This morning's Today led with the Guardian's lead story (or non story) about the Bank of England sending a memo by mistake to a Graun journalist saying they are looking into the possible financial consequences of a Brexit from the EU.
Except for a Labour MP who was trying (and failing) to score some political point or other, neither the programme's guests or their own reporter appeared to think it amounted to very much. And yet they still ran with it.
They also ran with the Independent's lead story about "the secret CCTV switch-off", though the two media outlets took a contrasting tack on it. The Indie rejoiced in the fact on civil liberties grounds while Today focused on the negatives - i.e. the complaints of the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (yes, I didn't know we had such a person either) about the possible adverse effects of austerity cuts (which he blamed for the 'switch-off') on public safety. [Typical BBC!]
Conspicuous by its absence though was the Times's lead story. Today didn't include any features on it or even mention in during either of their paper reviews - and that's despite the fact that the story concerned someone who's appeared on their programme on many occasions, namely Sue Berelowitz, former deputy children’s commissioner for England.
The nub of the Times's story is contained in its first paragraph:
A child protection chief who was criticised for failing to speak out about widespread sexual abuse by British Pakistani gangs has quit her job with a six-figure payoff and been immediately rehired on almost £1,000 a day.
It's a story that's obviously bound to be of interest to many people. Other right-leaning media outlets - the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and Breitbart London - picked up on it and ran with it. Several parliamentarians, from George Osborne to Keith Vaz, have also picked up on it and run with it.
Yet this story of apparent public sector profligacy involving a famously politically-correct quangocrat doesn't seem to be of interest to the BBC, or other left-leaning media outlets.
Yet this story of apparent public sector profligacy involving a famously politically-correct quangocrat doesn't seem to be of interest to the BBC, or other left-leaning media outlets.
The Times has a particular interest in Ms Berelowitz though:
The former official faced criticism after she attacked The Times for exposing child sexual exploitation by groups of British Pakistani men who were preying on white girls. She said that the coverage was fixated on Asian perpetrators . However, an independent inquiry found that at least 1,400 children in Rotherham had been sexually exploited by abusers of mainly Pakistani heritage between 1997 and 2013.
And I saw and heard her many times on the BBC making similar assertions, pretty much unchallenged (if I recall correctly).
It is revealing what interests and what doesn't interest the BBC, isn't it? Today clearly had no interest in this story whatsoever.
