Demonstrating that they are becoming rather short on material for their piss-poor website, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog yesterday fell back on one of their old chestnuts, bashing the BBC over its Brexit coverage. Only this time, the added ingredient was that there were no ingredients at all, not that The Great Guido was letting on to his dwindling band of faithful readers.
Under the headline “BBC Flagship Shows Still Have Remain Panel Bias”, the Fawkes massive tells “Brexiteers always like to complain about Brexit bias on the BBC, so Guido has crunched the numbers on the BBC’s three flagship panel shows, Question Time, Politics Live and Any Questions to see if they have a point. They certainly do”.
They do? How so? “Since the start of the political season in September, 72% of the official panel guests across the three shows have been Remainers, while a mere 28% have been Leavers. A whopping 87% of the panels had a Remainer majority – only 13% of shows had a panel equally balanced between Leavers and Remainers. Not once have Leavers outnumbered Remainers”. And there was more.
“Eight shows since the start of September have seen Brexiteers outnumbered 4 to 1 by Remainers, while two shows in the last two weeks managed to feature four Remainers and no Brexiteers at all. No-one is disputing that the Remainer elite are the majority in the Westminster politico-media bubble, the Beeb should however try to reflect the majority of the country”. The response was swift in coming.
Rob Burley, editor of BBC Live Political Programmes, asked “Am I right to assume that you are counting as Leave or Remain based on where a guest stood over two years ago on 23/06/16? You do know that political programmes have to by law reflect party support not the position of guests on a vote in 2016?” But Rob had not been looking closely enough.
The Fawkes post has no citation supporting it. None. Not one. Which means one thing.
There may not be any real world “Guido Data” underpinning the claims. And even if there is, for some reason the Fawkes rabble is either unable, or unwilling, to pony it up publicly. The deception even extends to missing out programmes like The Andy Marr Show™ and This Week. Why? Aren’t they “Flagship Shows”?
Without the raw data from which The Great Guido has derived his assertions, the post is utterly worthless. Burley’s question of whether that data is based on how the panel member voted in 2016 is also highly relevant - it would class Tories like Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt as Remainers, which is not their stance right now.
All of which shows that Rob Burley got his response wrong. He should have simply told the Fawkes massive to pony up the data, and if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do so, then they could just take their sneering and dishonest attitude and shove it.
“Guido Data” - when there isn’t any data at all. Another fine mess, once again.
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6 comments:
More crap from the toilet that is Guido Fawkes. Brexiteer's seem to cry 'not-we' at anyone, disregarding the evidence like how often an unelected idiot like Farage was invited onto QT etc.
Incidentally, even BBC comedy tried to balance things out last night with the appearance of the Tory member and leave-voting 'comedian', Geoff Norcott on Mock the Week. Needless to say he was utterly dire. But the right wingers have come out in force to claim he was amusing and demand he's given the benefit of the doubt that they would never give to the 'wimmin, the lefties and the ethnics'
Question Time: Since 13-09-18
Rory Stewart - Remain
Chris Leslie - Remain
Theo Paphitis - Leave
Faiza Shaheen - Remain (Probably, just - Maybe)
Julia Hartley-Dooda - Leave
Chris Skidmore - Remain
Barry Gardiner - Depends who's listening
Vince Cable - Remain
Nazir Afzal - Remain
Camilla Tominey - Leave
Jacob Facts-Optional - Leave
Ian Lavery - Remain
Rod Liddle - Leave
Ayesha Hazarika - Remain
Polly Mackenzie - Remain
David Gauke - Remain
Emily Thornberry - Remain
Claude Littner - Remain
George the Poet - ?????
Isabel Oakeshott - Leave
I havn't got time to check Politics Live and Any Questions.
Mark mentions Geoff Norcott. He had a slot of Radio 4 with his show 'Right Leaning But Well Meaning' in June this year; he sounded then as though he was searching for some sort of hook and came up with being the only 'out' right wing comedian - despite being decidedly unfunny.
But then again there is an utter lack of rightist funny persons - Lee Hurst claimed he was for Ukip but has demonstrated a slide into losing it by smashing an audience members phone (as she was filming him dying on stage) and disappearing from the scene.
Jim Davidson was always out as a Tory boy and I'd imagine he would be in his element with Brexit and Ukip and all the racist 'jokes' he could mutter; he seems to be failing to milk this opportunity though - maybe he is rich enough?
Nigel Farage has not lived up to the image that Radio 4's Dead Ringers has created, but I guess we can all hope he one day soon dons that big red nose, the extra long shoes and the rest of his clown gear again so that we can all laugh once more when he receives yet another custard pie in the face.
Are there really (here's a set up for you!) no other right wing comedians?
Simon Evans?
Anon @ 00.17, Andrew Lawrence is another alleged right wing comic who claims he has been left out in the cold by the 'liberal backslapping BBC'. Farage got some retweets out of his 'plight' I believe
http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/written-for-money/where-are-all-the-right-wing-stand-ups/
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