Daily Mail Hypocrisy – Film At 11

There must be some attribute only possessed by the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his motley band of obedient hacks that enables them to indulge in acts of blatant and serial shamelessness, yet not be concerned, or even miss a beat over their actions.

Whatever that attribute – maybe Daily Mail hacks really do leave part of their soul at the door – it has been employed in characteristic style today in a piece that has been written to satisfy a key plank of the Dacre agenda. And that agenda item is Beeb bashing, as I noted yesterday.

Anyone bothered about such details will know that long running political punditry show Question Time is being moved north to Glasgow. As with any move of this kind, there are those who decide not to go, and current editor Ed Havard is one of them. So the BBC has replaced him with a bloke called Nicolai Gentchev.

And, so what? Ah well. The Dacre hackery has found out that Gentchev once wrote articles for Socialist Review and the International Socialism Journal. This enables the Mail to claim that the Beeb is in hock to rotten lefties, and enables them to wheel out appropriately critical rent-a-quote Tory MP Philip Davies, who makes me very glad I no longer live in the Shipley constituency, to support their contention.

The fact that Gentchev last contributed to Socialist Review six years ago does not enter. Nor does the past of the Beeb’s political editor Nick Robinson, who is a former national chairman of the Young Conservatives. Moreover, former Beeb business editor Jeff Randall, despite his forthright dislike of Young Dave, has been more than ready to put the boot into Tone and Pa Broon is his role at the Maily Telegraph.

And of course the BBC has just been tapped for Andy Coulson’s replacement at 10 Downing Street. But, unlike the broadcast media, there is no obligation for the Dacre hackery to show any kind of balance in their reporting, and so they do not.

No change there, then.

[UPDATE: this particular battle has now been joined by Maily Telegraph blogger James "saviour of Western civilisation" Delingpole, who has demonstrated the civility and moderation of his discourse by captioning a photo of Nicolai Gentchev with talk of "killing a few million Kulaks". He also reveals his rapier wit by telling that "the current batch of Tories were a bunch of something beginning with 'C' (and it wasn't 'Conservatives')".

As Derek said to Clive, "that's good, that - you ought to be on the radio with stuff like that"]