KAMINSKI AGAIN

*
The BBC's bottomless obsession with the European allies of the Conservative Party, especially Michal Kaminski, was on display again on last night's Newsnight. It featured a long, very strongly-worded report from Tim Whewell - a sustained denunciation of Mr Kaminski and everything he and his party stand for. If Whewell is to be believed (and his case is full potential holes) these are very unpleasant people, and the Conservatives should have nothing to do with them. If he's not, and if - as Dan Hannan says - this was a "partial" and "in parts disgraceful" report - a piece of shameless left-wing propaganda -, the Conservative Party should play merry hell about this and campaign vigorously for heads to roll, especially Whewell's.
**
Jeremy Paxman's introduction only gave the slightest foretaste of the vitriol to come: "Now when David Cameron promised the Eurosceptics in his party that he'd form a new alliance with Conservative MEPs in the European parliament, he thought he'd solved a problem. It turns out he's just given himself another headache. (Given it himself? Or had it given to him by the Left - i.e. the intimate circle that includes Labour, the Guardian, New Statesman and the BBC (etc)?) The group that Tory MEPs have formed is led by a man who claims (note only 'claims') he's wedded to a very British form of conservatism, but the accusation is (accusation by whom exactly? what are their motives?) that Michal Kaminski, the Pole who leads the group, is an anti-semite, a homophobe and a former Neo-Nazi, all of which he strongly denies. Senior figures in Washington (which ones? are they representative?) now wonder whether the Obama administration can possibly have dealings with a British political leader who has such bedfellows. Tim Whewell reports."
*
Whewell's report is far too long to go into detail but can be seen here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight
*
If you watch it, please then go on to read the BBC News website 'write-up'. You'll see it's much more than a mere write-up. It's a far tamer version of the Newsnight report - as if the BBC were deliberately being much more circumspect with what they put in written form. Compare and contrast the two versions and see if you agree:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8374686.stm
*
Neither touched on most of the points raised in Jeremy's introduction. Why the disconnect?
*
All of Whewell's 'talking heads' were deeply hostile to Mr Kaminski. It was a prosecution case, pure and simple. Aleksander Kwaśniewski, the ex-Communist former president, was (interestingly) the only exception. No voices for the defence were allowed.
*
I am suspicious of Tim Whewell. He's the sort of left-wing BBC reporter who calls a right-wing newspaper "the right-wing newspaper Nasza Polska" but calls a left-wing newspaper only "the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza" (this is called 'bias by labelling'). (In fact, Gazeta Wyborcza is not the leading Polish daily, if by that you mean the best-selling. The leading Polish daily is Fakt.) One of this left-wing paper's founders, Anna Bikont, was among Whewell's main witnesses. Whewell is also the sort of left-wing BBC reporter who occasionally writes for The New Statesman and The Guardian (of which his father, Harry, was once an editor), but not for The Spectator or the Daily Telegraph.
*
After this prosecution case had been made, Jeremy Paxman conducted a double-interview with the only witness for the defence, Dan Hannan, and smearer-in-chief Denis MacShane. After such a sustained attack, was another prosecution witness (MacShane) really necessary? As is his way, MacShane kept on interrupting Dan Hannan, spreading smear upon smear. Dan got in 3 1/2 minutes of defence in a segment that, in total, lasted over a quarter of an hour.
*
I will be watching Tim Whewell very carefully from now on.