Simon Schama tweets

Talking of the BBC's Sweden coverage, the famous Simon Schama took to Twitter just before 8 o'clock this morning to fulminate about...:

....a completely misleading report on BBC Radio 4's Today on Swedish elections as though SDs had become second biggest party - barely corrected at the end. 

I'll stick up for the BBC here because Gavin Lee's report was obviously an 'as-it-happens'-style piece beginning yesterday evening at the Sweden Democrats HQ as an early exit poll placed them second (with the SDs erupting with delight) and then returned there at the end of the report and in the early hours of this morning to say that the SDs had actually come third...

...and John Humphrys had after all introduced the whole thing by saying: 

The political face of Sweden has changed pretty dramatically in the past few years from a solidly socialist country one to where the far-right has challenged the old order. Many expected the populist Swedish Democrats to take second place in yesterday's elections. It didn't quite happen. They did take a big share of the vote, but the Prime Minister said he will not form a coalition with them. So what next?

So Simon Schama's complaint was itself rather "misleading", wasn't it? Naturally though, it provoked comments, such as this:

On the Today programme they made out that the SD had stormed to 2nd place then had to admit it came 3rd. 

Well, no, they didn't really do either of those things.

Anyhow, talk of Simon Schama reminds me of Harry & Paul's Story of the Twos and their tribute to the BBC's love for dark Scandanavian dramas: