Weighty matters

Not a happy bunny after losing

Is it possible to write a post about a BBC journalist not knowing something that the blogger knows - and that the blogger expected the BBC journalist to know - without sounding smug?

No.

Anyhow: 

Tonight's celebrity editon of Eggheads had BBC News channel presenter/Panorama journalist Chris Rogers taking the Geography round against Chris from Eggheads. 

You may remember Chris Rogers from such BBC 'events' as that News Channel interview with the North Korea expert whose was interrupted first by his young son then by his baby and then by his wife desperately trying to get their kids out of the room, or for his Panorama from Ukraine about far-right World Cup football hooligans where - away from the programme - he was caught on camera (off camera), giving a Nazi salute and goose-stepping. 

As such I'd expect him to be good at geography.

But this question - 

Which country lies between Costa Rica and the continent of South America? 

- led him to say "I'm guessing this one". 

The options were: (a) Belize, (b) Nicaragua and (c) Panama. 

He was torn between Belize and Panama and finally plumped for the right answer, Panama (famous for its canal and for being between the link between Central America and South America).

To me that was obvious and something a star BBC journalist ought to just know, straight-off. 

Later came a 'sudden death question':

Latvia shares land borders with Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus and which other country? 

As someone who so-famously reported from Ukraine, I'd have expected Chris to have been a dead certainty to have given the right answer, Russia (famously, Latvia's most troublesome neighbour). But, no, Chris misfired and said 'Ukraine'.

Why do I expect better from high-profile BBC journalists? 

At which point I'll now end the post...

Interruptions, interruptions

You are bound to have already seen this (as it has 'gone viral'), but just in case you haven't...

Robert E. Kelly,  Associate Professor in the Department Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University, South Korea, is discussing the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye with Chris Rogers on the BBC News Channel when something unexpected happens:

If that didn't make you laugh then there's no hope for you!

The Experts. Antisemitism and the Government’s plans to tackle Islamist extremism

Alas! Lack of technical nous prevents me from embedding the video into this blog. But I implore you to click on the link and please, bear with me and scroll past the montage of all Tuesday’s front pages, right down, on and on,  to the video headed “What the commentators say”

It’s Chris Rogers (who has form) hosting the paper review with guests ‘Journalist Rachel Shabi and Ben Riley-Smith of the Telegraph’.

Understandably, as this is a football-obsessed country (opiate of the masses etc) a major chunk of the chat is about Leicester City.  

Cheering News indeed. But we’ve already spotted that the biggest story on the front page of the Telegraph is the piece by Kate McCann with its screaming headline  Labour Suspends 50 for racism.

You couldn’t miss it, even if you were just a run of the mill viewer and not an actual ‘Telegraph political correspondent based in Westminster.’ For a while I thought the whole thing was going to be devoted to the footie, but eventually, Chris Rogers said  “There is some other news in the papers.”

Cack-handedly looking for some kind of code in a failed attempt to embed the video I found a bizarre transcript, apparently the output of a bot.

“Labour suspends 54 racism” it declares, mistaking “54” for “50 for”. Fun, but not much use for those of us who appreciate a good transcript. 

Anyway, you’ll have to play the video to get the full force, because even if I were to spend half a day transcribing it meticulously, you need the original sound and the visuals to get the full effect.

  

Watching Rachel Shabi, (well-known to those who have followed CifWatch now UK MediaWatch ) and a frequent guest on Dateline, is never a pleasant experience, either for the politics or the simpering manner.

Combine a foghorn with a mid-Atlantic drawl plus that metropolitan str e t c h ing of certain words, as in ‘soooo’. 

That’s the audio. Then there’s the visuals. A semi-amused smirk, a twinkly eye and much animated head-turning from speaker to speaker with a mixture of exaggerated expectation and faux admiration, but all the while waiting to air her misguided and self-opinionated views.

According to Ms Shabi, all this antisemitism needs to be put in context. It’s a widespread issue, always there, but "not specifically in the Labour Party." It’s only in the Telegraph because of the election, otherwise it wouldn’t be there at all. 

“Right-wing elements seem to be trawling through ..... we don’t have a control of this experiment, do we, we don’t have people doing the same for the Conservative partiee or any other partiee - there’s no way to tell that this is specifically about the Labour Party.”

Ben Riley-Smith doesn’t seem to have been following this particular news story at all. He couldn’t recall the name of the MP who had publicly accosted Ken upon the stair (he wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away)

“Antisemitism is a problem in society”, ventured Chris Rogers “Not just in the Labour Party”.

“Percisely” says the foghorn “I don’t think it’s particularly fair to say that the Labour Pardee has a problem with antisemitism”

“But politicians are meant to lead by example” says Chris Rogers, tasked with playing Devil’s advocate.

Next up: “PM plans new laws to stop Muslim extremists”

Shabi is an expert on this topic. The government is making things worse. “The problem is that they’re focusing on Islamist extremism.” 

I’m not absolutely certain, but I imagine she’s asserting that violent extremism is nothing to do with Islam. It’s just the criminals, the insane and the disenfranchised.

“It’s just about money, it’s just about oil” chips in the Telegraph man.

Next - The Guardian: “UK’s covert fight against the lure of ISIS”. 

“There is a propaganda war, isn’t there?" announces Rogers.

“It’s gonna end up alienating just the people you wanna get engaged” says the expert, leaning closer to her reviewing companion, who, though nodding vigorously, is backing away.

“You are more of an expert than me” he says.

“Briddish-backed enterprise” enunciates Shabi “is this gonna spread more mistrust at a time when what you wannado is build that,  because if people know that they’ve been, you know, fed lines by a government-backed unit, that’s not gonna be a way to counter or deal with the problem."

"We’ve only got a couple of minutes but I really want to do this: 'man sues former employer for boring him out of his mind' ”  says the anchor.

Does this paper review encapsulate one particular attitude, dare I say that of the BBC? 

If so, to put it in Rachel Shabi’s own phrase “that’s not gonna be a way to counter or deal with the problem.”

A Post in Five Rants

Famously, we don't do rants here at 'Is', but...

Rant the First

The past few weeks have been quite something, politically-speaking. 

As many of you will have noticed, there's been an all-out assault on UKIP from the media and the political class. 

I've never seen anything quite like it before. 

That the Tories seem to have been in cahoots with the Guardian says it all.

Some of you will blame the BBC, but the assault has come from all angles and the likes of the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Spectator, the Daily Mail, Sky News and LBC have at least as bad as the BBC and the Guardian, if not worse. 

The Daily Telegraph has particularly shocked me. 

I don't mind if Dan Hodges writes ten attempted hatchet jobs a week on UKIP because he's just giving his opinion, but I do mind if the paper's political correspondents (people who claim to be more detached) suddenly start publishing blatant smears about the party. 

One such piece really made the scales fall from my eyes as someone (below the line) linked to what the UKIP member had actually written, and comparing that with what the Telegraph reporter said he'd written proved beyond doubt that the Telegraph reporter was deliberately casting the UKIP member's views in the worst possible light - i.e. smearing him, blatantly and unequivocally smearing him.

I will never trust that reporter again. 

Rant the Second

Tonight's PM had more Nigel Farage-bashing, courtesy of Nick Robinson, and then banged on about the Premier League boss Peter Scudamore and his evil sexist private emails to a friend on a works email system. 

Some of the same pack who are going after UKIP are now going after Mr Scudamore (including David Cameron and the BBC) and they won't be satisfied until they've got him sacked. 

If I could vote for Peter Scudamore this Thursday I would, just to spite them all. They deserve nothing less. 

Rant the Third

This kind of thing sometimes works in reverse. The Daily Mail has been smearing a BBC reporter today, namely Chris Rogers.

Chris Rogers and Panorama may have genuine questions to answer about this particular episode on racism and football in Poland and Ukraine, but Chris Rogers' goofing around with his BBC pals and doing a Basil Fawlty impersonation (goose-stepping with a finger under his nose) isn't a big deal. It may have been frivolous but it was a private joke mocking Nazis (and neo-Nazis) - a joke originally made on a classic BBC programme.

If you want to see a smear in action, just look at the Mail's opening paragraph: 

A BBC journalist was filmed giving a Nazi salute and goose stepping while filming a documentary about anti-Semitic football fans in Poland and Ukraine.

'Nuff said (as they say).

The most jaw-dropping thing here though is the po-faced, The Sun Has Got His Hat On-style panic that seemed to have engulfed the BBC when the 'gaffe' became known. 

Chris Rogers was made to confess to his crime and publicly apologise. He was "strongly reprimanded" by the BBC. There was an internal probe into his behaviour and he was dropped from Panorama. 

Utter madness!

As for me, well, I'll have two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads...

Rant the Fourth

Two-minutes hates. There's something Orwellian about them.

They hate Clarkson, that UKIP councillor who said something or other, Peter Scudamore, Nigel Farage, etc, and we hate James O'Brien, that UKIP-bashing audience member on Question Time, Heather Rabbatts, Chris Rogers, etc.

I hate two-minutes hates.

Rant the Fifth

I hate ranting. Grrrrrrrrr!!!