Evan Davis v Nicola Sturgeon

Well, Evan Davis was back on BBC One tonight with his latest Leader Interview, featuring a leader the vast majority of UK voters can't vote for - Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP.

Tone-wise, it could hardly have been more different to Evan's last BBC One interview (the one with the leader of UKIP).

(If any cybernats moan about this, they seriously need help and deserve to be afforded no credibility whatsoever ever again).

Evan and Nicola got on like a house on fire. It was all pretty good-natured, with Evan and Nicola laughing at each others jokes, sparring light-heartedly and, generally, treating each other with kid gloves. (Evan even echoed some of her comments). 

She seemed to enjoy it. As did he.

There was lots of discussion about the SNP's attitude towards Labour and how things might work with Labour after the election, plus other post-election scenarios.  A bit of stuff about how she feels about London and who she'd support in, say, an England-Germany match, plus some stuff about what she'd like to be remembered for after her long career in politics, many years hence.

There were lots of interruptions (34, by my count - putting her ahead of Ed but behind David and Nick - and way, way behind Nigel's 55), but it still was a million miles away from the hostile tone of last week's interview with Nigel Farage - full of joshing, fencing, and pushing without bruising. 

He didn't imply racism (even anti-English racism). He didn't have a dig at SNP candidates or supporters. He didn't personally have a go at Nicola Sturgeon. He didn't, even for a second, dig into her economic policy (that fiscal 'black hole' for example), or anything else about her manifesto. He didn't seek to embarrass her with clips from the past, or an endless stream of potentially embarrassing quotes (just one from Alex Salmond, if I recall correctly). He didn't cite Paddington Bear against her nationalist standpoint. 

Evan's interview with Nigel Farage felt hostile, as if Evan were seeking to ruin UKIP's reputation.

This interview was pathetically soft in comparison because, I suspect, Evan doesn't care about the SNP as much as he cares (negatively) about UKIP - meaning that he's guilty of a bias against UKIP. It was just a prime-time interview with the leader of the SNP for him. Not personal.

Watch it for yourselves though please. 

Bearing down on Nigel

News-watch's David Keighley has written a fine piece about the Evan Davis-Nigel Farage interview at Conservative Woman, describing it as "another clumsy but brutal ad hominem attack":

His [Evan Davis's] approach to the interview was yet another example of the BBC’s ‘painting by numbers’ approach to Ukip.  The main intent was to show that all those who support such policies – and Nigel Farage in particular - are dangerous, bigoted racists.

Accordingly, the tone and mannerisms he adopted were those of a superior, enlightened being dealing with something rather unpleasant adhering to his shoe.

Quite.

David also notes the staggering amount of interrupting that went on (as we did here at 'ITBB'):

One obvious manifestation of this approach was that he interrupted Farage at least 50 times. Counting the total is quite hard because sometimes there seemed a deliberate desire to stop Farage talking at all, and certainly from presenting an answer that contained detailed reasoning.

Was this simply robust interviewing?  Emphatically not. In the equivalent interview with Ed Miliband by Davis, the number of such interruptions was only 32.  

He then adds another striking measure - a count of the words spoken by the BBC interviewer and his interviewee: 

Further, Davis spoke almost 3,000 words in the Farage ‘interview’ – only 700 fewer than Farage himself.

...which works out as Evan talking for about 45% of the interview and Nigel talking for about 55% of the interview - which isn't quite how interviews are supposed to work, is it?

Incidentally, David has posted a full transcript of the "interview" at News-watch (a great public service on his part).

Here's an extract, just to remind you of one of its lowest points:

ED: (speaking over) I wonder whether . . . I don't know, I just wonder whether there are different patriotic visions and there are certain people you would call liberal Metropolitan elite who have a different vision of Britain. Did you see the Paddington Bear movie last year?
NF: No.
ED: A terrific movie with a kind of . . . a rather sort of moving, in a sense, proclamation of the virtues of multiculturalism which I know you hate because he's a bear and he's different and he feels very at home and he’s made to feel welcome here.
NF: I think, I think . . .
ED: Would that, would that sort of be a ‘Metropolitan elite’ movie . .
NF: I think er . . .
ED: that is kind of a tragedy (corrects himself) a travesty of British patriotism and British values?
NF: Well, I think the fact you throw the word in ‘hate’ like that, as a sort of off-the-cuff comment . . .
ED: But you have (words unclear, ‘lots of insults’?)
NF: as if, as if . . . as if of course Mr Farage ‘hates’ things, what's your evidence for that?
ED: Well you said in your manifesto . . .. You said multiculturalism is divisive.
NF: What is your evidence that I hate it?
ED: But you say (words unclear due to speaking over)...

Evan v Nigel. This time it's personal.

Anticipating tonight's BBC One Evan Davis leaders' interview with Nigel Farage on an earlier thread, well, we certainly had our hopes of something that wouldn't be the usual sort of BBC interview with the UKIP leader:

Anonymous, April 2015 at 01:02

That will indeed be interesting! He might well go for some detailed querying of UKIP's spending proposals/budget cuts as economics is Davis's strong point. Also, expect some detailed scrutiny of the Australian style points system for immigration.

Craig, April 2015 at 17:52

A good, tough examination of UKIP's policies would be worthwhile. It would make a change from the usual 'Today'-style interviews with Nigel Farage which tend to focus on his party's dodgy candidates and accusations that the party is racist. 

Alas, our hopes were dashed. 

Evan Davis spent less than 3 minutes on UKIP's spending proposals/budgets, merely contenting himself with interruptions asking where the money's coming from...

....and that was pretty much it about UKIP's manifesto - despite a passing mention of some 'pro-posh people' UKIP policies near the start....

(...though, to be fair, a good minute was spent on the the 2010 UKIP manifesto and why it was, in Nigel's own words, "drivel"!)

And, yes, Evan Davis did do "the usual 'Today'-style interview with Nigel Farage which tends to focus on his party's dodgy candidates and accusations that the party is racist". 

Taken all in all, some 16 minutes was devoted to questioning the "tone" of UKIP's rhetoric, especially about immigration and Muslims - i.e. over half the interview. 

The very clear imputation from Evan Davis throughout this long section - though Evan was very careful not to use the word - was that, yes, Nigel Farage and his party are racists.

Nigel Farage strongly protested at several points that Evan Davis's had his facts wrong and that he was being misquoted and smeared. Several of Evan's lines of attack will, therefore, need a severe fact-checking. Given what befall Andrew Marr, they had better be correct for the BBC's sake. 

The other main line of questioning concerned whether UKIP is a posh, establishment party. Evan had a list of posh UKIP candidates at hand. 

Twitter has gone wild tonight with UKIP supporters - and people saying they aren't UKIP supporters - describing this as a disgracefully biased interview, one of the worst they've ever seen. Their opponents, outnumbered for once, are either gloating or claiming that Evan Davis was only doing what he ought to have done and that there was no BBC bias here at all.

I'm with the former group.

Interruptions-wise, Nigel Farage has definitely come off worst so far, easily beating all of the other party leaders by my reckoning:

Nigel Farage - 55 interruptions

Nick Clegg - 39 interruptions

David Cameron - 36 interruptions

Ed Miliband - 32 interruptions

Evan, the party leaders, and the spot between 'The One Show' and 'Eastenders'

As there's a UK general election on, no one (surely) will begrudge us a fair smattering of election-related posts. 

So, everyone having agreed with me on that point...

I've been watching all of Evan Davis's prime-time BBC One interviewers will the party leaders (7.30pm, between The One Show and Eastenders), and very interesting they've been.

Putting my ever-so-impartial Is the BBC biased? hat on, I've found all three interviews so far - with Nick Clegg, David Cameron and, tonight, Ed Miliband - quite fascinating.

I've been doing my old interruption-counting thing and found they've been fairly equal in 'interruptiveness' (Nick Clegg 39, David Cameron 36, Ed Miliband 32). 

Tonight's interview with Ed Miliband began with a bang - a veritable barrage of interruptions and Tory-defending questions - and then eased off considerably. 

Ed's body language said it all (he says, sounding like a Big Brother psychologist!) His tongue stuck out at Evan in nervous rejection during the first few minutes, but (in the second half of the interview) his whole being quite visibly eased into a relaxed state and he even gave the appearance of starting to actually enjoy itself.

I did my own usual thing of sniggering at Ed's 'politicianspeak' in the interview's early stage, but found myself sniggering less as the interview went on.

Would non-partisan BBC One viewers have felt the same way too? Did Evan consciously ease off as the interview went on, allowing Ed to blossom?

The interview last week with David Cameron went, somewhat, in the opposite direction, with Evan beginning gently, with few interruptions, but getting ever tougher and ever more 'interruptive' as the interview went on, eventually beating Ed's total number of interruptions. (Result!)

There were even, later on, some of those famous Evan Davis 'asides', which alert Today listeners will remember so well, where Evan contradicts his interviewee and then quickly changes the subject so that the interviewee can't reply - e.g.

"Pity, pity, you've been in government and have been unable to do that work hitherto. Look, Nick Clegg says..."

David Cameron was, however, near the top of his game and batted pretty much everything away with the appearance (at least) of a straight bat.

The interview with the aforementioned Nick Clegg was particularly intriguing. It had the most interruptions, and Evan and Nick got into an unexpectedly intense and strange spat over what the Lib Dem leader felt was Evan's misuse of his ability to speak Dutch. 

The usual questions about Nick's "journey from hero to zero" and the Lib Dems' "broken promises" were 'balanced', however, by questions such as: 

Do you regret the nationalist tenor of some British debate?

(Hmm, wonder who Evan had in mind there?)

And yet Nick - and, yes, I know you probably hate him - came across (despite everything) as essentially decent. And what more could he want from a prime-time BBC One interview? 

Who's next? 

Well, on Wednesday (it appears) Evan will be interviewing Nigel Farage. 

Now that will be very interesting - and a real test for Evan Davis. 

Watch this space.