For fans of BBC interviewers where the two BBC presenter-reporters decide to talk about themselves (sometimes cruelly but accurately described as 'navel-gazing'), here's a transcription from tonight's 100 Days, co-starring Christian Fraser and the famous Jon Sopel:
CHRISTIAN FRASER: Stay with us, because I want to discuss strategy with Jon. We really should talk about his attitude to the press, Jon. The media is, according to the tweet, "the enemy of the American people". That came last week. Now, you were on the receiving end of it last Thursday. I was sitting in the chair watching you. Let's just remind our viewers of of how that went.
Trump: Where are you from? Sopel: BBC. Trump: Here's another beauty. Sopel: It's a good line. Impartial, free and fair. Trump: Yeah, sure. Sopel: Mr President... Trump: Just like CNN, right? Sopel: On the travel ban... We could banter back and forth. On the travel ban, would you accept that that was a good example of the smooth running of government? Trump: Yeah, I do, let me tell you... Sopel: Were there any mistakes in that? Trump: Wait! Wait! I know who you are, just wait. Let me tell you about the travel ban. We had a very smooth roll-out of the travel ban...
I love that! "I know who you are". What do you make of the strategy, Jon?
JON SOPEL: I think that, if you look down the ages, every president has tried to communicate directly with the electorate without the mediation of newspaper journalists or people like us. You go back to the Second World War, it was Roosevelt with his fireside chats. Today, Donald Trump has 25 million followers on Twitter. He wants to go to rallies where he can address the crowds, like we saw over the weekend. I think that part of the strategy absolutely makes sense. I think the other thing about Donald Trump is he loves to have an enemy. If you think about when he was running for the Republican nomination, it was "lying Ted", "low-energy Jeb", "little Marco". And then it was onto the election itself and it was "crooked Hillary" and "Lock her up!". And I think he needs an enemy now, and he's determined to make the enemy us, and we must resist the temptation to fall into the trap of thinking that we are the opposition. We're journalists holding him to account.
CHRISTIAN FRASER: But there are people on both sides of the House...I mean, John McCain was saying this weekend, if you want to have a free democracy, you have to have an adversarial press, and there are people on both sides of the House that are concerned about the tone.
JON SOPEL: Yeah, I think there are, and I think there are people who would want him to dial it back. I mean, the idea of saying that journalists are "the enemy of the people", I think that went too far for some people, but broadly speaking, I think an awful lot of Trump supporters believe that we are the bad guys in all of this, they think that Donald Trump is the purveyor of truth, and sometimes it will be our job to say, "You know what? What he just said is not as truthful as first appears". But it's going to be contentious, I think it is fair to say.
Complete dishonesty from the BBC, as we have come to expect...
ReplyDeleteTrump did not say in his Tweet, as claimed by Christian Fraser that the "press" or "media" were the enemies of the American people - he said that the "fake news media" whom he specified as CNN, New York Times and NBC and many others. He did not say all media and press were enemies of the American people.
The BBC will lie, lie and lie again when it comes to defending nutjob PC globalism against common sense nationalism.
What a load of garbage. They never held Obama to account, and worked overtime to defend Hillary Clinton. Sopel is either lying or in denial, because most of the US and foreign media have already declared themselves the opposition. There's a difference between discussing impeachment and military coups and fact-checking a speech.
ReplyDeleteWhat really grates on Sopel and his ilk is that they are well aware that most of the public do view them as the enemy now. And rightfully so.
I remember reading that another POTUS made similar remarks regarding the Press.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=70018
Let's not forget this sub-species of BBC Fake News bias:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-39037554
The webpage headline for that read "Man charged with mosque terror offence"...my first thought was nasty far righter was plotting to do something horrible to a Mosque. But no, the allegation is that a pro-Sharia preacher gave a sermon at the Mosque in support of IS.
I am sure that the nature of the charge could have been expressed more accurately if they were really trying e.g. "Preacher at Mosque on terror charge", "Mosque sermon leads to terror charge".
"We're journalists holding him to account."
ReplyDeleteBut who holds them to account? They quite happily engineer a political or diplomatic disaster and then walk away - using the 'we are just the messenger' defence.
You rightly highlight an issue the BBC has banned people for raising, and endless political lightweights dare not go near.
DeleteI don't know when it was first coined, but this was when I first saw a senior Beeboid claim they were there to save us from abuses of all power:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/boaden_vlv.shtml
The same woman who bragged about an email account to nowhere for complaints when she headed the editorial complaints system.