Trust and media trusties

Johnson has refused a provocative 'invitation', more like a demand, from A Neil, somehow appearing in his own right, to be 'interviewed' on the BBC.The refusal is tactical, of course, but the reply to the BBC has some power:

A senior Tory party source has responded to Neil’s challenge to appear on the BBC One leaders’ interviews by saying live televised interviews are anachronistic and pointless: “The public are fed up with interviews that are all about the interviewer and endless interruptions. The format is tired and broken and needs to change if it is to start engaging and informing the public again.”

Quite right in my view. We know the views of Maitlis, Barnett, Davis and Wark only too well. Would Neil add much? It sounds like he already has his sad petty bourgeois agenda:

“The theme running through our questions is trust, and why at so many times in his career in politics and journalism, critics and sometimes even those close to him have deemed him to be untrustworthy.”

As questions, these are pathetic. How or why would Johnson know why people deem him untrustworthy -- why not ask them not him? Why the same old moral tirade from a self-appointed priest? We know Neil's views -- why give him another 20 minutes to bang on and on in mock outrage? Who in their right mind would accept this as legitimate political journalism?

The tactical benefits are also clear:

The saga over Johnson’s refusal to do the Neil interview has caused internal chaos at the BBC, with Labour furiously insisting it was operating under the belief that the Conservatives had agreed to take part before it allowed Corbyn to appear....There is also the impact of days of media coverage being given over to the debate over whether Johnson would subject himself to scrutiny from Neil, rather than being scrutinised for his policies [by someone else?].

Signs that Aunty still doesn't really get it though:

Within the BBC there is fury about the challenge to its integrity

Aunty threw her integrity down the pan long ago by encouraging virtue-signalling interviewers to shout down anyone daring to question their superior wisdom.

G Younge dutifully follows up the Nice People's Issue of the Day

From Johnson’s lies to Corbyn’s promises – this election is about trust 

Younge starts with this:

 the degree to which people’s votes are guided by party leaders can be overestimated. Manifestos matter, so do age-old affinities. Lived experience can trump it all. In 2017, canvassers in Harrow West said fly-tipping came up more often than Jeremy Corbyn.

But then back to the Graun pulpit nevertheless:

With a week to go before the election, the central issue seems to come down to trust. For the Conservatives it is about whether people trust what they say; for Labour, it is about whether voters trust that it can do what it says....The challenge for the Tories goes all the way to the top. Their leader is a liar. This not a partisan point. It is a fact. .. the brazen, bare-faced, shameless lying for which Johnson is renowned has now become the norm.

Followed by the usual examples.Then, as 'balance':

With Labour, the problem is less that people think Corbyn is insincere, but that when it comes to Labour’s central offer – its ambitious manifesto pledges to redistribute wealth, reinvest in public services and nationalise different sectors of the economy – they fear the plans are impractical.

I certainly do, now I have seen how the remaining (sic) Blairites abandoned their manifesto promises and launched initiatives with Bercow and senior Tories (O Letwin!) and Libs. For we doubters:

A course correction of this nature requires political education.

In a camp? Younge offers us, and Labour, the first lesson:

not simply to emphasise Johnson’s untrustworthiness but to tie it to Brexit. It’s baked into people’s views that he’s a liar. Yet they believe he’s sincere when he says he’ll “get Brexit done” by the end of January. He isn’t. He won’t. He can’t...They have to nail his dissembling, conman shtick to his Brexit promise and make it clear that he’s lying about that the same way he’s lied about everything else and he’s lying to them the same way he’s lied to everyone else....[While Labour must]...show it can deliver that offer – to convince the electorate that Labour can be trusted with the changes that will help the country while Johnson can’t even be trusted with anything.

So nothing on LibDems who are now a spent force even for the Graun. And a nice circularity and redundancy to the whole argument, characteristic of tired ideology. The lessons are the same as the diagnosis but in an active voice. The whole thing looks like another attempt to list all the Johnson lies as a kind of catechism to keep up their morale.