DIMBLEDATA

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Quantifying last night's Question Time reveals the following stats:
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Who got most time to speak?
1. Liam Byrne - 11 minutes 7 seconds
2. Richard Madeley - 8 minutes 34 seconds
3. Sarah Teather - 8 minutes 25 seconds
4. Caroline Spelman - 8 minutes 7 seconds
5. Andrew Roberts - 7 minutes 30 seconds
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Who received the most interruptions from David Dimbleby?
1. Caroline Spelman - 15
2. Sarah Teather - 11
3. Liam Byrne - 7
4. Andrew Roberts - 3
5. Richard Madeley - 1
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Who scored the highest interruption coefficient?
1. Caroline Spelman - 1.9
2. Sarah Teather - 1.3
3. Liam Byrne - 0.6
4. Andrew Roberts -0.3
5. Richard Madeley - 0.1
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Who was asked the most supplementary questions by David Dimbleby?
1. Caroline Spelman - 17
2. Sarah Teather - 9
3. Liam Byrne - 6
4. Andrew Roberts - 4
5. Richard Madeley - 1
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Not a bad night out for oily Liam Byrne and the Labour Party was it?

TALK OF TORY TOFFS? HERE'S CRICK!

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On the same edition of Newsnight my old friend Michael Crick was back, talking about Labour's class-war strategy in the wake of Harriet Harman's latest drivel.
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This gave him a chance to bring up the 'privileged backgrounds' of David Cameron and his colleagues, while talking to Harriet Harman, the niece of the Countess of Longford, and not mentioning hers.
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His experts were openly-Labour-supporting pollster Sir Bob Worcester and a self-confessed man of the Left, the excellent professor Peter Hennessy.
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Crick, who is as undisguised a Labour-supporter as Sir Bob, had previously made no bones about which side of the Labour argument he comes down on, as you can read here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2009/12/making_mileage_out_of_tory_tof.html

Crick himself has made a career out of the sort of anti-Tory-toff attacks favoured (for whatever cynical reasons) by Ms Harman. If Labour doesn't continue making them, he can guarantee that he will.

ESLER DONS THE BURQA

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The likely French action against wearing the burqa was discussed on last night's Newsnight by Gavin Esler with his left-wing Dateline friend Agnes Poirier, a gobby, jargon-spouting Muslim student (but quite a looker!) and Lord Pearson of UKIP.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight
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As you would expect with Gavin Esler he was not neutral in the debate. Very far from it. When the Muslim lass wasn't interrupting (or talking over) Lord Pearson, he was! 10 questions and 7 interruptions came in fast succession, resulting in a very high interruption coefficient of 2.8. (If the pretty student hadn't been talking over Lord Pearson so much this I.C. would doubtless have been even higher, as Gavin would have been able to interrupt even more himself!).
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ALL SIDES OF THE LEFT CAN JOIN IN

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Last night's Newsnight discussed Jack Straw's evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry with a supporter and an opponent of the Iraq War, which sounds balanced enough, but the supporter was self-confessed ultra-Blairite John Rentoul of The Independent (and before that The New Statesman) and the opponent was a Labour-backing blogger Chris Ames, who contributes to The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Independent.
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The BBC News website's main story this morning, Gordon Brown 'to face Iraq Inquiry before election' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8473790.stm) links in its 'From Other News Sites' section to The Guardian, Observer, Independent, Sky News and Press Association.
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Another lively debate on the Left.

KATTY CLAWS THE REPUBLICANS

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Back at work again today means some more late, late blogging! 20 hours after Newsnight's post-mortem on the Massachusetts defeat for the Democrats I've finally got round to watching it. Almost immediately my hackles were raised by Katty Kay, a particularly biased specimen of BBC reporter.
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Even Mark Mardell would baulk at this bit of characteristic anti-Republican spin, right at the beginning of her Newsnight piece: "This is not a good vote for Barack Obama, but it's not necessarily a good vote for Republicans either." Her reasoning for this remarkable statement? "Yes, Scott Brown ran on a Republican ticket but he didn't use the Republican name in any of his ads or in any of his leafleting." Some might call that clutching at straws! "And more than anything else this is a vote from the angry middle ground of America against the existing political heirarchy". So not mainly against the Democrats then? (It's the new BBC line in evidence again).
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It is interesting though that the BBC, even Katty Kay herself, is now acknowledging the Tea Party movement, that "fiercely conservative...band of self-declared patriots" (in Katty's words) that is leading the charge against big government in the United States, and even acknowledging its huge popularity. It took them an age to do so.
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WHO'S LEFT IN?

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This morning's Today was almost completely free of right-of-centre voices.
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Charges for online newspapers were discussed with Tim Luckhurst, "Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent and a former editor of the Scotsman" in the words of the programme. If the name is familiar to you it's because he used to report for the BBC. He had previously worked for the Labour Party (standing for them in the 1987 general election) and now writes for The Guardian, which he praised on today's programme as "a great British newspaper". He also praised the Guardian's ideological soulmate, the BBC for its "excellent journalism" (sic) .
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Liberal Democrat peer Lord Wallace was invited on to discuss government cuts to funding for counter-terrorism programmes in Pakistan (with Brown being caught out again by a blundering admission of reality from Her Ladyship Kinnock), though he was more interested in attacking David Cameron (for some reason). John Humphrys's interruption coefficient here was a paltry 0.2 (Lord Wallace not being a Tory). Later Labour MP Kim Howells came on to respond (I.C. of 0.5).
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The abuse of the internet by rogue governments was discussed by Sarah Montague with a lawyer Robert Amsterdam and Labour MP Tom Watson (a ex-crony of McBride in Brown's inner circle), I.C of 0.5.
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Obama's popularity (or increasing lack of it) was discussed with left-wing Reverend Al Sharpton, a man who made every possible excuse (unconvincingly) for the president.
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I will pass over Observer film critic and BBC presenter Mark Kermode discussing the BAFTAs - as he's a BBC institution now, offering left-wing film reviews to all and sundry.
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On at the end was a (presumably) right-of-centre voice featured, in duet with another (definite) left-winger: Richard Exell, labour market expert for the TUC (praising the government, warning against a change of government), and Katja Hall, director of employment policy at the CBI.

A DAY NOT TO BURY GOOD NEWS

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I can't put this any better than Not a Sheep, so I'll just lift his entire post instead!:

Reporting of economic news depends on the news

When the dreadful inflation figures were released on Tuesday the coverage was skimpy and by the end of the afternoon the news story was the last item on the 5Live news, just before the humorous item. By way of contrast, today when the better than expected unemployment figures came out today it was headline news from the moment of announcement and was still the lead story in the 6pm Radio 4 news.
Do note how the BBC adjust their coverage of news stories to push a pro-Labour message. It's sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious, but almost always there.
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/01/bbc-reporting-of-economic-news-depends.html

If there is an unwelcome rise in unemployment next month, will the story be shoved back to just before the humorous item again?
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RYAN v RADIO 5LIVE

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DB on the Biased BBC website had highlighted concerns over bias at Radio 5Live (a channel I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to), in particular some correspondence between commenter Ryan (good man!) and Radio 5Live's controller Adrian Van Klaveren that is well worth a read, being very instructive about the biased mentality (and sheer illogicality) of the BBC's top brass:
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/01/sunday-mornings-on-five-live.html

THE JO DELUSION

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An enjoyable Daily Politics today, with Andrew on top form, Norman Tebbit talking good sense (on almost everything) and an interesting discussion with Richard Dawkins.
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Only lovely Jo Coburn let the side down with her presentation on the parties' proposals on marriage, outlining Labour's laughable proposals without even the merest whiff of criticism or cynicism but outlining the Conservative position with this caveat: "The Conservatives want to reward marriage in the tax system, but detailed proposals about how they would afford it have not been decided." Has Labour's leaflet to all expecting dads advising them on how to be dads been costed Jo?
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And on top of that there was with her abuse of David Cameron's admirable admission that he wasn't quite with it one morning, having a lot on his mind (we all know that feeling!): "Just to go back to the issue of families, because David Cameron had made it a central plank, even though he in his own words 'messed up' in terms of exactly what the Tory Party could promise."
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Thank God (sorry Richard) for Andrew Neil to provide some balance to all this! Andrew Neil is bracingly right-wing, but he attacks Tories and Labour and UKIP and Lib Dems with equal relish (indeed he's generally harder on his own side!). He is an example to the rest of the BBC, including our leftist lovely Jo Coburn, on how not to be a biased interviewer.
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DAVID WILLETTS SPEAKS FOR THE TORIES, AND SO DOES ED BALLS

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Here's some of this morning blurb on the Today website:

The pre-election campaign moves onto families today. The government is to launch its green paper on families as the Conservatives publish the families section of their draft manifesto. Ed Balls, Secretary for Children, Schools and Families,
and his shadow David Willetts, discuss their party's policies.

This is not a true description. Ed Balls didn't discuss his party's policies at all. Both he and David Willetts discussed Conservative policies!
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As for John Humphrys, well, he certainly tried to get Ed Balls to talk about his own party's policies (unsuccessfully). However, the interruption coefficients for each guest are an accurate reflection of his partiality during the affair: 2.3 against David Willetts, 1.3 against Ed Balls. He let one of Balls's answers go on for an age and allowed some of that overgrown kid's anti-Tory attacks to go on well beyond the point where most other interviewers would have felt the need to step in.
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John Humphrys, incidentally, also got to see some Van Goghs (lucky man). Here's one of my favourites, 'Red Vineyards.'

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NO MARKS FOR MARDELL

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I know it's unseemly to gloat, but...
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Mark Mardell got it wrong!: "It would be a grievous blow for Obama if this seat went Republican for the first time since JFK took it for the Democrats in 1953: especially as the result will come on the eve of the anniversary of his inauguration next week. I don't actually think they will lose the seat..."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2010/01/the_ifs_of_the_massachusetts_e.html *
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Well, they did lose the seat in Massachusetts. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8466995.stm
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This was not quite on a par with Matt Frei's classic prediction (during a 'Correspondents Look Ahead' sometime during President George W. Bush's first term) that he thought Bush was likely to be a one-term president! But it is another example of BBC hope triumphing over good judgement!
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Mardell now promises to learn from his mistake (not that he's conceding that he made a wrong call of course): "It will be a part of my job in the coming months to try and discern what the mood really is." http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2010/01/what_a_difference_a_year_makes.html
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Yes, indeed it will.
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But in the meantime why not just bandy about the 'p' word instead? (The 'p' word is a BBC bogey words). "Not for the first time the race to be the biggest populist on the block is on."
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******************UPDATE & AFTERTHOUGHT
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Paul Adams on Today's 7.00 News was presenting the Massachusetts result as an 'anti-establishment' one rather than an anti-Democrat one.*
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This could be a new line for the BBC to take whenever Democrats lose over the next few months (leaving open the nuclear option of playing the race card should they lose the mid-term elections in November).
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Going off the point a little (though not totally), this takes me back to the BBC's coverage of the 2004 European elections. This was when the BBC was most feverish in its hostility to the Iraq War. When the results came in from across Europe, Dimbleby and co. put all the swings against national governments who supported the war (in Italy, Spain, the UK etc) down to public opposition to their support for the war, but when the results came in from France and Germany, who strongly opposed the war, showing a similar swing against each national government, they did not put this down to public opposition to their opposition to the war but to an anti-incumbency mood in those countries. They were so hooked on their line that they couldn't see the staggering flaws in their logic. I spend quite a bit of the night shaking my head in disbelief. Were they merely being stupid or were they being deliberately disingenuous? Well, at least some of the people in that studio were certainly not stupid.

HARKIN' ONLY TO THE LEFT

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The Conservatives are courting 'the wisdom of crowds', or 'crowd sourcing' in the jargon. (Please hand me my revolver!) This idea, of pooling many minds to find new solutions, was discussed on today's The Daily Politics, beginning with a report by young Adam Fleming. His 'talking heads' were Lib Dem activist 'Gez' Smith of Delib, former Blair advisor Dr David Halpern of the Institute for Government (fresh from his appearance on yesterday's Today programme) and blogospere-loathing leftie James Harkin from the Guardian and New Statesman. Jo Coburn then discussed the issue with Hugh Flouch of social networking organisation Networked Neighbourhoods. Un'sourced' in this particular 'crowd' were any Conservatives, or anyone else from the political Right. The likelihood of any actual wisdom, therefore, was significantly reduced!!
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BONKERS!

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Jim Naughtie really doesn't like Conservatives (or members of UKIP for that matter). You can hear that in his tone of voice in interview after interview.
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On this morning's Today programme he interviewed shadow home secretary Chris Grayling about Conservative proposals to introduce "a targeted increase in taxation on the drinks that they think are strongly associated with anti-social behaviour". Unlike the earlier interview with former Labour minister John Reid there were no jokes during this interview. No, this was very much Naughtie the Terrier in action again.
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Oddly, as he did in his very rude 5th Jan. interview with Nick Herbert, he deployed the word 'bonkers!' again. It came during his most aggressive interruption:
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Grayling: "But actually our goal is to try and get manufacturers to bring down the strength of the strongest alcohols. We'd obviously provide an exception for specialist niche products, the tradtional ye oldie cider in a traditional area like..."
Naughtie (interrupting:) "So if it's Killer Cider it doesn't...I mean super strong cider, which can knock people out, a pint of it, you don't mind that if it's produced by a little producer? Isn't that bonkers, when you're saying if somebody produces a lot of superstrength beer you're going to tax them extra?"
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I think I might have to keep a 'bonkers' tally for Jim Naughtie!
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THE NORMAN YOKE

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I was not especially impressed by Norman Smith (standing in for Carolyn Quinn) on Westminster Hour. (Laura Kuenssberg was much better.) He was reviewing a survey of the Top 20 political priorities of Conservative prospective parliamentary candidates with Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome.
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At the bottom of the survey, as Tim pointed out, comes "reducing Britain's carbon footprint". Norman Smith referred to this in his introduction, but he didn't say "reducing Britain's carbon footprint". He said, "On the plus side looking after the NHS is near the top, at number four - but on the glum side, saving the planet comes at the bottom of their list of priorities." 'Saving the planet'! (I think we know where he's coming from on the great man-made global warming debate).
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There's a world of difference in tone (and effect on the listener) between saying that Tory candidates don't think that "reducing Britain's carbon footprint" is a top priority and saying that "saving the planet" isn't important. The former merely makes them sound lukewarm on 'global warming', whereas the latter makes them sound like Bond villains!!

Norman Smith is positively Crick-like in his use of the word 'Tory' at the expense of the word 'Conservative'. He was at it throughout the programme. This is a 'tell', as cod-psychologists like to say.
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Here's another example of Norman Smith's apparent anti-Tory bias from another blog:
http://www.horgan.co.uk/2009/11/bbcs-norman-smith-holds-his-hands-up.html
And an example of Norman's seeming pro-Labour bias from another:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidhughes/100003341/the-bbc-just-loves-ian-gibson/
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EVAN FALLS TO EARTH

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The shine is coming off Evan Davis and my hopes that he would soften the left-wing bias of Jim and John are fading. This morning's political interviews provided further evidence than Evan is starting to go down the Naughtie route. The interviews with Labour's Lord Myners and the Conservatives' Michael Gove lasted almost identical lengths, but whereas Lord Myners was only interrupted twice (I.C. of 0.4) Mr Gove was interrupted six times (I.C. of 1.2). Moreover the highly sceptical tone of Evan's questioning of Michael Gove was not matched by his much more reverent questioning of Paul Myners, as you can hear for yourself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8464000/8464789.stm
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HOW BLAIR'S COURTIERS PROSPER

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It's interesting how many former New Labour courtiers seem to crop up on the Today programme in new, doubtless well-paid positions. This morning's edition featured Dr David Halpern, former advisor to Tony Blair, now working for the Institute for Government think tank, and Geoff Mulgan, another former advisor to Tony Blair as well as Gordon Brown (and a co-founder of the centre-left think tank Demos), and director of the Young Foundation (among many other things). Both were treated as independent experts.
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A CHILE DAWN FOR THE BBC

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The BBC are choking on their muesli today as a conservative candidate has won the presidential election in Chile. The tone of both their website articles on the story shows them to be bad losers. Gone is the gloating whenever a Latin American left-winger wins, leaving only sour grapes. Check out these articles (especially the second, by Gideon Long) and you'll see what I mean:

Billionaire wins Chile election
Conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera wins Chile's presidential run-off, ending more than 20 years of centre-left rule.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8464136.stm

Tycoon Pinera promises rapid growth for Chile
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8464690.stm

INDEPENDENT HOUR

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Here's an update on something I blogged last Monday. This is what I wrote in its entirity (how's that for re-cycling!):

Most editions of Radio 4's Westminster Hour feature a political journalist, who
usually casts an eye over some key event or other in a one-to-one chat with
presenter Carolyn Quinn. On 30th November it dawned on me that the featured
journalists seemed to be coming disproportionately from the UK's left-liberal
newspapers. So I began to note down who was getting the invitations.
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This is the story so far:
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10/1/10 Nick Watt of the Guardian
3/1/10 Michael Savage of the Independent
27/12/09 no programme
20/12/09 no journalist
13/12/09 Andrew Miller of the Economist
6/12/09 George Parker of the Financial Times
29/11/09 Toby Helm of the Observer
22/11/09 no journalist
15/11/09 Nick Watt of the Guardian
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Case proven?

Well, the trend continues. This week (17/1/10) it was Andrew Grice of the Independent. He was, unsurprisingly, much more critical of the Conservatives than of Labour.
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Any chance of someone from the Times or the Telegraph getting a look in any time soon?

SN(i)P(ing)

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As a disinterested party in this (strongly disliking both Labour and the SNP), I find The Politics Show: Scotland and its pro-Labour presenter Glenn Campbell intriguing but not particularly unsettling (at an emotional level). In any interview featuring a Labour and an SNP spokesman, it's pretty much a dead certainty with Glenn that the SNP spokesman will come off worse. Today was yet more proof of this.
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Discussing health (smoking in particular), the SNP's pale-looking spokeslady Shona Robison was interrupted twice, while Labour's Richard Simpson was not interrupted at all. Even to this disinterested viewer, the disparity in the treatment between the two was blatant. When Glenn went on to interview UK energy minister (Labour) Lord Hunt, it was (like the Simpson interview) an interruption-free zone (I.C. of 0). I suspect regular SNP viewers of the programme will fume at Glenn Campbell rather as I fume at Andrew Marr or James Naughtie!
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THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS...AT THE BBC

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As The World This Weekend began its coverage of the upcoming election in Massachusetts for the senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, I was pleasantly surprised to hear an interview with a Republican senator, Mel Martinez from Florida. Such people are rare orchids on the BBC. After interviewing him, however, Brian Hanrahan moved on to a voice from the Left, Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist independent from Vermont. Ah well, a voice from the American Right alone is a thing even rarer on the BBC, and such balance is always to be applauded - would that it always worked in the other direction, which it so very rarely does at the BBC. Then came a third interview, this time with Democrat Congressman Chris Van Hollen, thus restoring the BBC's natural tilt to the Liberal-Left. It just had to be that way, didn't it?
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