SOPEL SHOWS HIS HAND AGAIN

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If The Andrew Marr Show was not as obtrusively biased as usual, the same cannot be said for The Politics Show with Jon Sopel. (I was pre-warned about this by reading an outraged Llew on the B-BBC website http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2009/11/open-thread_18.html#comments who says pretty much all that I'm about to say - but much more succinctly!)
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Sopel mentioned viewers chucking things at the T.V. I wanted to chuck something at him.
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His initial interview with Labour dronette Yvette Cooper was soft. Lasting well over four minutes, it contained only 2 interruptions) and neither of those interruptions came during the answers to Sopel's last two questions - the first of which brought up that Observer poll again (see my last post), which Sopey was at pains to point out shows a "big narrowing of the gap", and the second of which asked about an emergency budget in the light of Conservative proposals to hold one within 50 days of coming into office. Both questions got fairly long answers (33 seconds and 26 seconds respectively), and both answers strongly attacked the Conservatives. The second answer ignored the nub of Sopel's question and Sopey didn't think it appropriate to either point that out or re-ask the question.
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Later Yvette Cooper returned for a joint interview with her Conservative shadow Theresa May. You might have thought -if only out of a sense of fair play - that Jon Sopel would have also interviewed Mrs May alone first. Not only did that not happen, but he allowed Yvette Cooper to dominate this second interview too!
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The stats show this clearly. She got exactly 5 minutes of the joint interview, whereas Theresa May only got 2 minutes 42 seconds - i.e. Yvette got almost twice as long to speak as Theresa. Moreover, if you add that time to her earlier interview you get 9 minutes 42 seconds - exactly 7 minutes more. That's hardly fair, is it?
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Yes, the interruption coefficients were identical (0.8) and Sopel pressed Yvette Cooper on several points in this later part of the programme but the questions he put to Therasa May had the edge on rudeness. After a 52 second-long first answer from Yvette Cooper, listing Labour's glorious achievements, Sopel asked this: "And, Theresa May, isn't that a record the Tories simply couldn't compete with when they were last in office, when there was very little help?" (By God, what a biased question!). He also interrupted Theresa's second answer after only 8 seconds, with "Let's not go onto VAT. Deal with the issue."
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Theresa May also faced an onslaught of interruptions from Yvette Cooper, which Sopel was hardly at pains to curtail. (Yvette got to finish every single one of her points). When Theresa tried to do the same (just once), Sopey did not withdraw for once (as he did - twice - when Yvette Cooper persisted in speaking), holding out his arm and making a 'stop' gesture to Mrs May and saying "Hang on, hang on, one at a time". *
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Also, when Yvette launched yet another of her attacks on the Tories, Sopel just let it run. He's making a habit of this now.
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Beeb bias? I'll say!