Another Wark on the Biased Side

Unkind souls used to refer to Kirsty Wark as 'Slursty Wark'. She was certainly on fine sense-mangling form last night, ending with:

Thanks very much indeed for all of us for watching.

Earlier she'd read out the Daily Mail's headline and 'misgendered' the elderly man fatally stabbed in Ealing. :

And let's take a look at some of the front pages, beginning with the Daily Mail. 'What kind of monster kills an 87 year old woman in a scooter?'...that was the person on the mobility scooter...is the story on their front page.

That all followed an interview about the RAF diversity row where a man and a woman were interviewed. Both were strongly on-message but the man briefly said something that strayed from the true path and Kirsty came down on him like a ton of bricks. He then returned to saying 'the right thing' again, now overcompensating for the 'rightness' by being even more on-message than earlier. [If Col Richard Kemp had been on instead I'm sure he'd have held his ground].  

Those kind of one-sided challenges are par for the course, of course. What's so annoying watching Kirsty Wark interview though is how often she interrupts just so she can get her next question in. She has her 'little list' of pre-prepared questions and nothing's going to stop her ploughing through them, never mind if the flow of the discussion keeps being diverted or comes to a juddering half, as it did once last night. 

One odd thing about the programme's treatment of the story might stand out to anyone who's been hearing about it elsewhere, that the senior RAF recruitment officer who resigned in protest at an "effective pause" on offering jobs to white male recruits in favour of women and ethnic minorities [as Sky reported it] is a woman - which, in this case, is surely relevant. Newsnight was oddly coy about stating it though:

• The RAF's recruitment chief hit quits over diversity targets.
• "Impossible diversity targets" - that was was the reason, it came to light today, which was cited by the head of RAF recruitment for resigning from the service.
• But it now finds itself at the centre of a row after one of its senior officers resigned.
• Dr Sophy Antrobus, do you think the RAF chief recruiter was right to resign?

Viewers might have thought it was a moaning man until Kirsty Wark let slip a “she” very late on. 

“Neighbours, Everybody needs diverse neighbours”

Thursday's Newsnight marked the end of the sunny Australian soap Neighbours. Kirsty Walk's introduction contained this modish take, worthy of a Guardian column:

Although it became more diverse in later years, its heyday was just bland, mostly young, usually attractive heterosexual white Australians living unremarkable lives.

Lots of people loved it nonetheless. 

Trouble at t'Newsnight

Victoria Derbyshire is to become a regular Newsnight presenter, alongside Kirsty Wark.

She'll serve under new editor Stewart Maclean. 

I missed the controversy surrounding his appointment in April. According to The Times back then, a former BBC employee tried to derail his appointment.

What's so fascinating is the culture the story reveals about the toxic culture at Newsnight.

[1] Mr Maclean was said to have made “insensitive” comments about a Black Lives Matter story, comparing the destruction of statues by BLM to the destruction of statues by Islamic State.

His alleged comments, made during an editorial meeting, raised concerns among Newsnight employees on WhatsApp, according to messages seen by The Times. One person quoted Maclean as saying: “We were very critical when Isis were pulling down statues in Palmyra. We need to make sure we reflect that.”

“Hot Take Stew is well and truly back,” a Newsnight insider said. Another added: “I honestly have had enough of the crap he spouts.

[2] He's also said to have questioned why pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller “cared so much about Brexit after a colleague wrongly suggested she was Australian, though he denied saying anything inflammatory”.

[3] And most strikingly:

Those familiar with his tenure as deputy editor claimed that he wanted to bring “balance” to panel discussions about racism on Newsnight by booking white conservatives. Producers are said to have protested against the requests and the debates did not make it to air.

Isn't that something, wanting to allow a different point of view on Newsnight? Whoever heard of such a crazy thing?

Goodall news

And so farewell to blog favourite Newsnight's Lewis Goodall, who is departing the BBC in September to join Jon Sopel and Emily Maitlis at Global. Mark Urban might be left switching having to switch off the studio lights at this rate. Steerpike at The Spectator pays handsome tribute to the departing Lewis:

Departing from the BBC means that now Goodall is, at last, free to share his political views that have been so well-concealed to date.

The top comment at Guido Fawkes hit the spot too:

I for one will be curious to learn what Lewis's real views are now that he will be no longer having to work under BBC impartiality rules.

Maybe LBC should add another B to their name and become LBBC? 

Comparing GB News with Newsnight

For lots of reasons I've not seen much of GB News or the BBC for months, but I actually sat down today and watched last night's Newsnight on BBC Two and - live - this afternoon's GB News with Nana Akua.

Such a random snapshot proved useful because last night's Newsnight dealt with much the same topic as GB News's 'Great British Debate': the Rwanda/Channel-crossing migrants issue: so it made easy a simple exercise to compare and contrast them.

And the contrasts couldn't be clearer.

Nana's GB News debate saw Nana, the presenter, lay out the pros-and-cons of the debate, but she also declared her own hand. On the question 'Should illegal migrants be tagged like criminals?' she said:

'...But critics say that the plan treats those fleeing persecution as criminals...Well, they are, aren't they? They crossed the Channel illegally. Sorry, did I say that out loud?

She then interviewed Phil Brewer from the Human Trafficking Foundation, who disagreed with her. He argued that the tagging plan won't work and will impact badly on the mental health of the Channel-crossing people being tagged.

What was so pleasing here was that Nana didn't just let him talk but was clearly happy to let him do so, despite her not sharing his point of view. He wasn't interrupted or belittled. He was simply listened to. And he listened to her in return. And Nana left it up to GB News viewers to listen and decide too. 

It was all about listening to open-minded people with strong views listening with an open mind to each other.

Then came Kevin Saunders, former Chief Immigration Officer at UK Border Force, who was pro-tagging and, with caveats, pro-Rwanda option echoed Nana's sentiments. Nana didn't disguise the fact that she agreed with him. It was all in the open.

And Kevin quoted the Full-Fact approved stat that some 70 per cent of those crossing the Channel are fighting-aged men aged 18-40. Newsnight's Lewis Goodall, in contrast, ignored that and made more of the the Full-Fact approved stat that the large majority of 'asylum seekers' crossing the Channel are given asylum in the UK, thus showing that they aren't mere economic migrants.

Then on GB News came a discussion on the issue featuring comedian Leo Kearse and broadcaser Lois Perry. Nana continued to make plain her own views to viewers, but kept outlining both sides. Lois and Leo aired their views, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes agreeing, though they broadly agreed with Nana.

Standing back and judging, this was clearly a debate with a bias - a bias in favour of tagging and the Rwanda plan. But the bias was openly presented and the dissenting voice was treated no differently to the agreeing voices and given full freedom to make his points uninterrupted and in just as friendly a spirit.

Compare that to last night's Newsnight and you'll find yourself in a very different place.

The starting point here was a report from Newsnight policy editor Lewis Goodall. It used Lucy Halliday from Care4Calais, an opponent of the government's Rwanda plan, as a 'talking head'. Next came a sympathetic 'asylum seeker' who says he fled the Taliban in Afghanistan. And then a lawyer working for the 'asylum seekers', Jacqueline McKenzie of Leigh Day solicitors. 

It was one of those BBC reports that spoke with one voice on one side of the argument.

And then it was back to the Newsnight studio for Lubna Shuja of the Law Society, who sounded unsympathetic to the Rwanda plan, and former Labour home secretary David Blunkett, who also disagreed with it.

Watching Newsnight again, after a few months' abstinence, brought it home to me just how one-sided the BBC can be when it really puts its mind to it.

Though Mark Urban, presenting, struck a detached tone, everything else felt like a campaign video.

Lewis Goodall, reporting, came across as a man on a mission, a campaigner telling you what you must believe if you're a good person like him.

And that's what's so galling. Lewis Goodall, someone who uses long threads on Twitter to garner 'likes' from left-leaning types, gets to play the righteous voice of impartial BBC authority on Newsnight and Twitter. 

And Newsnight gets away with presenting the most one-sided airing of a matter of public controversy imaginable with no dissenting voices whatsoever. 

All at the public's expense.

Seriously, give me the honest bias and openness to other points of view of GB News any day over the narrow, preachy 'curating' of stories and opinions by the 'impartial' BBC.

Where is Ukraine?

“BBC chiefs are lining up journalist and newsreader Clive Myrie to replace Emily Maitlis on Newsnight, The Mail on Sunday can reveal”, says the The Mail on Sunday.

My favourite Clive Myrie moment came five years ago when he appeared on Richard Osman's House of Games and had to locate Ukraine on a map of Europe. My flabber was well and truly gasted when, after TV presenter Angela Scanlon correctly marked her guess for where Ukraine is with a green dot, Clive, having given it time and thought, then revealed his orange dot for where he thought Ukraine is:

Clive had located it in Azerbaijan. He didn't win the point. 

“He reads the news. It would be embarrassing”, teased Richard Osman, quipping, “Clive, you know what, Ukraine hasn't really been in the news recently, has it?”

Everyone laughed.

Clarifying and Correcting, featuring friends of China and Lewis Goodall

 

Qing dynasty art, attributed to Ma Quan [no relation to Ma Barker]

Regular readers will know that we value those vanishingly rare 'BBC corrections and clarifications'.

They are like the most endangered species of butterfly - almost never seen and extremely hard to capture.

The latest pair are particularly intriguing. 

The first is unusually fulsome and concerns a China expert who writes nice things about communist China's influence in the world - winning plaudits from pro-CCP types in the process. 

She complained that the BBC edited her Today interview and removed a key bit of what she wanted to say:

Today

BBC Radio 4, 1 December 2021

In an item about Chinese ‘debt trap’ diplomacy we interviewed Professor Deborah Brautigan, who explained that this ‘is the idea that China is deliberately luring countries into borrowing more money than they can afford with the goal of using that debt for strategic leverage, to seize assets of some kind or otherwise push the country to do China’s bidding.’ She went on to give an example of the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, saying it was used by the Trump administration to promote this theory.

However Professor Brautigan’s further point, that these ideas have little basis in fact, was edited out of the broadcast interview. In fact Professor Brautigan’s research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota.

We apologise for the error.

7/2/2022

Googling around, it turns out that the BBC also wrote directly to the China-defending professor and blamed an editing error by an inexperienced producer.

Guess what though? The BBC's 'correction and clarification' misspelt her name. She's Professor Brautigam, not Professor Brautigan. 

Standards really are slipping at the BBC.

Talking of which, the other new 'correction and clarification' concerned yet another botched Newsnight report, and what looks like a particularly slipshod example:

Newsnight

BBC Two, 13 July 2021

A graphic attributed the following statement to the Government Race and Disparities Report 2021:

Not a single police force in England and Wales registered an arrest rate of less than 20 for every 1000 black people.

By contrast not a single police force in England and Wales registered an arrest rate of more than 20 for every 1000 white people

We should have made it clear that this conclusion had been carried by The Independent newspaper the previous year in a wider survey of social and economic data on disparities between different ethnicities in the UK and reflected statistics from a different Government website which was now out of date.

The most recent figures show there are four police forces with an arrest rate of below 20 for every 1000 black people.
4/2/2022

As I've moaned before, it's hard to track the guilty BBC party after these BBC statements about poor BBC reporting, as the BBC keeps its mouth shut and rarely names names, most likely in order to spare their people's blushes. So it often takes a lot of patient digging to track down the culprit and the context. 

'Advanced searching' on Twitter reveals however that it was my favourite Newsnight reporter, shiny-faced Lewis Goodall, who bungled it here.

Pleasingly, a retired police officer called him out on it for 'pedalling dodgy statistics' at the time - and for BBC-style race-baiting too:

As so often, it took over six months for the BBC to post that 'correction/clarification' on a page hardly anyone other than me reads. 

I think Lewis should correct it publicly on Newsnight and explain what he did wrong.

[Chances of that happening = Zero].

A pair of interviews

Following on from the previous post...

It was fascinating watching Operation Midland victim Paul Gambaccini [my teenage favourite] reacting live to the breaking news of Dame Cressida Dick's eviction on Mark Steyn's GB News programme on Thursday night. 

As you'd hope, he was given time and space to have his say, and not interrupted. 

Contrast that to Newsnight's inept, awkward interview with Harvey Proctor, another Operation Midland victim. 

He was constantly interrupted by rookie presenter Emma Vardy, as the BBC programme repeatedly panicked at what he had to say in criticism of Dame Cressida and her high-up Met colleagues - despite him insisting it was perfectly OK legally to say what he was saying. 

Why invite a victim on if you're going to repeatedly get the Heebie-jeebies when he says something you've obviously not prepared for?

A Saturday Selection

I've been a bit out-of-action recently, but here are a few things I noted down this week:

I

Never mind Partygate. Sue Gray and Dame Dick need to investigate the Foreign Office for blowing lots of licence fee payers' money on a sparkling farewell party for departing BBC North America editor Jon Sopel. 

That's reported by Steerpike at the Spectator. 

You'll find beneath his piece this comment from former Harry's Place regular Lamia which will doubtless strike a chord with many of us:

Sopel spent the four years of Donald Trump's presidency Tweeting his disapproval of Trump and his Tweets, helping keep the humble folk of Broadcasting House and North London in a permanent state of gratified superior outrage. Once Joe Biden got into power, Sopel and the BBC simply lost interest in reporting about the US President, except what flavour of ice cream he likes. Sopel is a worthless journalist, let alone a journalist for a supposedly impartial broadcaster, because his personal and political biases have infected and dictated everything he reports (and everything he doesn't report about). Not only should he not be the BBC's political editor - if the BBC had any standards (yes, we know it doesn't...) then he would have been sacked years ago. So obviously he's a shoe-in as BBC political editor.

II

Rod Liddle probably ought to hang up his satirical spurs because BBC reality is outpacing him faster than the winner of the Kentucky Derby. A Guardian exclusive reports that the BBC is preparing to broadcast a new take on Dickens's Oliver Twist that will “make a conscious effort” to put food poverty “to the fore” and echo footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to reduce child hunger. Very BBC.

III

The BBC is celebrating what they call “a hundred years of our BBC” and they've released a two-minute campaign video - in response to Nadine Dorries - about how the “BBC belongs to all of us”. As you'd expect,  the last word - “every one of us” - goes to Sir David Attenborough and the whole party political broadcast on behalf of the BBC ends with the caption, “This is our BBC.”

The estimable Lance Forman responded:

If the BBC belongs to me - Please can they release the Balen Report which examined anti-Israel bias at the BBC. The BBC have spent circa £500,000 to keep this covered up. With antisemitism rampant there is a public interest in releasing this. Transparency belongs to us all!

IV

The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson pompously gives us “a reminder”:

Just a quick constitutional reminder for the BBC’s 100th anniversary: it belongs to the people of the UK. It doesn’t belong to the government. And, contrary to what the current Culture Secretary seems to think, it isn’t state-funded.

It may not be, but it still drags thousands of reluctant viewers through the courts.

V

As Paul Homewood notes, BBC Future has a piece by some white woke guy called Jeremy Williams headlined Climate change divides along racial lines. Could tackling it help address longstanding injustices? The pasty-faced gentleman in question has a book out too, Climate Change is Racist: Race, Privilege and the Struggle for Climate Justice, thereby evidently making him absolutely irresistible to the BBC. I'm not sure I was even aware of BBC Future. The BBC has no many tentacles it's hard to keep track.

VI(a)

I see some people on Twitter have been complaining that BBC One's main new bulletins gave mere seconds to the jailing of former Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham for paedophilia last night. Indeed, News at Six gave the story 17 seconds and News at Ten gave the story 13 seconds. It beggars belief.

VI(b)

It remains a telling fact that Newsnight has still never covered the Barry Gardiner/Chinese Communist Party influence story or that their policy editor Lewis Goodall, despite being a hyperactive Twitterer, has never tweeted about it either - despite the CCP's influence on the UK being one of the biggest new stories out there. I put it down to bias. 

VII

Wagner's Ring cycle lasts 17 hours and runs for over four days. In it the bronzed Valkyrie Brünnhilde disobeys the Director-General of the gods Wotan, ensconced in Valhalla House. The weak Wotan, despite Brünnhilde's flagrant disregard of Valhalla editorial guidelines, merely slaps her wrist by giving her a talking-to and then sentences her to a good night's sleep on a luxury bed surrounded by fire. The dragon-slaying idiot Siegfried awakens her with a kiss and an embittered, self-righteous Brünnhilde then - after various twists and turns - mounts her mighty steed Grane and, immolating herself in the process too, brings about the fiery destruction of Valhalla House and the godly board. Similarly long-lasting is the BBC's Monologue cycle. In this saga the bronzed Emily Maitlis disobeys pasty-faced chief god of the BBC Tim Davie. Tim Davie weakly slaps her wrist by mildly saying she might, possibly, not have been quite entirely right - and then does nothing more. She disobeys him again. And again. And again. Always playing throughout to her main audience, her fellow Valkyries on Twitter. The Trump-slaying Jon Sopel awakens her with a kiss and she mounts her mighty stallion Twitter and disobeys Tim Davie yet again. So what happens next? Well, if my tortuous Wagner analogy runs on, Emily's biased behaviour will help precipitate BBCdämmerung, The Twilight of the BBC, as Tim Davie sits forlorn in Broadcasting House as everything around him goes up in flames and, amid floodwaters, the Thamesmaidens swim in to take back the BBC licence fee. So is Tim Davie ever going to do something about her? She's making a mockery of 'BBC impartiality' and sneering at her BBC bosses, but I doubt he'll do anything. He doesn't seem the type to tackle BBC bias full on. As BBC TV sitcom Valkyrie Mrs Slocombe was wont to say, he's ''weak as water''. 

VIII

BBC disinformation reporter Marianna Spring has been busy promoting a new 10-part podcast series “investigating the human cost of pandemic conspiracies online in one town, who believes them - and why” for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. She “will share more details soon!” This drew a sarcastic reply from Peter Hitchens: “Looking forward to this, Marianna Spring. Obviously this is the most urgent lack in BBC coverage of the last two years. But will a mere ten episodes be enough?”

IX

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Landale followed UK PM Boris Johnson to a press conference in Ukraine with the Ukrainian president and provoked criticism in some quarters for “making the UK look like a joke” by asking Boris about Partygate rather than Russia-Ukraine. I suspect that as extraterrestrials first emerge from their twenty-mile-long mothership to make contact with humanity for the first time BBC types will be there at the front of the press pack asking about the Sue Gray report. 

What 'Newsnight' was doing in late 2016

There's a video doing the rounds this weekend of Newsnight pulling a stunt and mocking a call by a Conservative MP for the BBC to play God Save the Queen every night by playing the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen, introduced with a straight face by Kirsty Wark. 

Though the same Conservative MP [Andrew Rosindell] has repeated his call this week, that Newsnight stunt dates from November 2016, back when Ian Katz was the programme's editor. He was fond of those kind of japes. 

I'm surprised we didn't cover it back then. 

UPDATE: Whoops. Well, that video, via Alex Belfield, has been removed. 

I'm guessing, given that Alex's YouTube channel is still up-and-running, that Alex either spotted his error or had his error over the date of the Newsnight video pointed out to him and then deleted the video. 

If you're still interested in seeing the 2016 Newsnight playout though, here's a fresh link. Altogether now, 'I wanna be.../Anarchy BBC':

Of Twa hunters and Emily Maitlis

Further to a post here from last Saturday - the one featuring Michael Crick saying “Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” says Emily Maitlis in her Newsnight intro. What total rubbish - here are the opening two paragraphs of a long-read essay at UnHerd by Aris Roussinos, which expand slightly on Michael's 'What total rubbish' critique:

“Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” declared Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis recently, referring to the abortion debate currently going through America’s Supreme Court. No doubt, in the dark forests of the Ituri, Twa hunters paused their age-old stalking of game to deliberate on Mississippi’s new legislation; in the glittering skyscrapers of Shanghai and Guangzhou, the Chinese economy ground to a halt as industrialists awaited Amy Coney Barrett’s contentious deliberation; high in the mountains of Bolivia, peasant farmers abandoned their timeless struggle with the frigid Andean soil, huddling in their villages to confer on what this could all mean for America’s women.

Obviously this is a fantasy, like most British political commentary. It is Britain’s political comment class alone who are so destructively enamoured of the political theatre of a distant foreign country that American news crowds out our own in the battle for attention. Yet this colonised mindset is only true of a specific shade of American politics: an identitarian left-liberal strand tailor-made for our mid-Atlantic Twitter class.

Michael Crick vs Emily Maitlis

I'm guessing that former Newsnight colleagues Michael Crick and Emily Maitlis won't be sending each other Christmas cards this year. On watching Emily delivering one of her usual introductions on Wednesday's Newsnight, this time introducing a story about abortion rights in the United States, former Newsnight political editor Michael tweeted: 

“Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” says Emily Maitlis in her Newsnight intro. What total rubbish.

 The four most 'liked' replies say: 

• Well said. Mine aren't.
• Seemed to more about Jackson, Mississippi. By the end there were probably more people participating than watching. I certainly turned off. Shows how much money the BBC has to throw away.
• BBC eyes, Michael. They live on different planet to the public.
• Always considered myself a right-minded person, and generally well updated on news and current affairs....but my eyes are certainly not on Washington and tbh I've no idea what's happening there.

It isn't impartial broadcasting

 

 

As we've been discussing on the open thread...

This morning's BBC Breakfast included an interview with the French MP for Calais and a former Chief Immigration Officer for UK Border Force in light of the tragedy in the Channel yesterday.

In a very BBC moment, BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty decided to interrupt when the latter, Kevin Saunders, said something that, however factual, was clearly unpalatable to her. 

She then took umbrage with him when he reacted with bemusement to her interruption. 

And, not letting it go, she then went on to try and shame him by playing the time-honoured 'please think of the children' card. 

It was all rather aggressive from the BBC presenter. 

Here's a transcript of that section:

Kevin Saunders, Former Chief Immigration Officer for the UK Border Force: In the longer term, we have got to have offshore reception centres for these people. The draw to the UK is phenomenal. They want to come here because basically everything is free. And that's the attraction. That's why they wants to come. They are going to get housing, education, money, everything. That's why they are wanting to come...

Naga Munchetty, BBC: [interrupting] Because they are seeking asylum.

Kevin Saunders: Ah, er...um...

Naga Munchetty: Sorry, what do you mean by...what does that gesture mean?

Kevin Saunders: I was in France for 16 years pulling people out of the back of lorries and such like. Most of the people that I dealt with were not asylum seekers, they were economic migrants. And I do think it's a little bit disingenuous of some of the people who've never met a migrant in their life to say that they are all asylum seekers. They are not all asylum seekers. A lot of them are just plain economic migrants.

Naga Munchetty: What about those who aren't like the child that died on that boat yesterday?

Kevin Saunders: I mean, I'm not saying that everybody is an economic migrant. But a lot of them are.

And then came a report from the BBC's Lewis Goodall which contradicted the lived testimony of Mr Saunders, former Chief Immigration Officer for the UK Border Force. 

Here are some quotes from that:  

• Some of those have made that journey two, three, four or five times to try and make it to the UK. Why? Well for some of them at least they feel they have already risked everything coming from countries where they have been persecuted perhaps, or where their family have been imprisoned, and so it's merely the latest in a series of risks. 
• And of course some people say, well, why don't they just stay in France? There are a few reasons for that. Sometimes it's about family connections, their last family in the world might be in the UK. Sometimes it's about language, they can speak English, they don't speak French. One of the other reasons is they feel they have been treated badly in France and I don't think people necessarily appreciate just how poor conditions are in the camps, and I call them 'camps' charitably. They are basically really just woods and roadsides where people with kids - women, men and children - are living. 
• To understand that, we spent some time in some camps in Calais and Dunkirk and here is a sense of what we found there. When you think of Dunkirk, this almost certainly is not the escape you think of. But in 2021, this is what Dunkirk is. Thousands of people from around the world, men, women, children too, living in the woods, wondering the motorway, waiting for the call to flee at dawn across the sea from France to Britain.
• We should remember, too, that in terms of numbers at least, compared to other European countries, or indeed elsewhere, we are not talking about that many people. It's just more visible.   
• There's much discussion in Britain about whether these people are genuine asylum seekers. It's a fair question. But also fair to consider whether many or most would credibly take these sort of risks if they weren't.

Now, who would you trust to know whether the bulk of the people crossing the Channel are migrants or refugees: the former Chief Immigration Officer for the UK Border Force who has dealt with these people for 16 years or a BBC 'instant expert' Newsnight reporter who has just popped over to France for a couple of days and talked to a few people?

And this isn't just any old BBC journalist. Lewis has a reputation. 

And, as per an earlier post, both Mark Easton and Newsnight were on a concerted mission to try to defuse this as a story before yesterday's tragedy struck and Lewis Goodall was obviously despatched to help advance that mission. 'Defusing the story' is now impossible, so deflecting it seems to be the new approach. 

Watching a Lewis Goodall report is like watching a university debating society in action. Note, as ever, how Lewis uses the tricks of rhetoric to advance it further - that last quote in particular.

Lewis just can't imagine that people who have travelled so far and are trying so hard can be economic migrants. For him, 'it stands to reason' that they must be asylum seekers. Well, it doesn't for me, and I think that's an absolutely ridiculous thing to say.

Note also his 'we should remember' in the fourth quote. Should we really? Why is a BBC reporter telling us what we should think?

As for the Dunkirk references [and there were images from the war], it crossed my mind that Mark Easton was playing the 'little ships' card. Lewis Goodall, unlike the very canny Mark Easton, was less discreet about using that analogy.

And he really hammers home the 'women and children' angle - despite everything we've seen with our own eyes from video after video over the past couple of year [something the full report heavily reinforces]. 

It's a one-sided argument disguised as a report, loaded in both its content and language.

The whole report also goes out of its way to tug at the heart strings, and - in typical Lewis Goodall style - features talk of what he calls ''this political purgatory''. This gets him into familiar territory, and he negotiates the UK-French angle by putting the emphasis on the French side's criticisms of the UK government. 

Even while he's emphasising his own fears for the lives of the migrants he's spoken to he can't but advance his own position on matters of controversy, and do it with a partisan politician's way of winning an argument. 

Whatever this is, it certainly isn't impartial broadcasting.

Of gut reactions and BBC narratives

 

If you're worried about thousands upon thousands upon thousands of largely adult male migrants from the Middle East and Africa arriving illegally on our English Channel shores and then melting, unchecked, into the Home Counties  - especially given recent terrorist attacks by such people - and if you think that a population rise of around 10 million people in just 20 years in a small country isn't necessarily a good thing, then the BBC's chief propagandist on the immigration question, Mark Easton, was there - as ever - to waive away all your worries yesterday. 

To sum him up: It's not a big deal. The government's pandering to pro-Brexit sentiment over the issue. And what problems exist are because of Brexit. And there's nothing we can legally do to stop the poor migrants in their dinghies. And, shush, don't even mention concerns about terrorism. And please think of the migrant children.

And where the canny Mark Easton led, Newsnight followed last night. 

Emily Maitlis's latest monologue contrasted the ''hard numbers'' [that ''net migration to the UK is actually down. More people are leaving than coming into the country, in other words. The UK currently takes far fewer asylum seekers than many of our European neighbours''] with people's ''perception''.

And in the following report Ben Chu continued that theme and followed the Mark Easton line almost to the letter, and warned us against our ''gut reaction'' on seeing ''images of cross-Channel migrant crossings''.

 ''A closer look at the numbers suggests there's more complexity to this subject - and, indeed, the wider immigration debate - than a gut feeling might lead us to believe'', he said, arguing that ''in the scheme of things'' those poor migrants crossing the Channel aren't a ''big'' problem. 

To sum him up: Everything's hunky-dory as far as numbers go, with no population explosion whatsoever, we've not taken in many asylum seekers compared to other countries, and UK businesses are crying out for more migrants. 

The propaganda from the BBC is massively ramping up again, and I'm guessing the Mark Easton/Newsnight tag-team - all saying the same thing, all spinning the same narrative - were just the tip of the iceberg as far as the BBC's output goes. 

The hope remains, of course, that most of the public will see through it all - though whether they should be made to fund it is another matter entirely.

The sentencing of a sitting MP doesn't get a mention on 'News at Ten' or 'Newsnight'. Why?

Am I missing something? Owen Paterson led BBC One's News at Ten and BBC Two's Newsnight last night, but former Labour MP Claudia Webbe being convicted of threatening her partner’s former girlfriend with acid [and of threatening to send naked pictures of her to her daughters] and being given a 10-week suspended sentence didn't even get a mention. Why?

Emily Maitlis is at the centre of an impartiality scandal again

Emily Maitlis strikes again. She began last night's Newsnight by saying:

Tonight, Conservatives change the rules and protect one of their own at the centre of a lobbying scandal.

This drew a rebuke from former Newsnight political editor Michael Crick who tweeted:

Newsnight has twice just called the Paterson affair a “lobbying scandal”. I personally think it is a scandal, but it’s wrong for Newsnight, part of a broadcaster which is meant by law to be impartial, to make such a judgement.

3-against-1

When watching the TV or listening to the radio, I especially don't enjoy it when broadcasters set up 2-against-1 discussions/debates on a controversial subject.

It doesn't feel fair to me. 

Even worse is when the host of the programme takes the invited majority side and makes it 3-against-1. 

And my hackles really rise if that host then sends the bias sky-rocketing by either mainly or exclusively interrupting the one and only, single and unique dissenting voice, making it 3-against-1 with an added power imbalance against the 1.

And I find that grossly rude.

So let me confess: 

In first getting acquainted with GB News a while back, I was heavily disappointed to find GB News host Dan Wootton doing that very thing on a matter of controversy.

It was 2-against-1 guests, made 3-against-1 by Dan himself sharing the same view of the 2 against the 1, then Dan going after the lone dissenting 1 with contradictions and questions...

...and I thought to myself, ''I don't think I want to escape the BBC just to end up with a mirror image of the BBC - even if it's slightly better because its biased host isn't pretending to be impartial'' [or words to that effect].

And I wasn't thinking that because I agreed with the harassed dissenter. 

Far from it. In the discussion, I agreed with the 3 against the 1 and didn't particularly like the 1, who I felt wasn't right.

It just felt wrong though. 

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And I've held that view for about a month now regarding parts of GB News's output, but now I'm starting to think again...

My new thought is: Given how the BBC is, is that reasonable? Maybe a mirror image of it it necessary after all, especially as the BBC is publicly-funded and getting away with murder?

----------------------

And what provoked that re-think was last night's publicly-funded Newsnight on BBC Two.

This was the first discussion about Boris's reshuffle, hosted by Emily Maitlis. 

It was a classic biased BBC discussion.

It featured two Boris critics - Peter Kyle, Labour's Shadow Schools Minister, and someone Emily introduced as ''former Cabinet minister, now outspoken critic of this PM'' Anna Soubry - pitted against just one Boris supporter, Charles Walker, briefly former leader of the 1922 Committee.

That's Stage One. 

The obvious question already is: Why not just feature one guest from each side? Why not, say, just have either Mr Kyle or Ms Soubry face off against Mr Walker? Why stack it against Mr Walker with a 2-against-1 situation?

Then came Stage Two, as the biased host entered stage left, and intervened most aggressively against the single, dissenting voice - here Charles Walker. 

It was 3-against-1 time again,

Yes, it was pure Dan Wootton on GB News again, but from the opposite direction while - far worse - pretending to be impartial.

----------------------

Ironies abounded.

It began with Labour's Mr Kyle being given a long, free run to attack the Government. He got 1m 4s of uninterrupted ranting.

Then pro-Boris Charles Walker was brought in and Emily asked him about there being ''very little diversity of opinion'' in the new cabinet - which, in the first irony, is particularly rich coming from the present Newsnight team of left-liberal thinkalikes who think nothing of repeatedly labelling Nadine Dorries - the new culture secretary - a ''social conservative'' [as they did at least twice last night].

Hilariously, Mr Walker then 'did a June Sarpong' and replied listing all the racially diverse members of the present cabinet, and Emily - repeatedly interrupting him - told him, as if it was wrong, that he was ''talking about race'' rather than diversity of opinion [O irony upon irony!] - something Emily didn't want to do here but which Newsnight would undoubtedly have done if given even the remotest chance...

...except that they are famously one of the whitest, most right-on broadcasting teams at the BBC and that the Government puts them to shame as far as the identity politics 'putting diverse people in the top jobs' front goes.

Charles Walker barely got a sentence out before being quickly and repeatedly interrupted and contradicted by Emily, who seemed to be gunning for him. Her first interruption came 9 seconds into his first answer. [Note the contrast with Mr Kyle].

Anna Soubry was then brought in and soon fell out with Mr Walker. Ms Soubry said, ''Could you let me finish? You've spoken an awful lot, Charles'' - even though he hadn't been allowed to speak much at all.

I've counted it up and he got the same amount of time, prior to Anna entering, than Labour's Mr Kyle [around 1m 10s each] - though Peter Kyle got his free run while Charles Walker had to bat off Emily Maitlis's targetted-to-him questions and interruptions. And Anna went on to get plenty too.

Mr Walker, his hackles rising, asked why she was even on, given that she's no longer a member of Parliament. It's a good question, though we can easily guess the answer. Emily replied that she ''actually'' has ''been in cabinet''. Mr Walker replied that Ms Soubry ''wasn't in cabinet''.

''Let her finish her sentence, please,'' said Emily to Charles around this time - which was ironic given that Emily had repeatedly interrupted his sentences earlier. 

Anna Soubry, of course, unlike Charles, wasn't interrupted by Emily after 9s. She was also given free rein, only stopped by Charles Walker interrupting her. 

Anna then continued again, at length, ranting against Nadine Dorries. Emily let her finish her sentences. And on Anna Soubry was allowed to go, for an entire minute, raging against the new culture secretary. 

Charles Walker then defended Nadine Dorries and slammed Anna Soubry for not being ''nice'' - a section ending in all three guests speaking at the same time.

Emily then went on the attack against Charles Walker, gunning for him again. 

And Emily then did the BBC thing of playing devil's advocate for the one and only time, asking the Labour man a  half-hearted question about about how Boris is ''getting stuff done'' and doesn't looked ''scared of your party''.  Mr Kyle then delivered another long rant with the shortest interruption midway from Emily. And then Anna was given another long go. And then Mr Kyle returned again to add to his rant.

And finally Charles Walker was asked a long, complicated, heavily loaded by Emily - one with half a dozen questions embedded in it. He answered briefly. Then Mr Kyle leaped in and slagged off Michael Gove, uninterrupted.

And that was that.  

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And after that, frankly, please give me openly biased Dan Wootton over 'claims to be impartial' Emily Mailis any day. 

It's the pretence of impartiality whilst being any but that really, deeply sticks in the throat.

''We conflated...In fact...We also said...To be clear''

Talking of Newsnight and BBC management 'corrections'...

Did you see this - a BBC 'correction and clarification' issued on 16/8, some four months after the offending programme was originally broadcast?

Newsnight, BBC Two, 20 April 2021

We conflated the vaccination rates for Israel’s Palestinian citizens and Palestinians in the occupied territories when we said the roll-out rate was half a percent.

In fact, within Israel it was then estimated to be around 67%.

We also said the “Palestinian population has not been inoculated at anywhere near the rate of the Israeli population.”

To be clear, this was because of vaccine hesitancy.

16/08/2021

I had to dig a little, because the BBC gave no clues, but...Can you guess who at Newsnight said these things, and got them so wrong? 

Yes, it was Emily Maitlis. 

She keeps on getting the BBC into trouble, doesn't she?

Conversations about Gaza [I]

SUE - We’re making this comeback, possibly a one-off - due to the exceptionally problematic media coverage of (how to put it) the current ‘Israel / Gaza’ war.

The BBC’s ‘domestic’ bias is capable of looking after itself on ITBB but we both think this topic merits special attention.

Really, can't think why!!??

BBC opens special complaints page over coverage of Israel-Palestine violence https://t.co/U9qPxf4Wb3

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) May 14, 2021

Unfortunately for the argument that we are about to make, most of the complaints are from people who like to believe that the BBC isn’t pro-Palestinian enough.

Global Chinese Whispers plays out like this. The media sets the stage. Feelings trump facts, and an inflammatory message travels around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. We’ve covered much of this issue over the years, both on ITBB and (before 2012) over at Biased-BBC. It’s Remember the Hamas Bunny? MEMRI?

Alan M. Dershowitz goes down memory lane: This article was originally published in a slightly different form in 2009. Nothing has changed. And it’s déjà vu all over again again with the estimable Matti Friedman.

Not so long ago the many forms of media bias cited and defined by bias-watching fanatics like us would fall on deaf ears. Not so much now; we are no longer alone. The BBC is coming under much wider and closer scrutiny, partly due to the public’s belated recognition of the BBC’s left-wing, some say Marxist, agenda.

The comments in the non-left-wing press show how frequently that particular problem is alluded to in comments by interested members of the public. The bias is almost universally accepted as a given, which arguably downgrades ITBB to the status of self-indulgent irrelevance.

Obviously, the BBC is conscious of the criticism and perhaps it suspects its future depends on more rigorous compliance with its charter obligations, but even if it’s forced to adopt a genuine policy of impartiality over its output, other broadcasters (i.e., Sky, Channel 4) ain’t necessarily bovvered and can stir up trouble with impunity. The new BBC DG may have been ‘trying’, but his influence looks distinctly lip-servicey. When we get the obligatory ‘other side' of the story it’s delivered at arm’s length - impersonal - and framed with the disclaimer “Israel says”, which smacks of cynicism and a sarcastic voice comes on in my head as I read it.

The most pungent flower plucked from the bouquet of biased reporting is ‘omission’ where vital information is tacitly omitted or concealed, especially that concerning the religious indoctrination that underpins Palestinian rhetoric and incites violence against Jews.

#ICYMI: Senior Hamas Official Fathi Hammad to Palestinians in Jerusalem: Buy 5-Shekel Knives and Cut Off the Heads of the Jews #Hamas #terrorism #Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/tok8zWJS3p

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 14, 2021

And a close second, florid emoting. Gratuitously dwelling on the misery of one side. Loaded language; lazy, repetitive, and economical with the actualité.

[CRAIG - What follows are various parts of Sue and my email exchanges over recent days. Exclusive free, PREMIUM, director's cut material.]

CRAIG - You may already know this, but did you spot that Naz Shah returned to type? I've just not seen anyone commenting on it yet - though someone probably has and I've just missed - but I myself spotted three falsehoods from her in a single just-over-a-minute video, and I think it's newsworthy.

My message to the Foreign Secretary regarding the ongoing situation in Palestine. #SheikhJarrah #AlAqsaMosque pic.twitter.com/u3GFyAomKV

— Naz Shah MP 💙 (@NazShahBfd) May 12, 2021

1. Israeli forces didn't attack innocent worshippers on the holiest of nights, in the holiest of places. [Those 'worshippers', stirred up by rhetoric from Palestinian leaders, had stocked the holy al-Asqa mosque with stones, firecrackers, and the like ready for violent protest]. 

2. Thousands of Israel weren't celebrating and chanting the burning of a place of worship. [It was a tree that was on fire, not the mosque, and it was accidentally set alight by the Palestinians, and the Israelis were celebrating an annual national day]. 

3. Settlers didn't illegally occupy or forcibly evict Palestinians from their homes. [The Palestinians are still there pending a Supreme Court ruling].

So, she made three statements, all wrong, and all attacking Israel.

Why has a Muslim Labour MP, who had to apologise for antisemitic anti-Israel tweets and was then widely portrayed in the media as being genuinely repentant, now reverted to blithely spreading lies about Israel?

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I'm thinking that Naz Shah may have got her take on things from watching Aleem Maqbool's  misleading piece on Wednesday's Newsnight which chose its words so carefully as to make one side appear almost entirely in the wrong:

Though the focus is now on Gaza and southern Israel, It was events in Jerusalem that led to what we are seeing now. 

[CRAIG -  And what of the possibility, approaching certainty, that another key cause [perhaps THE main cause] is an intense power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, fuelled by elections cancelled by Fatah, with Hamas ferociously attempting to outbid Fatah in terms of inciting violence against Israel in Jerusalem, and elsewhere, in the hope of reaping the rewards, and that this ultra-heightened level of incitement has been strongly encouraged by Iran and Turkey, emboldened by a weak US president? Shush!!]  

An Israeli court decided it was right to evict several Palestinian families from their homes 

[CRAIG - So, an Israeli court put in the dock by Newsnight. Whether those homes really are their homes and whether they were reneging on the terms of their occupancy by refusing to pay their rent, suddenly, for some reason, right now, being just a few questions ignored by Newsnight.]  

in occupied east Jerusalem.  

[CRAIG - The Israelis didn't evict anyone. It's now gone to the Supreme Court - something else unmentioned here].  

Last Friday those families and others had gathered to break their Ramadan fast

[CRAIG - nice and peaceful family stuff, with lots of invited onlookers]. 

but Jewish settlers came to make their presence felt and stake their claim to the homes. 

[CRAIG - Israeli settlers - boo! - joining that Israeli court in the Newsnight dock]. 

It quickly led to scuffles. The UN and US condemned any forced evictions of Palestinians in east Jerusalem  

[CRAIG - which didn't happen anyhow].

but the issue had already sparked more confrontation in Jerusalem,  

[CRAIG - so that's just the Israeli side in the dock then, so far]. 

Israeli police using rubber bullets and stun grenades and water cannons.  

[CRAIG -  Ah, now the Israeli police are in the Newsnight dock].  

But it was Monday when things escalated so dramatically. Israeli nationalists   

[CRAIG - Israeli nationalists, step into the Newsnight dock please!]  

prepared to march through the Muslim quarter to celebrate their country's capture  

[CRAIG - ''capture'', eh?]  

of east Jerusalem 54 years ago. Palestinians had been in the al-Aqsa Mosque, some ready to oppose the march  

[CRAIG - BBC understatement! They stocked this holy site with rocks, Molotov cocktails, firecrackers and the like],  

when Israeli police stormed  

[CRAIG - ''stormed'', eh?]  

the mosque compound, once again using force  

[CRAIG - ''using force'', eh? Unlike the violent, well-stocked protestors inside the sacred mosque, spoiling for a fight, ]  

in the form of sound bombs and rubber bullets but now at the doors of one of Islam's holiest sites.  

[CRAIG - Must remember to stock my parish church with rocks, Mototov cocktails, firecrackers and the like. Not sure if my vicar would agree though. Should I ask Jeremy Bowen if he can recommend an imam from a mosque in and around Jerusalem?].   

Around the compound Palestinians threw rocks and bottles   

[CRAIG - yeah, and the rest Aleem]. 

and more that 300 were injured and as well as 21 Israeli police.  

[CRAIG - Imagine how that would sound the other way round ''More than 21 Israel police were were injured, as well as over 300 rioters'].  

Later, when a fire broke out 

[CRAIG - Just 'broke out', did it? Wasn't started by Palestinian rioters accidentally setting a tree ablaze with one of their firecrackers, Aleem?] 

at the mosque compound, Israelis were seen celebrating. 

[CRAIG - ''Seen celebrating'', eh BBC? Leaping to conclusions without fact-checking, BBC? As it was the annual Jerusalem Day celebration, where thousands of Israelis gather each year, were the several foregrounded Israel people filmed dancing actually celebrating the fire around al-Aqsa, or just celebrating and getting filmed against a background of a burning tree on the Temple Mount? Not that bigoted, vicious Israeli Jews have been absent from the recent violence - unfortunately, far from it -  and I'd been full for admiration for how the pro-Israel people I follow on Twitter have both brought up their actions and damned them unequivocally. But I can't find any evidence that these people were rejoicing at fires on the Haram esh-Sharif / Temple Mount complex rather than just rejoicing as they do, every year, even amid the horrors of recent days. Wrong place, wrong time, perhaps, for the people featured in that 'viral' footage, dancing as a tree burned on the night sky as the backdrop of their celebrations? Or maybe, entirely guilty as charged by the like of Labour's Naz? But shouldn't the BBC do a huge amount of due diligence by trying to find out and not spouting off in a potentially inflammatory way without evidence?]

SUE - I did hear a leek Maqbool (autocorrect struck) speaking the other day but I’m thinking it was an abridged version, or maybe I was half asleep. The language he and his colleagues use is typically loaded and you are right that this kind of thing is where Naz and her ilk get their inspiration. Even in the first section of that transcription [below] there are clues that anyone with an interest in language could pick out:

This is not a story about buildings coming down, or a rocket count. It is about civilians suddenly being thrown into despair. A boy in Gaza running to a coffin, after his father and elder brother were killed. Dozens have now died. Panic and fear etched on the faces of those in Ashkelon in Israel as the warning sirens go off again and where the number of dead rises there too. Today started with more air strikes in Gaza, this tiny densely packed territory, just 25 miles long, five miles across, given a deadly wake up call. And the day was punctuated with more massive bombardment, Israel saying it is targeting places associated with senior figures in Hamas. And while militants have been killed, many civilians, including children, are known to be among the dead. And if they haven't lost relatives, more and more of those living in this impoverished strip are losing their homes and belongings, and are in fear. Overnight, militant groups in Gaza sent a huge barrage of rockets into Israel. And while most were stopped, many did manage to get through, some hitting buildings. In Rashon LeTsizon a 50-year-old woman became one of six Israelis who have now been killed. So how did we get here?

I mean Palis are always defined as ‘families’, usually with empathetic adjectives, whereas Israelis are held at arm’s length without “personalisation’. The lip service that is half-heartedly paid to balance is shamelessly gratuitous. Then there are the half-truths that have embedded themselves into the language such as ‘densely packed’. Then every single utterance about Israel’s action is reported as ‘Israel says” which implies reluctance at the compulsory obligation to ‘put the other side’. In fact, I’m sure that’s actually passive-aggressive.

And that’s even before the ‘how did we get here’ section.

The terms used are always emotive. Jewish Settlers. Right-wing. Etc. Not to mention the lazy, sloppy, malicious, deliberately misleading emoting throughout.

CRAIG - As we've quoted two-thirds of that report from Leeky Maqbool, as I'll think of him from now on, we might as well finish it off. This is how he ends it:

Several rockets were fired from Gaza, and although they were shot down Israel decided to hit back hard, with air strikes across the Gaza Strip. It said it was targeting militants but of nearly 30 people were ten children including a four-year-old and 6-year-old. By Tuesday, it felt like a point of no return had been crossed and Gaza had, as has happened so many times in the past, become the cauldron of conflict. For the most part, Gazans do not appear to blame the Palestinian militants or the rocket fire for bringing this catastrophe on them, saying it their occupier that is the aggressor. But Israel says this is entirely the fault of Hamas and that it will continue its military action. With neither side backing down, the funerals look set to keep coming for days.

First sentence, for starters: Just ''several'' rockets. Then Israel deciding to hit back hard ''although they were shot down'', making the Israeli response sound unreasonable, even disproportionate. And then comes another of those 'Israel says' phrases followed by a ''but'', i.e. language of contradiction. And another ''Israel says'' comes later, this time after a ''but''.

And there was a good example of Jeremy Bowen doing an ''Israel says'' on Thursday's BBC Breakfast. The ''they call'' bit was HIS emphasis:

You mentioned appeals for calm coming from abroad, but this is not going to end, I think, until both sides can find a way of declaring a victory that they like. Hamas will want to be able to say that they defended Palestinians and Jerusalem, and Israelis want to do something that they call "restoring deterrence", which essentially means giving a good hammering to anybody who raises a hand against them. So I think that this has got some way to go at the moment. The ''disproportionality'' charge was there too, of course, in his sneer about Israel ''giving a good hammering to anybody who raises a hand against them''.

What's happening in and around Israel at the moment is horrible, and worse than ever this time, with sectarian violence inside Israel adding to the usual story of genocidal terrorists trying to kill as many Jews as possible (and not caring how many of 'their own people' die in the process) and Israel robustly defending itself and being demonised for doing so. 

And then, as if things couldn't get any worse, Jeremy Bowen - the man with a deep personal grudge against the State of Israel, one he's been nursing for a couple of decades - pops up at Heathrow Airport announcing to the world that he's on his way.

Living the dream (again) sitting on my bags on the pavement at Heathrow waiting for a plane I might not be able to board… no seats in the terminal. journalism in action pic.twitter.com/JyMTNgjClp

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) May 12, 2021

SUE - 

A tower block that is the base for international media in Gaza has been hit by an Israeli bombardment, causing it to collapse.

People inside were warned about an hour before it was attacked and, at this stage, there are no known casualties.

Read more: https://t.co/aebk62o8nU pic.twitter.com/OZeyD90C0o

— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 15, 2021

"Heart of stone not to laugh!"

CRAIG  - David Collier just replied to AP about that; ''If AP, Al Jazeera and co didn't know that the very building they are reporting from in Gaza is used by Hamas to hide military assets - then maybe they should change jobs?''

'Newsnight' and accuracy

 

In his regular Spectator column Charles Moore recounts how - and why - he spurned the BBC's advances earlier this week:

On Tuesday, I was asked to appear on BBC Newsnight to talk about the Sussexes’ interview. When told it would be presented by Emily Maitlis, I declined, on the grounds that ever since her political speech against Dominic Cummings on the programme last year, I have had no confidence in her fairness. Sure enough, she spoke on the programme that night of ‘the sense of the attempted suicide’ of the Duchess of Sussex — though Meghan had mentioned only ‘suicidal thoughts’.

At the time, my little gesture seemed rather pointless, so I was pleased to read in the next day’s papers that Ofcom has at last decided that the Maitlis diatribe against Cummings ‘had the potential to be perceived by some viewers as an expression of her personal view on a matter of major political controversy’. Hardly a bold rebuke, but a start.

Emily Maitlis's error was actually on Monday night's Newsnight when she asked John Kerry: 

Just before we end, we are talking on a day that has been dominated by the Harry and Meghan interview. We know how important the monarchy is to soft power. Does anything in it that you've read, any of the accusations of racism or the sense of the attempted suicide change how America views the institution of our monarchy?

The Tuesday edition itself was notable for another error - one which necessitated an on-air 'clarification' from Emily Maitlis. She began one interview by saying:

But first we're joined by Guy Hewitt, former High Commissioner of Barbados, which will leave the Commonwealth in November - a decision that we should say has been years in the making. It wasn't as a result of the last 24 hours. 

I can imagine, as the interview continued and Rev. Hewitt said what he had to say, that alarm bells began ringing in the studio as it dawned on them that they'd made a mistake, and that voices appeared in Emily's earpiece telling her to 'clarify' the matter. Towards the close of the segment, the following happened:

Emily Maitlis: And just let me clear up an inconsistency that I think I made. You will remain part of the Commonwealth, is that right, but you won't have the Queen...? 

Guy Hewitt: Barbados will remain...Yes, we will have a native head of state but we will remain part of the Commonwealth as the majority of members are republics.

 I don't think the "attempted suicide" error has been corrected yet.