Drat it!
I spotted a pair of Lewis Goodall tweets this afternoon which, even by his standards, were outrageously opinionated - Boris-bashing tweets in response to the Spectator's Fraser Nelson saying that Boris Johnson is a centrist Tory who has shown the way for well-mannered conservatives (who think like Fraser) to overcome right-wing populism.
Former Labour activist Lewis (now Newnight's policy editor) attacked both Spectator Fraser and PM Boris 'from the Left', tweeting something to the effect that Boris was a law-breaking right-winger who'd done nasty populist things last year.
It was another very bad batch of Lewis Goodall tweets, bias-wise, and I intended to transcribe them as another gob-smacking Gotcha.
But, alas, while on the verge of doing so, I got drawn away by family and friends for a few hours and on getting back to the internet found that Lewis had deleted the jaw-dropping tweets I'd seen. And then the wine flowed and my memory became befuddled.
And he'd also deleted a follow-up tweet. (Goodness knows what it said).
What to do?
What to do?
The moral of this story: As a blogger you should always screengrab biased tweets while you can, lest they get deleted...
...Ah but, seriously, just as I was about to post this (live blogging!), and after trying everything to re-find that original tweets in recent hours, I've just spotted a left-wing Twitterer saying that Lewis was "100000% right!!!" and, praise be!, he's screengrabbed the original Lewis Goodall tweets.
Bingo!
The third deleted tweet is still missing, but the first two can now be transcribed:
So that's what Newsnight's Lewis Goodall tried to vanish down the memory hole by deleting his tweets.
Did he realise that he'd gone too far, bias-wise? Or did someone at the BBC instruct him to delete these tweets?
...Ah but, seriously, just as I was about to post this (live blogging!), and after trying everything to re-find that original tweets in recent hours, I've just spotted a left-wing Twitterer saying that Lewis was "100000% right!!!" and, praise be!, he's screengrabbed the original Lewis Goodall tweets.
Bingo!
The third deleted tweet is still missing, but the first two can now be transcribed:
- For a good proportion of last year, the government pretended it would break the law if it had to. Think its fair to say, it's not a conventional centrism.
- Moreover a key part of the government's susccess [sic] in the election was centred on running against Britain's political institutions. Whether that's right or wrong, good or bad, that is a key tenet of populism.
So that's what Newsnight's Lewis Goodall tried to vanish down the memory hole by deleting his tweets.
Did he realise that he'd gone too far, bias-wise? Or did someone at the BBC instruct him to delete these tweets?
