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| Katty and Katy |
I went to bed early last night knowing that I'd wake up about 2 am. And wake up around 2 am I duly did.
I watched BBC One's coverage for a couple of hours, rested my eyes for an hour, then watched a couple of hours more before having to go to work, thus missing the long-awaited Pennsylvania result.
It felt like the night of 23 June all over again.
I had my eye on the ever-busy Going Postal comments as I watched, many of which chimed well with my own impressions of the BBC's coverage.
There was much talk there of long faces in the BBC studio. (Some felt Andrew Neil was the exception, though others felt he shared the general look of gloom and shock.)
There were also many suggestions that various female BBC reporters looked as if they'd been crying. I don't usually hold with that, merely believing them, generally, to have been either tired, depressed or both tired and depressed. One BBC reporter in Mexico, however - a certain Katy Watson - most definitely did look as if she's been crying. She looked and sounded so depressed as she described the Mexican reaction to the growing likelihood of a Trump triumph that she really did make Newsnight's perpetually glum-looking Helen Thomas look like joy personified.
Those with time on their hands will find that Andrew Neil's co-presenter Katty Kay is worth re-watching. She's never exactly been 'Ms Impartiality' and she certainly wasn't last night. Her 'finest' contributions, however, were to say, at least twice, something to the effect of 'We didn't see this coming at all'. The exact words have slipped my memory but she definitely said 'we' and what followed is accurately paraphrased there.
Of course, her - or everyone like her at the BBC - not seeing it coming didn't stop her from, without so much as batting an eyelid, then going straight on to 'explain' why Donald Trump was winning and Hillary Clinton losing....as if she and they really had a clue what they were talking about.
I made the comment earlier that the BBC has revenue of some £2 billion and sends hundreds of staff (entirely unnecessary really)to the USA to cover the Presidential elections. It should hang its head in shame that it got its election predictions so very wrong. But we know why they did. They were Clinton partisans.
ReplyDeleteI also like to say I find the BBC's urge to racialise analysis of the result as very distasteful.
I think the BBC's revenue is nearer 4 billion? Whatever it is, the waste of sending so many correspondents over there (whilst also having some based there permanently) to tell us the same biased nonsense is insulting.
DeleteYes, they are quick to try to racialise the vote. that's what the left does these days. It's called identity politics. You tell everyone they are victimized minority (women, blacks, gays, muslims, Hispanics, etc.) and hey presto it adds up to 80% of the electorate. Victimised by who? Well ... all that's left is white guys, Christians and jews. Fortunately it didn't work in the US elections, but the BBC is institutionally wedded to this approach.
The problem isn't with any BBC predictions based on obviously flawed polling (people lie to pollsters out of fear of attack incited by, among others, the BBC), it's with their overtly biased reaction to the result.
DeleteThis is three straight major votes within an 18 month span that the polls got horribly wrong, and to which the BBC has reacted very, very negatively. Their reactions have actually gotten progressively worse with each successive defeat.
The poor lambs must really think the world they knew is being pulled down around them as they speak, and simply don't know how to act anymore. The public is noticing, though.
Sorry you're right - nearer £4 billion. An incredible sum.
DeleteThe BBC could provide an across the board service more cheaply if it cut back on its absurdly over-complicated management structure, made judicious use of its back catalogue, stopped over-coverage of its favourite events (like the US election - where it could easily tap into American networks) and cut back on its overpaymnet of its "stars".
I think there was a problem with their assessment of the polls. There were polls that regularly had Trump ahead or tied. These never got mentioned on the BBC - nor the fact that the polls were varying by about 15% (a huge range meaning someone was getting it seriously wrong). In other words they failed to accurately describe the polling information (simply so they could present Clinton as the stronger candidate).
Katty Kay has long been one of the worst. She gets away with it because the BBC Complaints drones can shift responsibility over to BBC Worldwide, who then claim freelancers don't have to follow the same rules.
ReplyDeleteShe pulls in up to $25K per speech if you want her to talk about one of her pet issues, e.g. income inequality.
One day the practice of deliberately creating no-responsibility zones between two entities under the same brand umbrella so each can point at the other and see it vanish will come back to haunt its creators.
DeleteI once had it domestically with Dateline, about a guest's outrageous, unchallenged claims, when Complaints said who said it was under one Director, and who invited them under another, but they could not talk to each other so it never existed as a problem.
Much ink has been spilt theorising whether people lie to pollsters thus leading to these unexpected results but isn't a much more likely explanation that certain people just don't talk to pollsters at all? I, for one, always tell the person with the clipboard (politely) to push off. If it could be demonstrated that people who do this are predisposed to vote in a certain way then we as a group would represent an invisible factor influencing every election. Do pollsters even consider such things?
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