*
This morning's Today programme was in full campaigning mode. The presenters were the Gruesome Twosome, James Naughtie and Justin Webb, and, as so often when this left-wing pair are left in charge of the programme, the bias was palpable.
*
Justin Webb interviewed three politicians.
*
The first was Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb. He was interrupted three times, resulting in an I.C. of 0.9, though only one of these interruptions contained a note of challenge (asking whether the Lib Dems had been naive), the others being fact-finding questions (aimed at digging up dirt on the Tories). Mr Lamb would doubtless have come away pleased from this interview.
*
Justin's second politician was Labour's Kim Howells. The tone here was, as it so often is, thoughtful and civilised in tone. The Today website truncates the interview, which actually lasted some six minutes. Webb only interrupted Mr Howells once (and then so gently that you might not have noticed), so the I.C. was a puny 0.2.
*
Lastly came the Conservative, shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley. He was on the receiving end of a very different kind of interview from either of the others. Gone were the fact-finding questions and the thoughtful, gentle discussion. In their place came aggressive questioning and bags of interruptions - 14 in all. These interruptions were designed to disrupt Mr Lansley's case and began early and continued throughout. Within a couple of minutes, Mr Lansley complained that Webb hadn't given him the chance to explain - and he was dead right about that. That didn't stop the barracking. The interruption coefficient was 2.0 (ten times that of Kim Howells).
*
Here are the three interviews for comparison:
Lamb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8511000/8511983.stm
Howells: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8512000/8512056.stm
Lansley: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8512000/8512097.stm
*
This story has been spotted by Umbongo on the Biased BBC website, & he notes something you also won't find on the Today website: Naughtie's post-Lansley comment that the interview was 'interesting' (http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/02/open-thread_12.html#comments). That ultra-biased Labour luvvie Naughtie would find such a disgraceful interview 'interesting' tells you all you need to know about it.
*
The full, unredacted version of the programme can be heard here for the next seven days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z
That interview with Andrew Lansley was a disgrace, I really don't understand why the Conservatives do not make official complaints about blatant BBC bias such as this.
ReplyDelete