Today's 'Daily Politics' featured interviews with five of the candidates to replace Ian Gibson as MP for Norwich North, all conducted by the fragrant Anita Anand.
Here the Interruption Coefficients do tell a lot of the story:
Chris Ostrowski (Labour), 0.9
Chloe Smith (Conservative), 0.7
April Pond (Lib Dem), 0
Rubert Read (Green), 0
Glenn Tingle (UKIP), 2.8
Were I to represent this graphically, the spike for the UKIP candidate would be so sharp it could have someone's eye out!
Poor Mr Tingle. Not only does his name sound like a character in a 'Carry On' film, he only gets 1 minute and 8 seconds to speak and, to add insult to injury, is interrupted 3 times for his pains.
Considering the content of the interviews, the one with Glenn Tingle was also, by some way, the most challenging. Here are three of Anita Anand's questions/interruptions:
"Have you been running a negative campaign here?"
"Accusations that it started 0ff in a jingoistic, even racist way."
"But wasn't there an incident where, I don't know, there was gunfire heard somewhere? You called a press conference, you talked about immigration laws being lax and saying it was immigrant gangs. There was no evidence of that at all."
Such hounding, such harshness is a sure sign of significant anti-Right bias, especially if contrasted with the treatment of the other party candidates, particularly the left-wing Liberal Democrats and Greens (who were not interrupted at all).
Here the Interruption Coefficients do tell a lot of the story:
Chris Ostrowski (Labour), 0.9
Chloe Smith (Conservative), 0.7
April Pond (Lib Dem), 0
Rubert Read (Green), 0
Glenn Tingle (UKIP), 2.8
Were I to represent this graphically, the spike for the UKIP candidate would be so sharp it could have someone's eye out!
Poor Mr Tingle. Not only does his name sound like a character in a 'Carry On' film, he only gets 1 minute and 8 seconds to speak and, to add insult to injury, is interrupted 3 times for his pains.
Considering the content of the interviews, the one with Glenn Tingle was also, by some way, the most challenging. Here are three of Anita Anand's questions/interruptions:
"Have you been running a negative campaign here?"
"Accusations that it started 0ff in a jingoistic, even racist way."
"But wasn't there an incident where, I don't know, there was gunfire heard somewhere? You called a press conference, you talked about immigration laws being lax and saying it was immigrant gangs. There was no evidence of that at all."
Such hounding, such harshness is a sure sign of significant anti-Right bias, especially if contrasted with the treatment of the other party candidates, particularly the left-wing Liberal Democrats and Greens (who were not interrupted at all).
Thats very interesting - UKIP is anti open door immigration (not all immigration). Yet they have an "ethnic minority" doing the interview.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair though I suspect that anyone of the BBC interviewers would have been the same.
Your analysis is fast becoming extremely useful in exposing how anti-"conservative" the BBC people really are.
Thanks again John.
ReplyDeleteUKIP brings out the worst in many a Beeboid.
Other recent examples include Sarah Montague, Emily Maitlis and Shaun Ley. Four interviews only (since the June elections) for Nigel Farage and co., all of them tougher than average. Unlike most of the limp-lettuce Tories, I suspect Mr Farage to be the sort of man to speak out about this sort of thing & might consider sending his party an e-mail on the subject.