Oddly to hymns by Wagner

...with A.C. Grayling, Gavin Esler and Carole Cadwalladr looking on...

Here's a box of frogs on Twitter. Enjoy!

Denis MacShane: What proper journalism into Farage? The man's portrait is the official BBC screen saver.

Andrew Adonis: BREAKING NEWS - BBC News bulletins will henceforth be known as ‘Farage Campaign Updates.’ Nigel is also presenting Songs of Praise this week, oddly to hymns by Wagner.

Marcus Chown: BBC makes urgent plea for Nigel Farage stunt doubles. "One Nigel Farage is not simply enough for all the appearances we are scheduling," says BBC spokesperson.

Peter Jukes: No one knows where this drift into right wing populism and demagoguery will end, but end it will one day. Then Britain will have to look to reform many of the institutions that failed us. And the BBC will be top of that list. 

George Foulkes: BBC cancel Have I got news for you because Heidi Allen who is not a candidate was due to be on but had Farage who is a candidate on Question Time. Can anyone stop this disgrace?

Marcus Chown: BBC announces Nigel Farage to front Spring Watch, The One Show. Match of the Day, Antiques Road Show and to be offered role of H in Line of Duty 6.

Alastair Campbell: Farage and John Mills on BBCQT together, as Marr books Farage for 3 days later. Now Heidi Allen dropped from a popular BBC satire show because of impartiality rules. There is something seriously sick going on inside the BBC and has been throughout Brexit process.

Careless Whisper

Agnes Poirier

It went on (of course):

Denis MacShane: Is it true that on Andrew Marr both Emily Maitlis and Tom Newton Dunn ignored in their paper review the tiny fact of 1 million filling central London? This is part of prob of whole London elite media and BBC handling of Brexit/EU.

Tom Newton Dunn: No it isn't. You could try watching it before tweeting? Less fun I appreciate.

Quantum Tarantino: It was certainly discussed. But it was the French lady who emphasised it, seemed less so from you and EM. Only thing AM said was to remark on the witty signs.

Rob Burley (to Quantum): So what!!!? We are now examining every micro exchange in the hunt for bias. When the show had references to the march and questions on it throughout. It’s bananas.

Andrew Marr (to Denis): C’mon Denis. It was in the very top of the programme, extensively discussed in the paper review and mentioned in every single interview. This BBC bashing is just getting absurd. I’d expect better if you.

Rob Burley (to Andrew): Not sure why, it happens every day.

Denis MacShane (to Andrew): I was told only Agnes Poirier emphasised it in contrast to EM and TND. If untrue and the two Brits focused on march I apologise. Yday BBC 17h50 TV news treated a million marching in London as same weight as a few dozen w Farage in Midlands.
Iain Dale (to Denis): Why do you tweet such utter bollocks when you clearly didn’t watch it?
Rob Burley (to Iain): Good question and rather well put.

Actually, the funny thing is that Denis MacShane was broadly correct about the Agnes Poirier/Emily Maitlis/Tom Newton Dunn matter (in that neither of the latter discussed the march), but I've absolutely no idea at all where he got his last claim from (the one about "Yday BBC 17h50 TV news treated a million marching in London as same weight as a few dozen w Farage in Midlands") as it's entirely false. You can still check for yourselves here for a few more hours:

BBC Weekend News

You'll see that the Nigel Farage protest didn't even get a mention in that bulletin and that nearly half the entire BBC 17h50 TV news was given over to the 'PV' march. So did Denis trust what he read elsewhere on Twitter about it without watching it for himself (just like with this morning's Andrew Marr show)? If so, Rob would not approve. And he'd approve even less if Denis simply made it up!

Ah, more 'complaints from both sides' fun!

Chirp, chirp

Another Twitter contretemps:

BBC Politics: Peoples Vote March organisers say more than a million people joined protests in central London.

Tim Montgomerie: The BBC has become Remain’s propaganda vehicle.

Chris Mason, BBC: I should arrange a lunch for you and Andrew Adonis. A table for two, a couple of cameras at a discreet distance...

Tim Montgomerie: BBC uncritically repeating organisers’ claims that a million marched today. Last time the organisers exaggerated by 450,000. 

Denis MacShane (former Labour Europe minister): Tim, BBC TV News gave equal billing to Farage and 50 anti Europeans in car park to one million of our fellow Brits expressing concern. BBC bias against EU this century is shameful.

And enter stage neither left, right, nor centre (as the BBC is, of course, wholly impartial), here's Rob:

Rob Burley, BBC: Maybe you're both wrong...

So who's right? 

Well, let's start with Denis MacShane's claim. Saturday's three main BBC One news bulletin's all led with the pro-Second Referendum march and none of them mentioned the pro-Brexit protest ("50 anti Europeans in car park") at all. So his complaint is false in regards to BBC One. And the BBC News website has also been leading with the march and placing a brief mention of the '50 anti Europeans in car park' at the back end of its long report - quite literally the back end, i.e. the final three paragraphs of a 32-paragraph report. And that doesn't even includes the eight paragraphs of pro-Second Referendum 'voices from the march'. So his claim is false about that too. 

As for Tim Montgomerie's claim, well, I must say that reading and comparing the BBC, Sky and ITV news websites earlier this evening, I thought the BBC actually put in rather more caveats that either of its broadcast rivals as far as the numbers go. And, checking out their respective main late evening news bulletins, their opening headlines ran as follows and reinforced my first impressions:

Sky: Demanding their voices be heard - As many as one million people take to the streets of London calling for a second EU referendum.
ITV: An estimated one million people marched through London today demanding a second referendum to break the political deadlock over Brexit.
BBC: A huge march in central London by protestors demanding another EU referendum. Organisers claim more than a million people took part and say it's one of the biggest protests in British history.

So I'd said Rob Burley has a point that both sides are wrong here - though Denis is much more wrong than Tim. Denis is plain wrong; Tim is wrong because the others are even worse.

Update - It continued:

Denis MacShane: Both?
Rob Burley: Yeah, you and Tim.
Denis MacShane: Ah. You are probably right.
Rob Burley liked

Very civilised.

More MacShame?

Good old Denis MacShane - Europe Minister under Tony Blair, jailed for false accounting in 2013. 

He's a good egg basically, if ultra-pro-EU and a convicted criminal, but - fervent Mark Mardell fan that he is - he's not above posting a little bit of Lord Adonis-style fake BBC-bashing:

"But not the BBC elites who promote Brexit ideologues".

I don't believe he believes that fraudulent claim for one minute.

Mr. Mardell Goes to Rome

I see Mark Mardell has been living la dolce vita again.

This time he managed to wangle a working holiday in Rome from his BBC bosses, despite the BBC having a Europe editor (Katya Adler) and a Rome correspondent (James Reynolds) and another Rome correspondent (David Willey) already in place there for the Italian election.

Nice work if you can get it!

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how Mark is one of the few BBC journalists to get regular compliments from left-wing, pro-EU members of the Twitter fraternity, so it wasn't surprising to see this tweet today from one such individual: 

Nor was it surprising to see this criticism from someone on the anti-EU Right:

As you'll have spotted, Paul from the pro-EU Left admired Mark's "hatchet job" of Silvio Berlusconi while Adel from the anti-EU Right disliked his "character-assassinating" of Silvio Berlusconi. The only thing uniting them was their feeling that Mark Mardell wasn't engaging in a fair, measured piece about Snr Berlusconi (though one was happy with that lack of fairness and the other was unhappy with it). 

The thing that struck me about Mark Mardell's piece from Italy, as highlighted by the contribution of its two dominant talking heads, was its main message - and, yes, it did have a message. 

Both the novelist/journalist Carlo Bonini and the professor Giovanni Orsini, were basically saying much the same thing: Beware of anti-politician populists, for such 'devils' undermine democracy. 

No wonder Denis MacShane has tweeted his appreciation yet again:

Denis MacShane gives a BBC programme the thumbs-up

Readers may recall the former Labour Europe minister Denis MacShane. 

He was always - and remains - a strong Europhile, and has a book out now called "Brexit, No Exit. How (in the End) Britain Won't Leave Europe". 

Well, he's one of that minority of a minority of a minority (like Lord Adonis and Alastair Campbell) who thinks, or pretends to think, that the BBC is pro-Brexit. 

He rather gave their real game away though as far as such criticisms are concerned when he said a couple of days ago, "The complacency of the London pol-media-biz establishment esp BBC that referendum couldn't be lost was remarkable". 

He wants the BBC to stop being "complacent" and become even more engaged in the fight against Brexit.

Denis is, of course, never able to disguise his pleasure when a BBC programme does exactly what he wants the BBC to do. He's long been a fan of Mark Mardell and his The World Thjs Weekend, for example and, Chris Morris's Radio 4 series Brexit: A Guide for the Perplexed has proved to be another  such programme:

Having heard Brexit: A Guide for the Perplexed I can well guess why Denis MacShane enjoyed it so much. Denis MacShane could pretty much have written it himself.