JUDGE AND JURY

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If you remember the excuse made by Today editor Ceri Thomas on Feedback for why Gordon Brown's admission of a 'mistake' over defence spending statistics was not covered by his programme, it ran something like this: It was a 'one-fact story' that broke the previous day and was widely covered by Radio 4 throughout that day, so there was no need for Today to cover it too. "Once he had said "I'd made a mistake" there wasn't a great deal more for us to explore...", he said. http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2010/03/cerimandering.html
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It seems that the Chris Grayling story doesn't fall into this category, for despite being widely covered across Radio 4 yesterday and despite no new facts emerging, Today returned to the story this morning, inviting for interview one of the two gay men (Michael Black) refused a room by the Berkshire B&B in the story. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8603000/8603188.stm *
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Also invited on was Mike Judge from the "traditionalist" Christian Institute, who supports Mr Grayling's line. James Naughtie gave him a hard time. As evidence of this Mr Judge felt the need to say, "Now you may not like their view..." at which Naughtie protested "No, no, I'm not taking a view on it one way or the other, I'm just asking you...I want to pull the argument out". Yeah right!
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