Rob praises Jo, and plays his joker

I see that Rob Burley's been busy today. Here he is, for example, - oh Rob! - taking out and waving the old, tattered 'complaints from both sides' card:

I reckon Jo Coburn has eaten her Weetabix this morning. Absolutely brilliant and super tough political interviewing. The usual complaints on here from both Labour and Conservatives that she is in some way biased. You guys need to get your story straight, you can't both be right!

That arose after today's Politics Live. 

Here's a complaint for 'our side' about that very edition of that very programme, posted btl (below the line) at Guido Fawkes today:

I honestly think that the Tories are so far ahead in the polls partly because the public have been exposed to the absolute rancid and breathtaking bias of the BBC during this election campaign. Everything from the tone of the interview, the type of questions and implications, to the selection of facts, is entirely dependent on which party the interviewee represents. Earlier today on Politics Live McDonnell was allowed to spout his nonsense about having a 4 day week effectively unchallenged. But in the space of a few minutes what that Tory went through was tantamount to a police investigation. He was hounded, sneered at, and it was implied several times that he was just an outright liar. Heck, he wasn't even treated like a normal human being, but more like a pathetic and inferior dog who should learn to behave himself. I think people have started to wake up to this disgusting organization. Privatize it now.

I've watched it myself now, and done a bit of counting and comparing. But the counting  and comparing is complicated by the fact that we're partly comparing chalk and cheese. 

John McDonnell took part in a one-on-one interview with Jo Coburn from outside the studio. It lasted over 9 minutes, and Jo interrupted him just 6 times. 

Paul Scully for the Conservatives, in contrast, was in the studio with Jo, and her three other guests, and their discussion was free-flowing and hard to time. Jo interrupted him 31 times (over 5 times more often than Mr McDonnell). Her other guests also repeatedly interrupted him. And Joe, the programme's fact-checker, appeared mid-interview, to add to Mr Scully's misery by telling viewers that he was factually wrong. 

More subjectively, I myself felt that Jo gave John McDonnell the gentlest of nippings while going after Mr Scully like a Hammer House of Horror hell-hound. She was, of course, pursuing the scent of the BBC's "Can we trust the Tories?" angle, and trying very hard to make Mr Scully look like a liar with all sorts of pre-primed statistical grenades and booby-traps. 

(The mild-mannered Mr Scully seemed to take it all in his stride. However sour Jo became towards him he just went on placidly, like a cow eating grass). 

As regards  'complaints from both sides', there's no equivalence here, so that argument collapses. Jo Coburn sent John McDonnell to heaven and Paul Scully to hell. Jo's Weetabix consumption revealed interviewing toughness towards Mr Scully alone.

But, being ITBB, here's a thought in counterpoint: Had the situations been reversed and Mr McDonnell been in the studio with three other guests and Mr Scully outside the studio in a one-on-one interview with Jo Coburn, would these stats have swung 180 degrees in the other direction?

Who can say? Counterfactuals can only ever be guesses. 

I very much doubt it though. The BBC - possibly out of fear, possibly not - seems incapable of properly taking John McDonnell to task.