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Last night's Newsnight was a special from New York on the Great Depression and its lessons for today. If ever a programme demonstrated the BBC's left-wing cultural and political bias this was it.
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The opening report from Paul Mason on the economic lessons of the Great Depression featured as its main expert Max Fraad-Wolff, a left-liberal economist from the 'progressive university' The New School and a regular blogger on the ultra-liberal Huffington Post website. The other two 'talking heads' were Professor Mark Gertler of New York University, a 'New Keynesian' economist, and Professor Alan Brinkley, 'progressive historian' of the New Deal at Columbia University.
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The following roundtable discussion, hosted by Kirsty Wark, featured one of America's leading left-liberal voices, Arianna Huffington herself (of Huffington Post fame). Alongside her was our own Simon Schama, who left-wing views are well known. With these voices of the Left were Liaquat Ahamed, author of 'Lords of Finance', and Andrew Ross Sirkin, author of 'Too Big to Fail'. Mr Ahamed made plenty of left-wing noises, but the oft-interrupted Mr Sirkin sounded less shrill.
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Next came another report from Paul Mason, this time looking at the cultural lessons of the Great Depression. Its main talking heads were cultural historian Morris Dickstein, author of 'Dancing in the Dark' and a proud, self-professed liberal, and one of Newsnight Review's regular gaggle of yakking lefties, the literature lecturer and frequent contributor to The Guardian and The Independent Sarah Churchwell. The third voice was the Obama-supporting head of the America's National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman.
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For Kirsty's other roundtable discussion, guess who remained? Arianna Huffington and Simon Schama, of course. They were joined by another occasional Guardianista and Newsnight Review leftie, Hari Hunzru.and a cultural critic called David D'Arcy. What a left-wing love-in followed!
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Even by the standards of Newsnight, this was a tour-de-force of bias.
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Just wondering why you haven't colour-coded Paul Mason red as well?
ReplyDeleteFrom his Wikipedia entry:
"He has spoken on behalf of the Trotskyist organisation Workers Power, of which he was previously a member."