The final Newsnight of 2016 featured part of an interview with The New Yorker's liberal, anti-Trump editor David Remnick and a transcript of the full interview has also been published on the BBC News website. The passage that stood out for me was this one (not broadcast on Newsnight) where Mr. Remnick and Newsnight editor Ian Katz discussed impartiality, and the former had a little dig at the BBC's view of itself:
Ian Katz: But is there a problem that if you hoist your flag - as you did effectively on the night of the election - that actually when you do this really important accountability reporting you're talking about and you call the government out on lies and you deliver this crucially important fact-based reporting, that actually you are dismissible by the other half of America, because you've shown your colours.
David Remnick: My colours were never concealed. I don't believe in that business - this old 1950s notion of the New York Times, much less the New Yorker - that it was objective, somehow like a science experiment. That scientific method was involved in journalism, I think is a fantasy... What I think is achievable is checking facts. What I think is possible is to have fair argument. What I don't think is possible is to have some fake objectivity - in which on the one side we have 99% of the scientists say... You know on the one hand on the other hand… That's bad journalism. It does the world no good.
Ian Katz: But you've got a problem in this country which is that there is no place, there is no media organisation, platform, which even a plurality of the country can agree to trust.
David Remnick: If you think that French state television or the BBC in England is somehow a common narrative of the country, I think you're fooling yourself. I bet you there are a lot of people, the people in the north of England, who think the BBC is a bunch of lefties.
