Re:The BBC on the Rack
by zimpenfish on Saturday April 04, 2020 @10:25AM
(#22778384)
> the left were desperate to see [Andrew Neil] interview the Conservative party leader
Indeed but it was because all the other party leaders had submitted to his interviewing and it was seen as blatantly unfair that someone with a track record of, let's be nice, wildly inaccurate and misleading statements should be able to skip the process.
Re:The BBC on the Rack
by notahacker on Saturday April 04, 2020 @11:19AM
(#22778726)
Agreed. But it was also because regardless of his politics being largely aligned with Johnson's and if anything further to the right, Neil could be relied upon to aggressively question Johnson on his inaccurate and misleading statements and track record in government
(more so than some of the lighter interviewers who I suspect have considerably greater issues with Johnson and his platform). If they'd thought Neil's [undisputed] personal bias would have lead him to softball or even stan for Johnson rather than challenging all the candidates equally toughly, it would have been different.
You've missed my point, the point isn't that a right wing person is on the BBC, the point is that the BBC shouldn't be political and by having prominent partisans employed and having a revolving door between the "non-partisan" BBC and political organisations you fundamentally create a political organisation that is an arm of the state.
It doesn't matter who the Conservative party have as their director of comms, it matters that there's a revolving door between a state broadcaster and the political orgnisations that they are menat to be covering.
Apparently people who present political programmes sometimes have political views and differences of opinions, and sometimes get hired by partisan bodies. Who knew? FWIW the current Director of Communications for the Conservative Party in Number 10 is a guy who was previously employed by an outspokenly Labour-supporting tabloid to chase round previous Conservative PMs dressed as a chicken during election campaigns. And the BBC's most outspokenly conservative journalist Andrew Neil is someone the left were desperate to see interview the Conservative party leader in the run up to the election on the basis they expected Neil to absolutely savage him.