'Newsnight' goes Through the Looking-Glass

Allison Pearson has been watching Newsnight tonight. Most of the programme was taken up discussing the BBC in the light of Lord Hall's departure:

This BBC Newsnight discussion misses the fact that the BBC projects a metropolitan point of view in most of its output. But the country now has the upper hand. The BBC can’t respond because its staff don’t get the country.

Indeed, and it was quite surreal.

MB on the open thread nails it:

We can analyse ourselves objectively. To begin with we will have three pro-BBC guests/pensioners on who will show industrial levels of delusion. 

Then have three people on, one pro-Beeb, pro-more PC-Beeb and one Beeb agnostic (well, feels it's not performing as well as it should, sounding more PC by the minute...wants public broadcasting - wants a "digital licence fee"). 

So that's a grand total of six people who want to preserve the BBC! And no one who wants it abolished. 

Usual BBC impartiality, then.

The guests were: David Dimbleby (pro-BBC), Michael Grade  (pro-BBC), Katy Brand  (pro-BBC), Suzanne Franks  (pro-BBC), Nels Abbey (pro-a-more-PC BBC) and Tom Mills (BBC critic).

And Tom Mills, the token 'BBC sceptic', isn't your normal BBC critic. He's a pro-public service broadcasting BBC critic from the hard-Left  - so hard-Left that Aaron Bastani of the far-left Novara Media would like him to be the next DG of the BBC!

None of them wanted to get rid of the licence fee. (What are the chances?!)

Navel-gazing Newsnight surpassed itself tonight.

Others are noticing:

𝕽𝖆𝖕𝖍𝖆𝖊𝖑 𝕴𝖑𝖔𝖍: Watching BBC Newsnight I couldn't help but notice that all guests on the show are hardcore "Pro-BBC" & are all invariably making the same case for the BBC. Oh, what a joke! I think, unless something dramatically changes, the BBC is almost at the end of the line. When all guests on Newsnight all sing off the exact same page of the exact same hymnbook, the "hidden" agenda becomes way too apparent...