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.
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.
[Richard] Sambrook was asked by the board of Channel 4 to do a similar inquiry into bias on C4 News, though it was all a bit rushed. His report - kept secret - concluded there wasn’t enough diversity in the backgrounds and outlooks of people on the programmes, especially senior staff.
Among Sambrook’s recommendations was that the programme make a “senior counter cultural appointment” - either a top presenter or editor - to balance “the uniformity of editorial attitude and approach in the [C4News] newsroom”. I’m not sure that would have worked.
“Senior counter cultural appointments” at, say, Newsnight? It's an intriguing suggestion, but I'm not sure it would work either. Such outsiders would probably get a very frosty reception.
Look what Guido Fawkes has posted this morning. Michael Crick is ‘literally’ salivating at capturing this awkward ‘open mic’ blunder, but before gloating over a relatively minor ‘gotcha’, which no doubt will be made a massive banquet out of by the left-wing media, he might ask the master of the ‘set-up’, a certain Mr Sweeney, whether catching out a 'set-up' is something to be quite so triumphant about.
Maybe Crick should consider exactly what it was he’d unearthed, and you never know, it might eventually come back to bite him on the bum.
Caught in the act! Meet Lee Anderson, Conservative candidate for Ashfield, who forgets his MailPlus mic is on. Click here to see our film and his ruse to set MailPlus up with unusually friendly voter. https://t.co/0gFSdXnFLk
Alan at Biased BBC....(in a piece headlined 'BBC Stalinists grind out the propaganda' - something which might well win Seumas Milne and the Corbynistas back to the BBC again!)....gives the BBC a good right hook over this morning's Broadcasting House and its treatment of UKIP:
This morning on R4’s Broadcasting Housewe heard another addition to the BBC’s long sneer (28 mins) at UKIP as it again tried to paint it as racist and an irrelevant rabble. We were told we’d have a quick run down of UKIP background but you’d have little idea that this has been a highly successful party that has brought the Liberal Establishment to a heightened state of panic, not only as it disembowels Labour and scoops up its supporters with 4 million voters, but has also been the driving force behind one of the most momentous events in British political history…Brexit of course. The BBC preferred to mock and ‘Trumpify’ it by suggesting it is packed with violent, sexist, probably racist, back-stabbing people who have no interest in ‘ideology’. They dragged in Michael Crick to do a little hatchet job….apparently UKIP is the worst of the worst…no other political party has any of its problems or attitudes. The presenter finished off of course with a suggestion that the ‘tone’ of UKIP was a bit nasty…..again based upon what?
That final comment from the presenter (Paddy O'Connell) was an evidently pre-prepared closing question to UKIP donor Ko Barclay:
You raised that you're an immigrant, and on the radio people don't know that unless you raise it, which you've kindly done, but it helps me in the final question: Does a little bit of you, who has funded UKIP, worry about a tone in British politics which has left some immigrants frightened? Does a little bit of you, who has given £600,000 to UKIP, worry?
Michael Crick (that old basher of the political Right) was audibly dripping with salaciousness over UKIP's goings-on. He said that UKIP people are forever bombarding him with "incredibly juicy" gossip about each other - sexual, political but rarely ideological - and that he's even thought of writing a book about UKIP called Beer, Blood and Semen.
He did, however, also say:
It seems to me that the potential for UKIP right now is massive. Those millions of people who regard themselves as left out, who are badly paid (the people who Theresa May was talking about last week), the people in northern England who traditionally used to vote Labour, are worried about immigration and low-paid jobs and things like that...With Labour moving to the Left and having this air of being a metropolitan socialist party under Jeremy Corbyn and the other figures, many of whom in the shadow cabinet are London MPs, the potential for UKIP is massive right now. They could do to Labour in northern England what the SNP did to Labour in Scotland. But to do that does require a pretty well-organised party and a leader, and they don't seem to have a leader anything like as good as Farage. But even a leader half as good as Farage, who could hold the party together and march into the Labour heartlands, would be a very significant factor in British politics.
The insults, smears and downright lies heaped on UKIP over the past few weeks by large sections of the media, much of the political class and the nastier kind of political activists have been just jaw-dropping (and very disillusioning), so it's something of a relief to find that one or two 'old media' types still have enough integrity to 'do the right thing' when an anti-UKIP smear is unfolding before their eyes.
“Of course I’m not embarrassed by it. If I had the choice again, would I do it? No. Is there a difference between being 20 and being 40? Yes.
"I went along with it for a laugh. In retrospect I wouldn’t do it again.”
Now, I'll admit I'm not a fan of Ed Balls, but one thing's for sure - he's not a Nazi.
And nor is Nigel Farage.
Newsnight's former Tory-Basher-in-Chief, Michael Crick, now at Channel 4 News, has obtained a letter [via whom, and for what ulterior motive?] from a period in the UKIP leader's past, which doesn't even come from his university days but from his school days - a letter from 32 years ago, when he was just 17.
Apparently, he said some racist and fascist things at the time.
Michael Crick has also got hold of some comments from some anonymous types from Mr Farage's teenage years, saying that he also sang Hitler Youth songs. Nigel Farage himself says that latter accusation is "silly".
Scroll down though Michael Crick's (smear) article and you'll find this:
Terry Walsh, who was then deputy master at Dulwich (ie. deputy head), says Farage was well known for provoking people, especially left-wing English teachers who had no sense of humour.
The former master of Dulwich David Emms, the man who appointed Farage and received Chloe Deakin's letter, says he has no memory of the meeting or the letter. But he agrees with his former deputy: "It was naughtiness, not racism," Emms told me on Wednesday.
Near the end of his (smear) piece, Michael Crick anticipates the obvious reaction of many readers - what you might call the 'Ed Balls Defence' - but keeps up the (smear) smear anyway:
Many will argue that it is irrelevant what a teenager did at school more than 30 years ago, but Ukip has a problem showing it is not racist.
Well so says Michael Crick.
I could say in response:
Many will indeed argue that it is irrelevant what a teenager did at school more than 30 years ago, but Labour has a problem showing it is not communist.
The BBC, of course, decided to follow Michael Crick's lead and took the opportunity provided by Nigel Farage's UKIP conference interviews to ask him about his 'racist' and 'fascist' past. BBC Breakfast (not available to listen again, as ever) was one such programme.
The bizarre bit came when a pixel on the screen froze during the interview, resulting in this image:
A BBC TV sportscaster then tweeted it to the world:
That inopportune Hitler moustache provoked a feeding frenzy of unfriendly glee from UKIP's opponents, naturally - plus plenty of coverage from the online newspapers.
But it has also provoked a good deal of anger from the BBC's more conspiracy-minded critics.
If anyone believes the BBC had nothing more than an unfortunate and accidental pixelation error, they must believe in the tooth fairy, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and a fat man in a red suit with flying reindeer, who can get down chimneys to leave presents every December…
I'm not overly given to conspiracy theories myself (even about the BBC) and certainly don't believe in either Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster (though kids, yes, Santa and the Tooth Fairy really do exist!) and remain much more willing to entertain the possibility that this unfortunate pixelation might really be an accident, but it's one heck of a coincidence, isn't it?
Now, if there's one thing my interest in maths tells me it's that coincidences aren't (generally-speaking) anywhere near as unlikely as most people suspect. The chances of a Hitler moustache-shaped pixel freezing somewhere between Nigel Farage's mouth and nose during an interview where he was being probed about his 'Hitler Youth' youth may not be as vanishingly unlikely as you might think...yet it still seems like one heck of a coincidence, doesn't it?
The obvious question here is: Is it even possible though to deliberately engineer a Hitler moustache-shaped pixel to appear precisely where it did during that a live interview? If it's impossible (and just a random glitch), then there's no conspiracy whatsoever. If it's easier than we might think, however, then the conspiracy option re-opens. I haven't a clue about such things, I'm ashamed to say. Have you?
Plus, why go to all the trouble to fleetingly 'paint' a Hitler moustache on Nigel Farage's face when no one would notice it? Except for...erm...a BBC broadcaster who then tweeted it to the world, provoking a mass of interest, including online articles form most of the mainstream UK newspapers.
