Another victory for Guido’s co-conspirators as the BBC’s Newsnight editor admits that it didn’t “quite get it right” on its extreme, unbalanced anti-GB News programme last week. Guido let co-conspirators know how they could complain about the show trial and as a consequence the BBC’s own Newswatch was forced to discuss their coverage and haul editor Stewart Maclean in for self-flaggelation. Guido agrees that “the discussion would have been better” if they had someone on to defend GB News but finds it hard to believe that there was no-one available…

The BBC complaints team responded to co-conspirators yesterday. They said:

“We do understand that you might feel the item was therefore unbalanced, considering the way the discussion unfolded on air, and are happy to accept that in this case this item could have worked better if we had managed to find someone to robustly defend the channel”.

Maclean claimed in Newsnight’s defence that “it’s often very hard to pin down guests, particularly for a late-night news programme who are available and able to come on”. Yet Newsnight’s producers were able to pin down three guests who shared the same viewpoint. Maybe hire producers with different contacts?