Sunday 4 June 2017

The game is afoot




There's been a bit of a squall today about a reporter asking Jeremy Corbyn about the impact this weekend's terrorist attack on the outcome of the general election. The question has been widely seen as crass (at best). 

Corbyn supporters on Twitter have furiously denounced the reporter for trying to 'entrap' the Labour leader and have called for her to be sacked. 

The curious thing is that no one anywhere (as far as I can see) has so far been able to name the guilty reporter and Twitter has, for the last eight or nine hours or so, been asserting that it's a BBC reporter and, thus, blaming the BBC. 

Many of them want to know precisely which BBC reporter, so they can try and get her sacked presumably. 

Well, I can't work out who it is either, but, donning my trusty deerstalker, I followed the Twitter trail back to the first complaints about that interview (searching under 'Corbyn reporter') and found that all the earliest complaints were complaining, as it was happening, about a Sky reporter asking the crass question. 

So, Watson, the case is elementary: It's only after the BBC took up the clip and started broadcasting it (without naming the source or the reporter) and then, making the situation worse, after YouTube videos of the BBC's clip began circulating widely, that people began assuming that it was a BBC reporter asking the 'disgraceful' question. (Not unreasonably). 

(ITV also broadcast it on their website, but few people read that - enough though for a smattering of people to accuse ITV of asking the crass question!).

Chinese whispers? Seems so.

I'm too fixated on the BBC to be able to recognise the offending Sky reporter's voice, so if any of you can solve the mystery, please let us know below. 

Oh, Sue, the needle!

1 comment:

  1. Suspending campaigning sends the message that British democracy won't be affected? Talk about getting it back to front.

    Complaints From Both Sides, yeah.

    ReplyDelete

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