‘Send Newsnight to the knackers yard’

This is the title of Stephen Glover’s splendid hatchet job in this months ‘Oldie’ magazine. It is a curtain-raiser for the storm currently engulfing the BBC over lefty-bias. ‘Hurricane’ more like. The Telegraph goes for the jugular. The Sun has ripped apart the Beeb’s finances, exposing amongst other bad practices, the use of licence payers’ money to fill the multi-million hole in the pension fund instead of increasing employees’ contributions. The Commentator baldly states that the BBC is beyond redemption and should be humanely put down.

 

Glover reminds us of the Lord McAlpine scandal when Newsnight wrongly outed him as a paedophile. A new editor was appointed, one Ian Katz. His previous was deputy editor of – guess what? – yes, The Guardian. He is in good company. The political editor Allegra Stratton and the investigations editor Nick Hopkins are of the same provenance.

 

The audience is going south at an alarming rate.

 

In 2001, it was over one million nightly. By last April it had fallen by nearly half. Paxo himself has described it as ‘made by thirteen-year olds’.

 

And why was the attention-seeking loony-lefty Russell Brand interviewed twice in fairly quick succession? Could it be that the editor thought that he represented the young metropolitan lefties who need to provide the future audience when he is in the forefront of the lunatic fringe?