Laura Kuenssberg - Not Good Enough

Of all news sources in the UK, whether print, online or broadcast, the BBC has been and remains the most trusted. Its journalism is perceived to set the standard for others to follow. The Corporation is as admired for its impartiality and objectivity as it is despised by the partisan and politically motivated, an illustration that it is doing something right. So the disappointment at any fall in its standards is that much more keenly felt.

Laura Kuenssberg ((c) Guardian)

That the perceived fall in standards came via a long-serving presenter and anchor, and the Corporations’s political editor, has only made matters worse. The problem can be put directly: a shadow minister, Stephen Doughty, declared his resignation from Jeremy Corbyn’s team on Wednesday, live on the Daily Politics. This event occurred five minutes before the start of Prime Minister’s Questions.

David Cameron was, in those intervening five minutes, made aware of the resignation and used the information to mock Corbyn. That Doughty’s resignation was not spontaneous, that presenter and anchor Andrew Neil had suggested it earlier in the day on hearing that a junior shadow minister was “considering” resigning, and that political editor Laura Kuenssberg had actively solicited Doughty’s appearance, was then let slip.

This happened in a blog by Andrew Alexander, one of the Daily Politics team, titled “Resignation! Making the news on the Daily Politics”. The blog was later pulled, but a cached copy is still available (HERE). As Doughty was, earlier in the day, merely “considering” resigning, the question has to be put as to whether BBC staff were complicit in some kind of encouragement, an incitement, an inducement even.

Both Neil and Ms Kuenssberg would have known that the timing of Doughty’s appearance and his announcement would give Cameron an advantage at PMQs. Both are equally aware, as are all those who work for the Corporation, that the Tories, now with a Parliamentary majority, are leaning on the BBC to make cuts, while all the time whining long and loud about non-existent left-wing bias in its broadcasts.

But the chief culprit has to be Ms Kuenssberg: her reporting on the shadow cabinet reshuffle has been sloppy and tabloidesque, for instance telling viewers and readers about what Corbyn “wants” without actually getting that information from the Labour leader first. She, like so many of the Pundit Establishment, failed to notice that Michael Dugher was sacked because he was perceived as useless.

And the impression, only reinforced after Alexander’s blog was pulled, is given that she was central to not merely reporting the news, but creating it, and to the advantage of the Government. On top of that, Zelo Street understands that another BBC programme has recently shied away from running a story that could seriously embarrass a cabinet minister - and all this going on at a time the Corporation’s charter is under review.

That would be as in under review by the same Government that was handed the PMQs advantage, and won’t have that cabinet minister embarrassed. Ms Kuenssberg, as the successor to John Cole, Andrew Marr and Nick Robinson, should have risen above the kind of tawdry exercise that took place on Wednesday. She did not. And it is for that reason, more than any other, that her behaviour in the Corporation’s service is not good enough.