Less than an hour ago I spotted a couple of tweets from Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle:
He was referring to BBC One's prime-time US election special, Who's Won the White House? and a panel discussion involving former ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer, Karin von Hippel of RUSI and the BBC's Lyse Doucet - and, yes, none of them supported Donald Trump.
He was right about that, but that was just for starters...
That discussion followed a joint interview between Jennifer Lim of Republican Women for Hillary and Hillary supporting Democrat Lisa Osborne Ross of APCO Worldwide Public Affairs - i.e. two anti-Trump guests, one from each of the main parties.
Later came an interview with Frank Luntz, the anti-Trump Republican pollster (who today said that he no longer feels part of Trump's Republican Party) and, later still, an interview with the anti-Trump Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian who pushed the 'racist/sexist' angle on Trump and made the link to the made backward-looking/racist' comments about the Brexit vote.
Finally, with two minutes left, Fiona Bruce introduced us to the "right-wing" Raheem Kassam of Breitbart. That was the programme's 'balance'. He got 36 seconds. (Jonathan Freedland's had previously got 79 seconds).
This - sandwiched between The One Show and Watchdog - was the only news special (outside of the main bulletins) that most BBC One viewers would have seen. That it was so utterly skewed against the winner of the US presidential election ought not to do the BBC's reputation much good.
I'm seeing lots of similar comments about other parts of the BBC's output today.
Last night's Newsnight, by the way, echoing the above, had (a) Lissa Muscatine, an anti-Trump former senior advisor to Hillary Clinton; (b) Susan del Percio, Republican strategist who refused to vote for Trump; (c) the anti-Trump historian and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin and, finally (d) anti-Trump historian Francis Fukuyama...and no one else.
So: on the eve of the US elected Donald Trump Newsnight had nothing but anti-Trump guests.
Like Stephen Pollard, whether you love or loathe Mr Trump, you'll surely have to admit that such guest selection is highly biased.
P.S.
For David Keighley's take on this morning's Today (which sounds very biased indeed) please click here.
I'm seeing lots of similar comments about other parts of the BBC's output today.
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Last night's Newsnight, by the way, echoing the above, had (a) Lissa Muscatine, an anti-Trump former senior advisor to Hillary Clinton; (b) Susan del Percio, Republican strategist who refused to vote for Trump; (c) the anti-Trump historian and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin and, finally (d) anti-Trump historian Francis Fukuyama...and no one else.
So: on the eve of the US elected Donald Trump Newsnight had nothing but anti-Trump guests.
Like Stephen Pollard, whether you love or loathe Mr Trump, you'll surely have to admit that such guest selection is highly biased.
*******
P.S.
For David Keighley's take on this morning's Today (which sounds very biased indeed) please click here.
With reference to the BBC's negative reaction to the Trump success in the US Presidential Election, whilst listening to the radio coverage overnight, I thought I might have heard Gary O'Donoghue mention that Trump had attracted votes from 'the uneducated sector of the voting public'. Does this sound familiar?
ReplyDeleteYep I've heard it a few times today on radio 4 - apparently the uneducated white working class male vote won it for him. The way it was phrased was very critical. This troubled me for two reasons;
ReplyDeleteA) It seems that it's great if the Hispanic, Female or Black vote, vote for one candidate on the basis of sex or race not policy. But the inverse is to be discouraged?
B) Anybody still trusting polling companies to give an accurate demographic of voters is daft and should post their bank details, passwords etc below.