Being the fairest blog about BBC bias (from left, right or centre) to be found anywhere on the interweb, I really must give BBC Trending supremo Mike Wendling credit for his From Our Own Correspondent piece today.
From Kate Adie's introduction, which announced that his piece would be about an anti-mass-immigration Swedish centre-right MP, I suspected a linguistically-loaded hatchet job - especially as she described him as being "strident" on the issue of immigration.
And from Radio 4's Twitter feed I expected much the same, with it describing Mike as being "struck" by Sweden's "open politics" and "startled" by the "anti-immigration ideas" of "(immigrant) MP Hanif Bali".
And I don't doubt for one second that this feature was meant in exactly the way that Kate Adie and BBC Radio 4's Twitter feed suggested.
And, to be honest, much as I like him, I really did suspect much the same biased intent from Mike.
And, to be honest, much as I like him, I really did suspect much the same biased intent from Mike.
But Mike Wendling's piece about the 'Swedish-Iranian' MP...
...despite him angling on, and quite openly trying to reel in, the line that it was hypocritical of Mr Bali to have been a beneficiary of Sweden's previous open immigration policy whilst now wanting to severely restrict or completely stop immigration to Sweden...
...conscientiously gave Hanif Bali his due, and didn't stray into loaded language. And as result, I now suspect that Mr Bali is thoroughly decent and well worth listening to.
Despite his Twitter feed's fixation on the badness of the alt-right, about which he's writing a book (and has promised to give me an advanced copy), Mike Wendling, BBC Trending Master of the Universe, didn't disgrace the BBC today.
Let us pray and be thankful for small mercies!
Amen.
Amen.
