HEWITT ON A WHITE HORSE

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Baroness Ashton had her big day at the European parliament today. Gavin Hewitt was there and has penned an article that's now available on the front page of the BBC News website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/gavinhewitt/2010/03/the_trials_of_catherine_ashton.html *
Guess what? It's pretty sympathetic to her.
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Hewitt defends her over her no-show in Haiti: "She didn't travel to Haiti immediately after its destructive earthquake. She waited and only visited there last week. I have covered disasters; the tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake, Katrina to name a few. In my experience visiting officials are tolerated more than welcomed."
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He then defends her over what he calls her "no-show at the European defence minister's meeting": "She was actually in Ukraine, a strategically important country for the EU." This misstates the issue. It wasn't just any old meeting of European defence ministers, as Hewitt suggests. Lady Ashton actually failed to attend a joint meeting of European defence ministers and Nato officials - their first joint meeting since she became head of European security policy.
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He portrays her as being the victim of a turf war, afflicted by a 'little lash of cruelty'.
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And as to her being out-of-her-depth, well, Gavin has an anonymous official on hand to come to the lady's help: "One senior official said to me "she can't match up to some of the foreign policy heavyweights" but she is skilful (sic) at finding consensus and has already developed good relations with Hillary Clinton and Russia's Sergei Lavrov."
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CON-TEXT

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I know that I'm far from alone in having noticed that the BBC has a bit of a soft spot for poor never-elected-to-anything, completely-out-of-her-depth Cathy 'Go Home' Ashton.
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The BBC's Europe editor Gavin Hewitt presented a short report on the continued 'sniping' (yes, he used that word again) against Baroness Ashton, the EUseless foreign minister, on this morning's Today programme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8559000/8559141.stm
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The only direct critic was "Tory MEP Charles Tannock" - not that we heard any actual criticisms from him in the very short extract featured. Indeed, in the sporting spirit I expect from Mr Tannock (a fine Eurosceptic Tory), he said he still wished her the best of British luck, and added "she may surprise us all, and I hope she does", clearly said more in hope than expectation.
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That, however, was all the pretext someone at the Today website needed to yank Mr Tannock's words out of context and headline the piece
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**** ***Ashton 'may surprise us all'
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Have they no shame?

RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!

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BBC Europe editor Gavin Hewitt provides a neat example of bias by labeling in one of his recent blog articles http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/gavinhewitt. Though mostly quoting Charles Grant of the Beeb's favouite European think tank, the Centre for European Reform, Gavin ends by giving us a pearl of wisdom from a man he calls "the respected economist Paul Krugman". I wonder if this is part of the reason why Gavin uses the word 'respected' about Mr Krugman: "Krugman describes himself as liberal. He has explained that he views the term "liberal" in the American context to mean "more or less what social democratic means in Europe. Krugman has praised Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, asserting that he "defined the character of the worldwide [financial] rescue effort" and has since urged British voters not to support the opposition Conservative Party, arguing their Party Leader David Cameron "has had little to offer other than to raise the red flag of fiscal panic." (Wikipedia)