, and then remember it! The vision in front of you is real! Why do you think it will only become real when you look at it on screen later? Stop being so bloody 21st Century!
Sorry. I got cross for a moment there.

Ironically….here is a piece from her blog bringing to us the joyous visions she has enjoyed on her hols…and taken pictures of…..

Holiday Snaps

She tells us….

Accept that disapproving lectures to your loved one, or about strangers, cannot possibly be helpful – and then it’s fine to say you will lecture anyway because they’re so bloody annoying. Or frightening. That’s OK.

Well in that spirit here’s some critiqueing from the cheap seats:

I don’t know so much about VC. She may be a good looker, but she’s got a very sharp tongue about her, and she can be very catty at times, eg when commentating on poker on CH4 she did a fair few (unnecessary) personal put-downs of some of the players.. Whatever, I wouldn’t care to get on the wrong side of her. She comes across as having a rather ruthless streak about her.

I didn’t like Victoria Coren, I thought she seemed patronising and weasel like.

As for Victoria Coren, I humbly know that as a woman I cannot possibly understand her appeal to so many of you – but I have to say that I find both her and her brother Giles rather smug and self-satisfied whereas her Dad Alan was a wonderful comic and yet not at all priggish.

She is a good poker player though.

She said something along the lines of Mumsnet being a site for women to join and congratulate themselves for having children. Very disparaging, and she came across as a bit of a twat.

 

Seems she is married to someone who is of a like mind...sucking the joy out of every occasion:

David Mitchell on stag nights…I watched the video but had to turn it off…he is extraordinarily tedious and hard going……..

Stag nights. Now the stag night is a totally invented tradition.
But that’s ok, so are lots of basically good things like Christmas cards and Scottish tartans.
And I suppose come to that, so ultimately are weddings, Christmas and Scotland.

The problem lies in the arrogance of trying to be unique.
Now that not everyone simply goes to the pub,
the pressure is on each new groom to prove his wedding, and by extension he himself,
are so special that only ten days white water rafting in a paddle steamer crewed by strippers can adequately reflect it.
Whereas, of course it doesn’t work like that.
If you’re boring, no amount of high-speed water prostitution will save you.
If you’re not, then a night in the pub with your friends will be great.

The response…..

As you may have noticed, there are some professional hen night hunters and serious stag do spoilers out there.

The last thing any hen night organiser wants is some sour faced, dreary analyst taking every opportunity to ask if the hen night accessories you bought were ethically sourced from the wheels of recycled Peruvian mobility scooters.
Questioning the integrity of a T-shirt manufacturer is one thing, boring the pants off everyone till they prove there wasn’t a more sensitive way of celebrating the hen night is another – remember, they chose to go to Dublin dressed as nuns draped in condoms!
If you want to take an altogether different approach, there are plenty of classy stag party options. That’s ‘options’ – no one is getting on a soapbox to say you shouldn’t stay at home writing clever comedy, introverting yourself into an early grave.
Nor are they Tallinn you to go around tearing up foreign capitals on some vodka-fuelled crusade. Trips are laid on, and the booze is often super-cheap, but ultimately, it’s people who decide how they act and celebrate on a stag party – and they don’t care what you think!

cornerswell
16 June 2011 1:08pm
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I can’t think of anything worse than going on one of these incredibly loud and expensive ego-fests either, but it’s getting to the point with David Mitchell that, even if he was talking about something that I absolutely loved, he’d completely suck the joy out of it for me, completely and for ever.
I’m not suggesting that you start skipping around singing hello birds, hello trees, David, but you’re starting to depress the hell out of me. Please go away for a bit

 

Yes Victoria you really have met your soul mate…sucking the joy out of life for everyone else.

Still someone loves you enough to spend time photoshopping you, it’s very, very good, I’ve looked very, very closely and can’t see the join………..

Good job she has a sense of humour:

and so does David, allegedly:

Here you go, a new open thread to detail the bias. How do you think they are covering the Scottish Independence issue, any bias there? It strikes me that they would love to see a YES vote. Your thoughts?

Whatever the BBC’s roving reporter Jon Donnison is it’s not the renowned Alistair Cooke….Donnison doesn’t seem to know which continent he’s on, I’m not sure what planet he’s on.

Despite the BBC spending a large wodge of licence fee dosh on sending Donnison to Australia it seems he is still having flashbacks to Gaza, and can’t help telling the world…no doubt two weeks in Gaza without latte and a cinnamon bun and a dose of the Guardian imbibed daily has brought on PTSD.

What’s happening in Oz?  It’s raining, and it has a slower internet speed than Romania.

That hasn’t stopped Donnison from updating us on his personal crusade in an excited newsflash:

Donnison claimed Hamas had nothing to do with the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teens….and here he tries to suggest the Times of Israel article backs him up…trouble is, it doesn’t…as Donnison knows.

The TOI does say that ‘The officer revealed that the terror attack is believed to have been a local initiative rather than a directive from above’…..

That does not mean it was not an Hamas operation….it was approved of and paid for by Hamas….for Donnison to claim it wasn’t an Hamas operation just because Hamas HQ didn’t think up the idea is verging on dishonest when you read on:

The two men at the heart of the attack were the brothers Hussam and Mahmoud Kawasme. The latter, who lives in Gaza, was released from a 20-year sentence in an Israeli prison for his role in a 2004 suicide attack in Beersheba and exiled, as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, to the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.

Hussam, whom the Shin Bet said played a “staff officer role” in the attack, asked his brother for, and received, NIS 220,000 ($61,000) in cash in order to fund an attack, the Shin Bet said.

So Kawasme, a Hamas operative in Gaza, ran the operation past his bosses, who must have approved it and decided to fund it.

Kawasme is described in the indictment and by the Shin Bet as a command-level Hamas operative, who obtained funding for the kidnapping from his brother, a Hamas member whom Israel expelled to the Gaza Strip as part of the Gilad Schalit deal.

Palestinian sources: Teens’ killing planned, funded by Hamas

The brother of a Palestinian man arrested as the ringleader of a terror cell that kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens in June, suspected of funding the attack, has fostered deep Hamas ties since being deported to Gaza, Palestinian security sources said.

His ties to the attack and to Hamas will likely further implicate the terror group in the killings. Israel has alleged Hamas involvement, though Hamas’s leadership has denied any connection to the scheme.

According to Palestinian sources, Mahmoud Kawasme initiated and planned the kidnapping along with his brother Hussam. Senior members of Hamas’s military wing were aware of the plan, and gave him money to fund the attack. The kidnappers needed vehicles, Israeli license plates, weapons, and safe houses.

Donnison is being economical with the truth here….and twists it once more with his other Tweet claiming the Israeli police officer ‘told him’…falsely and slyly trying to bolster his story with the credibity of an Israeli police spokesman…@MickyRosenfeld was right in what he told me 6 weeks ago. Lone cell, not hamas leaders.

Trouble is Micky Rosenfeld denies having told Donnison that and Donnison hasn’t come up with any proof he did.

Rosenfeld said that he had told Donnison what the Israeli government had been saying all along. “The kidnapping and murder of the teens was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the Hebron area.”

 

It looks like Donnison concocted a story from the facts and due to his desperation to spin for Hamas only heard what he wanted to hear…..and now keeps digging himself deeper by refusing to acknowledge he was and is wrong.

It is quite clear Hamas were deeply involved in this, the main planner being an Hamas member, Hamas approving of and funding the operation.

Here’s something from the Times of Israel that Donnison decided not to share with us:

Be Responsible When Sharing Images on Facebook and Twitter

Terrorist organizations are bad enough – you don’t need to use falsified images to portray the horror they inspire. The real McCoy is as evil as it gets.

Good advice.  Donnison pay attention.

An Appeal:

If you want to help Donnie get into the mood and the swing of things in OZ, which he seems to have trouble doing, go buy him a T- shirt like the one at the top of this post..not only is it suitable for a warm climate it also comes with an uplifting message encouraging professionalism and a critical outlook on the world….and it’s sold by the Guardian…so kosher for a BBC ‘Friend of Hamas’.

Whilst the BBC doesn’t allow on measured, sane and reasonable commentators like Lord Lawson any more, extremist, frothing at the mouth, swivel eyed loons like George Galloway get the red carpet treatment, given a platform by the Islamist’s very own Trojan Horse within the ‘Establishment’, Peter Oborne.

Oborne is never happier than when ‘Dispelling myths about British Muslims’,   asking ‘Is post-war Britain anti-Muslim?’.   He tells us that ‘Many people have come to regard Muslims as a backward group of religious extremists estranged from wider society and incapable of coming to terms with what it means to be British.’….but of course that’s just so much prejudice and ignorance of the immoral, ignorant Kufar cattle.  He says that ‘The history of post-war Britain is a proud story of enlightenment and the steady eradication of irrational fears and resentments.’  So nothing to worry about….once again ‘The Power of Nightmares’ narrative is being peddled….nothing to see here…just ‘irrational fears’…there’s no such thing as Al Qaeda, no Islamists under the bed!

There is that old saying ‘you’re known by who your friends are’, so the fact Mehdi Hasan has a bit of thing for Oborne shouldn’t go unnoticed:

In praise of Peter Oborne

Yes, nothing like having a friend of the Islamic narrative behind the lines.

Oborne has recently come to the aid of Gorgeous George, allowing him a platform to present himself as the victim of an outrageously brutal attack not just on the body of Galloway but on the body of British democracy:

‘The attack on Mr Galloway is beyond doubt an attack on British democracy itself.’

Oborne reprised his thoughts on the BBC’s ‘Week in Westminster’ where he actually brought in Galloway for a chat.

We were told that this assault of GG was an attack on free speech and democracy, that all those who value free speech and value democracy should be concerned.

Except…whilst it was a brutal and violent attack it wasn’t an attack on free speech or democracy.  Galloway was attacked because of his virulently racist views,  something carefully not mentioned at all in the interview….racist views which I’m sure have no part in British democracy, nor, I’m certain, would Oborne suggest they should be propagated even under the guise of free speech….never mind the illegal glorification of terror in Iraq and of the Jihadists fighting British troops.

Some might argue that democracy and the law has failed when George Galloway is still an MP and walking free…not a concept that crosses Peter Oborne’s mind though.

However Oborne himself has spent a good deal of his time trying to suppress all criticism of Islam so it is somewhat surprising to hear him talk about threats to free speech and democracy.

Oborne asks if the attack on Gorgeous George is the start of a trend towards physical intimidation of politicians…whilst he mentions Jim Murphy’s travails in Scotland he makes no mention of Nigel Farage under attack by the Nats….nor of the threat by Lord Ahmed to march on Parliament with 10,000 Muslims to stop Geert Wilders speaking, or the allegations he placed a £10 m bounty on Obama’s head.  Nor indeed of the intimidation of Parliament by the ‘Muslim community’ who try override democracy and threaten us with ‘radicalised youths’ if we operate a foreign policy they don’t agree with. Yesterday the BBC in a trailer for Any Questions posed the question ‘Should we put boots on the ground in Syria or would that just radicalise people in the Middle East and here in the UK?’

Whence democracy and free speech there?….bearing in mind that supposedly, as we are constantly told,  all those ‘radicals’ don’t represent the true Islam nor the community…and yet somehow they do when it suits.

Oborne seems to pick and choose his examples with care so that they support his own pro-Islamist, anti-right wing narrative.

Good that he’s got the BBC to allow him time and space to devote to his pet prejudices.

Newsnight is run by children on a fool’s errand. Paxman

Newsnight, it’s redundant.  Who said so?  Ian Katz, the editor of Newsnight.

Well, sort of.  He tells us that the political interview is dead, has been for nearly 30 years.

Thatcher killed it, of course, oh and Kinnock.  But Kinnock doesn’t count politically, he’s a never was, so Guardianista Katz can rag him without upsetting the fellow travellers.

Oh hang on, news of the political interview’s death is slightly premature….

There are notable exceptions of course, most recently James O’Brien’s patient, forensic unravelling of Ukip leader Nigel Farage…..

and of course….

…. Russell Brand’s Newsnight diatribe against politics and politicians was watched more than 10 million times on YouTube alone and it’s hard to imagine that the spavined state of the political interview has not been a major contributor to the mood of suspicion and disgust that Brand so powerfully articulated.

So that’ll be an interview by James O’Brien who lied about and smeared Nigel Farage in an odious hatchet job and one with a drug addled half-wit who wants a revolution but doesn’t know what should come after it.

And just how self-reverential is Katz?…O’Brien being tried out as a guest interviewer on Newsnight recently and Brand interviewed by Newsnight’s Paxman, sort of, as Paxman giggled his way through it and refused to tax Brand with anything more difficult than what flavour of bubblegum he liked.

Katz lays out the problem..nothing original or new here……point scoring journalists out to show up a politician who consequently goes into lock-down resulting in a combative but uninformative interview that most people will be familiar with…

The unacknowledged truth is that half a century after the bristling exchange between Robin Day and prime minister Harold Macmillan that reshaped the relationship between politics and the media, the broadcast political interview is stuck.

[There is]  a safety-first ethos that conspires to make even the most interesting political figures seem dull, and rewards those who prove themselves to be “a safe pair of hands” with the highest offices in the land. 

Increasingly, the most senior political figures don’t simply stonewall their way through tough interviews, they avoid them altogether.

Ironically Katz quotes Evan Davis, the master of the point scoring interview that tries to humiliate and belittle the politician…any wonder they are reluctant to be interviewed.

Davis tells us that the political interview has  reached a Mexican stand-off where neither interviewer nor politician gives way : “The political interview is in a low trust equilibrium and it’s sort of stuck there.”

I imagine when you snigger your way through an interview, making fun of the politician, ridiculing him, is there any wonder you don’t get the trust?

Katz complains that politicians shut down and refuse to be candid and less defensive. He complains that interviews are impossible in such circumstances.

But isn’t that the job of the interviewer, to create an atmosphere conducive to trust and a level of familiarity in order to coax the truth out of an unwilling guest..failing that to lay out the facts for the audience and let them decide even if the politician won’t fess up.

Asking a question 12 times when the interviewee is obviously not going to give an answer is just stupid not great or courageous journalism.

Katz, after the longest moan in history comes up with the answer:

1.  Both broadcasters and politicians need to acknowledge that the interview is a transaction that must yield something useful for both sides – and especially the audience.

2.  We need to make a genuine attempt to explore and illuminate the dilemmas politicians face, to recognise that government is not a choice between good and bad policies but most often a search for the least worst option.

3.  We need to try harder to understand what makes politicians tick.

4.  Finally, one that follows from the first three: we broadcasters need to give interviews – at least some of them – the time to breathe, even if that means putting up with more boring, snoring bits.

Snooze. Does Katz write Ed Miliband’s policy statements?

You might have thought 30 years after the ‘death of the political interview’ he might have come up with something more original and less banal…otherwise the whole piece is an enormous waste of time….perhaps he should give up on interviews on Newsnight and allow guest speakers on to vent their spleen unfettered by the liberal constructs that stifle true political discourse in this country.

Geert Wilders recent speech in the Dutch Parliament comes to mind. [H/T Is the BBC biased?]

Geert Wilders: “War Has Been Declared against Us”
A Speech in the Netherlands Parliament

Ruffle a few feathers.

I have been away and been very busy so hence lack of activity here! Anyhow, here’s a thread for the weekend. Wonder if the BBC have discovered that it was a Muslim that cut the pensioners head off in London?  They seem more concerned about the CAT.