Scratch a liberal...

Outrage in the Guardian about an interview with A Banks on the  telly (Andrew Marr Show) on 4th Nov. I didn't see it myself, but it seems Banks was not skewered as easily as many liberals hoped. Typically, this has led Guardianistas to demand changes to the media!

That open-minded and tolerant person Lord Adonis had a piece yesterday:

Andrew Marr’s handling of Arron Banks was pathetic – and damaging

I don’t criticise the BBC lightly or with any joy. But its policy of Brexit ‘balance’ has led to catastrophically bad decisions

As predicted by myself, by Carole Cadwalladr and by many others the interview failed to land a punch. Instead, it provided Banks with a platform from which to attack his accusers and muddy the waters. This was not public interest journalism, it was carnival. And it did a great deal of damage...The BBC is consistently manipulated by Brexiteers into providing them with false parity in arguments where their views add nothing, represent nobody [!] and are demonstrably and factually wrong. Nigel Farage – the former leader of a party that polls in single figures and has no MPs – has appeared on Question Time disproportionately often. Brexit campaigners are paraded constantly across the airwaves to spout nonsense and lies about the single market, the customs union and – most unforgivably – the Irish border...[T]he BBC’s institutional determination [is] to declare the existential questions of Brexit answered. 

The specificf beef is:

Farage gets more coverage for a stunt throwing fish out of a boat – accompanied by a couple of fishermen and an entire school of journalists – than the People’s Vote campaign does for any of our many regional events and action days that attract volunteers in their hundreds.

And the response:

If the BBC expects to continue to enjoy public funds and public trust it needs – urgently – to examine its conscience and its output. It is not “balance” to invite contributors to mislead your audience. It isn’t “public interest journalism” to offer Banks a platform to attack his accusers and investigators. And it is not the responsibility of progressives and liberals to keep quiet in the face of such terrible judgment – either out of loyalty or from fear of what might replace the beloved BBC. It is our job to call it out [and go further?]

Similar sentiments today with the egregious S Moore:

Something is wrong with journalism – look at Andrew Marr’s Arron Banks interview 

The ground between truth and lies has become increasingly muddy. Marr’s failure to press Banks shows the media has not caught up with this reality

Journalists claiming to know the difference between truth and lies! Not at all playing his allotted part, apparently 'Banks got his 30-second soundbite in first and, once again, the BBC was played. Something has gone very wrong with my profession in this country, as it has in the US'

Moore has spotted one problem at least:

that there is truth and there are lies and that the job of a journalist is simply to reveal the lies and – hallelujah! – everything will change. This is patently not working. [I wonder why?] Trump supporters know he lies and they don’t care. They will counter this by saying the media lies about him...Remainers keep banging on to leavers that they were lied to, that a slogan on a bus was a lie. Again, they believe the reciting of this fact will change minds. But no. Of course, people who have lived in Russia have warned us about this for a long time [very old smear here]. It is possible to exist in alternative realities, to muddy the ground between truth and lies. It is possible to think two things at the same time. It is possible to know you are being lied to and not to mind that much, as it is par for the course.

An enticing alternative is on offer:

To counter this, we have to hit back at the level of emotional truth; after all, this is what Facebook ads were said to be doing [said by Guardian journalists mostly]  – appealing to people’s emotional understanding of the world. The BBC, in particular, has been completely unfit for purpose and the Ukippy right wing has run circles around it [how come if they are all simplistic liars?] ...The mantra of impartiality has permitted the amplification of untruths. We need to think again.

In an example of the self-referential citing of fellow believers, the link goes to a piece in the New York Review of Books, written by N Cohen, which has almost identical material which Moore has recycled. Cohen also sings the praises of a colleague of his on the Observer, the legendary C Cadwalladr:

Cadwalladr makes no claim to neutrality (and no one would believe her if she did). A few weeks ago, I urged her to take time off from exposing the corruptions of the Brexit campaign to write a book about her investigation. It would be a bestseller at home and abroad, I assured her....Cadwalladr looked appalled: “But I can’t stop the journalism, Nick. I can’t let them get away with it.” No one has done more to expose how the axis of technology, demagoguery, and oligarchy operates in Britain. She is everything BBC journalists are not.

Cadwalldr does do her homework better than most. We need to better train BBC journalists (especially Newsnight journalists) to properly research people they interview, of all political stripes, instead of just moralising at those outside the bubble and being appalled and frightened when those people answer back. Cohen might agree,but Moore wants us to look forward to more emotional and partisan banging on and on. That will not muddy the ground between truth and lies, of course. Leavers will repent, deeply affected by emotional appeals -- to what exactly is unclear though, and haven't we had all the personal stories about exiled German journalists and worried EU nurses? Guardianistas need to learn about passion fatigue and posture cramp and the contempt lots of people feel for that?