STUFFING THE TORY

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At least later in Newsnight there were three sides of the argument present, as Jeremy Paxman grilled Andy Burnham (Lab), Andrew Lansley (Con) and Norman Lamb (LD) over the NHS.
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This was a bit of a ding-dong at times, but Andrew Lansley (who ding-dongs with the best of them) was on the end of more than his fair share of questions (twice as many as Andy Burnham, even though they got an identical amount of interview time - partly due to being the target of some of those short repeated questions that Paxo is famous for) and more than his fair share of interruptions (even though he himself did plenty of interrupting himself).
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The interruption coefficients here were:
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Andrew Lansley - 2.5
Norman Lamb - 1.4
Andy Burnham - 1.4
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(For comparison, the I.C. for Liam Byrne earlier in the programme was just 0.8).

YES WE CAAN!

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Was it bias or blunder? What David Vance on Biased BBC rightly calls a 'Newsnight disgrace'
(http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/04/newsnight-disgracei.html) witnessed a discussion on national insurance between Labour's Liam Byrne and Dragon's Den star James Caan, who was billed as a former government advisor who is now backing the Tories on the issue. The result on the night though was two people strongly arguing against the Conservative position!!!!
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This followed on from a post on the BBC's web blog:

1829: The Conservatives now have a Dragon on their side. James Caan, entrepreneur and one of the stars of the BBC's Dragons' Den, has joined the list of business types backing the Tory plan to block any rise in National Insurance. Mr Caan said an increase would cost "thousands of jobs" and
claimed Labour's recent Budget had been based on "exaggerated" growth figures.

Following on from Mr Caan's Newsnight performance, which was everything Labour could have wished for - and a whole lot more! -, the BBC blog posted this retraction:

2255: James Caan, entrepreneur and star of the BBC's Dragons' Den, doesn't seem to be backing the Tories as we'd previously thought he was. He says Labour's National Insurance rise would only add £15 to the cost of employing someone, and that wouldn't realistically be enough to put him off filling a vacancy that needed filling.

After Mr Caan's sustained attack on the Tories, Jeremy Paxman turned back to Liam Byrne and said "Well, that must be music to your ears, I suppose?" I should say it was!
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Well, wasn't that all a big boost for labour and a blow for the Tories! Conspiracy or cock-up? Bias or blunder? If the latter, why on earth didn't they check and make sure what Mr Caan's position really was?
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To add insult to injury, Jeremy Paxman was (by his standards) very gentle with Mr Byrne - just 3 interruptions and a light-hearted manner!!

GETTING THINGS IN PROPORTION

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Well, the 'proportionality' thing didn't quite work out on Newsnight.
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If you watched last night's three-way discussion, lorded over by Jeremy Paxman, you might have felt that the Conservative didn't get his fair share. Your feeling would have been right:
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Douglas Alexander (Lab) - 3 minutes 54 seconds
Simon Hughes (LD) - 3 minutes (precisely)
Jeremy Hunt (Con) - 1 minute 55 seconds
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Wee Dougie got twice as long as Mr Hunt.
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Despite that, Jeremy Hunt wasn't interrupted to any less a degree than anyone else (indeed, his I.C. was 3.2, compared to 2.7 for Mr Hughes and 2.0 for Mr Alexander).
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The BBC guidelines state that 'proportionality' within a programme should best be judged over a week, so any imbalance early on ought to be re-balanced later in the week. We'll see.
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