Before we finish Michael Gove is reported to have said "the decision to leave the EU was on a par with the fall of the Berlin Wall and East Germany's quest for freedom". What's your response to that?
It now turns out that by 'reported' Kirsty actually meant 'rumoured on Twitter by pro-EU partisans'.
Douglas Murray has the whole fascinating story of this Twitter-facilitated, politically-motivated fake news story over at the Spectator - and, even better, he's released a recording of the whole Michael Gove speech to prove it.
The guilty parties are ex-BBC Labour MP Ben Bradshaw and one of the BBC's favourite experts on extremism (far-right and jihadi), Dr Peter Neumann of King's College London.
The former had claimed that Mr Gove had been heckled at the event without informing his readers that he'd been that very heckler (!), while the latter had tweeted:
So here's Michael Gove standing next to Luftwaffe band on Day of German Unity, telling German audience that decision to leave EU on par with fall of Berlin Wall and East Germans' quest for freedom. Shouts from audience: "Nonsense".
That tweet certainly got gullible Simon Schama & Co. squawking en masse: "Obscene. EU equated with USSR! Just vile. How can he sleep?" frothed Prof. Schama while the Observer's Nick Cohen fumed, "The Cold War ended when walls were torn down. Brexit builds them up again. Michael Gove can't spot the difference." David Lammy leapt aboard the bandwagon too. (Update - Nick Cohen, as I'd have hoped he would, has backtracked saying "It seems the professor was confused, to put the kindest possible constrcution on it".)
The audio released by Douglas (and the accompanying transcript) proves that 'the quote' used by Kirsty Wark was not a quote at all. Michael Gove didn't say what Dr. Neumann said he'd said.
At all. Not a bit of it. It was all utterly fake news.
At all. Not a bit of it. It was all utterly fake news.
Scary to think of it but without that pesky audio Messrs Bradshaw and Neumann might well have gotten away with it.
Now, to his credit (though to the annoyance of others), I'll just note here that the BBC's Evan Davis protested commented negatively and prominently on Dr Neumann's less-than-accurate tweet:
Amazed to see this still getting so many retweets and likes. Everybody should read the transcript and make up their own mind. But I for one saw this tweet and then read the speech and felt Peter Neumann had totally misinformed me as to what had been said.
So will there be fewer invites from the BBC for Dr Neumann now?
Douglas Murray, following his audio-and-transcript-led exposure of George Eaton of the New Statesman's shocking misbehaviour towards Prof. Roger Scruton is becoming quite the crusader for truth. Good on him!
Talking of exposures by released audio or video....
As noted on the Sweenexit thread and the Open Thread, it really does look as if Tommy Yaxley-Robinson has triumphed, game, set and match, in his war with the BBC's John Sweeney (a war the latter launched).
Tommy's Panodrama, whatever you might have thought of it at the time, really does appear to have (a) scruppered the BBC's intended Panorama hatchet job on him and (b) directly caused BBC star reporter John Sweeney to make his exit from the corporation (as per a not-available-online piece by Matthew Moore of The Times).
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Douglas Murray, following his audio-and-transcript-led exposure of George Eaton of the New Statesman's shocking misbehaviour towards Prof. Roger Scruton is becoming quite the crusader for truth. Good on him!
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Talking of exposures by released audio or video....
As noted on the Sweenexit thread and the Open Thread, it really does look as if Tommy Yaxley-Robinson has triumphed, game, set and match, in his war with the BBC's John Sweeney (a war the latter launched).
Tommy's Panodrama, whatever you might have thought of it at the time, really does appear to have (a) scruppered the BBC's intended Panorama hatchet job on him and (b) directly caused BBC star reporter John Sweeney to make his exit from the corporation (as per a not-available-online piece by Matthew Moore of The Times).
The UK media's reporting of this remarkable turn of events is fascinating in its near-absence. Silence has well and truly fallen. The Independent's Lizzie Dearden is a rare exception. Her not-entirely-factually-accurate report on the story actually manages to be quite balanced.
I do agree that it was the "bloody woofter" comment that must have got John Sweeney into particular trouble at the BBC.
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It's been another bad day for the BBC.
You have to go 34 paragraphs into the BBC News website's main report on the story to reach the bit where the retired judge slams the BBC for its involvement in the Carl Beech/'VIP paedophile gang' story, but at least they didn't 'forget to mention it'.
It should surely have been mentioned (if only trailed) further up the article though, and the BBC ought to be sharply questioned over this.
(Where's John Humphrys when you need him?).
Retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques is damning about the BBC's involvement, with BBC reporter Tom Symonds receiving the lion's share of the criticism
The judge said the BBC had "fed information" to 'Nick '(Carl Beech):
The showing of the picture of Martin Allen to ‘Nick’ by Tom Symonds of the BBC was unhelpful to the integrity of the investigation.
The photographic identification by Tom Symonds was fundamentally flawed and would not be admitted in a court.
It's complicated stuff, but (especially in the wake of the Lord McAlpine scandal which saw a BBC director general resign) it's really quite something (again) that the BBC fell flat on its face once more over the issue of paedophilia' (following the Savile scandal)...before then partly redeeming itself via, of all programmes. Panorama, which first raised huge questions about 'Nick'.
What will happen to Tom Symonds over this? Will he be joining John Sweeney? (Joint leaving do? JS to buy the drinks?)
My Twitter feed today was especially aghast at a woman in the audience at an Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez meeting passionately calling for babies to be eaten as a necessary step to counteract climate change.
By all recent accounts it was a hoax (channelling Swift's A Modest Proposal), but (like in the early days of Titania McGrath) a lot of people fell for it - from both sides (including a surprising number of my favourites on Twitter, though I won't name names!).
Gosh darn it, even Sky reported it straight too.
By the looks of it, the BBC held off until they could safely brand it a "far-right" stunt - as they duly did a couple of hours ago.
What's so intriguing here is how Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez reacted to the woman in the audience's question. She seemed to take it at face value, didn't take issue with the woman and was nice to her.
That has raised eyebrows.
And my eyebrows were raised by how the BBC edited the exchange.
Watch the full exchange here (via Sky):
And then watch the BBC's editer version. It removes the main bits where, to critics, AO-C looks as it she's falling for the hoax and pandering to the woman.
Of course, she might not have been doing any such thing, just diffusing the situation gently and skilfully.
But why shorten it when the whole exchange lasted less than two minutes? Was it some (agenda-driven) attempt to protect Ms Ocasia-Cortez?
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My Twitter feed today was especially aghast at a woman in the audience at an Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez meeting passionately calling for babies to be eaten as a necessary step to counteract climate change.
By all recent accounts it was a hoax (channelling Swift's A Modest Proposal), but (like in the early days of Titania McGrath) a lot of people fell for it - from both sides (including a surprising number of my favourites on Twitter, though I won't name names!).
Gosh darn it, even Sky reported it straight too.
By the looks of it, the BBC held off until they could safely brand it a "far-right" stunt - as they duly did a couple of hours ago.
What's so intriguing here is how Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez reacted to the woman in the audience's question. She seemed to take it at face value, didn't take issue with the woman and was nice to her.
That has raised eyebrows.
And my eyebrows were raised by how the BBC edited the exchange.
Watch the full exchange here (via Sky):
A woman who attended, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's town hall meeting, urges the eating of babies as a necessary step in the fight against climate change.— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 4, 2019
Watch more videos from Sky News here: https://t.co/hhDQuPJRZP pic.twitter.com/WbbEc9uTXk
And then watch the BBC's editer version. It removes the main bits where, to critics, AO-C looks as it she's falling for the hoax and pandering to the woman.
Of course, she might not have been doing any such thing, just diffusing the situation gently and skilfully.
But why shorten it when the whole exchange lasted less than two minutes? Was it some (agenda-driven) attempt to protect Ms Ocasia-Cortez?
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