Though there were three topics on today's The World This Weekend - the parliamentary goings-on over Brexit, the SNP and the Daily Mail - the common thread running through all of them was Brexit, with many a passing opinion about it being given along the way. The curious thing was that all of those opinionated interviewees (from Ken Clarke in the first section to all those SNP people in the second section to Nicholas Coleridge in the third and final section) are unsympathetic towards Brexit.
Yes, it was a clean sweep this week. Does that constitute 'due impartiality'?
The Daily Mail bit, if you were wondering, focused on Remain-supporting Geordie Greig taking over as editor from Paul Dacre. Mark Mardell framed it like this:
We ask will the new man sand down the Mail's abrasive edges?
Besides a further use of "abrasive" Mark went on to call the paper "feverishly fierce", "aggressive" and "scarcely nuanced", especially in its Brexit coverage. However fair those terms might be they aren't neutral language.
The programme's opening angle, on the parliamentary Brexit debate, was that Ken Clarke was going to appear and tell his fellow MPs to ignore Amber Rudd and vote against the government. And the programme then used that as its closing headline:
One closing headline: On this programme the pro-EU former Conservative cabinet minister Ken Clarke has urged fellow backbenchers to rescue Theresa may from Brexit-supporting Cabinet ministers by voting against the government in the Commons this week.
As this interview was recorded before the programme went on air that closing headline was doubtless guaranteed from the start.
Ken Clarke must be on tour. He was on the Sunday Politics as well.
ReplyDeleteI thought the BBC had realised that Ken may not , as such, swing the yoof vote.
DeleteIt would seem BBC-approved spring chickens like Ali Campbell, Andy Adonis and Owen Jones were off working their inspirational magic in green rooms other than those kept warm for them at W1A.