What with (a) incorrectly captioning footage of King Felipe VI of Spain with the name of his father Juan Carlos, and then (b) getting the year of the Queen and Prince Philip's marriage date wrong by ten years, and then (c) with Emily Maitlis mistakenly conferring a generalship on Emmerson Mnangagwe of Zimbabwe, and now (d) the programme wrongly using a clip of Jeremy Corbyn responding to this year’s Spring Budget instead of Wednesday's Autumn Budget, Newsnight has certainly had its fair share of foot-in-mouth incidents over the past few weeks.
And now, to make matters worse (for them), the Independent's media guru Ian Burrell has gone and applied a friendly boot to the programme's abdomen in a piece suggesting that, for all its virtues, it's no longer "a must watch" and that it looks to be at severe risk after its two main champions - Ian Katz and James Harding - announced that they were heading for the hills.
I did smile at Ian Burrell saying that Newsnight "can feel like a less punchy version of Channel 4 News, which shares its London liberal outlook and beats it in awards ceremonies and viewers". Even Ian Burrell of the Independent acknowledges that Newsnight has a "London liberal outlook".
Of course, Newsnight still has its defenders (and I think me and Rob will have to agree to disagree on this one):
Well, Emily is snowed under, poor thing.
ReplyDeleteNewsnight is engaged in a huge Fake News operation to avoid admitting the effects that mass immigration is having on a range of issues.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC is not the only part of the media at fault, but I note the BBC generally and Newsnight in particular have been careful to avoid any reference to mass immigration in relation to low productivity, the issue of the moment. But there is a clear link.
We have been importing huge numbers of low skilled, low wage workers whose presence reduces our overall productivity. Such workers become dependent on state benefits and support once they form families. It's a double whammy: low productivity in terms of their labour and high dependency on welfare.
Also, we have allowed huge migrant communities to form that have very low levels of economic activity - some have double the number of economically inactive people.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/articles/ethnicityandthelabourmarket2011censusenglandandwales/2014-11-13#economic-activity-by-ethnic-group
Newsnight studiously avoids joining the dots.
But it's not just on this one issue. We have seem them avoid mention of mass immigration even in relation to the housing crisis. Likewise they misrepresent on the pressure on the health service and education.
I like that "London Liberal" moniker for the BBC outlook. I'm going to use it!
ReplyDelete