Boris has managed to give his exclusive “first interview since resigning” to both the BBC’s Laura K and Sky’s Beth Rigby at the same time. Watch his BBC interview here…
UPDATE: It turns out Boris gave not two but three interviews in the same room which have all gone out at the same time today – ITV’s Robert Peston has got in on the act too.
State-backed press regulator Impress is currently investigating The Canary for spreading fake news about the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Given they are endorsed by the government, surely we can trust Impress to carry out a fair and proper probe, right? Or not. It turns out two members of Impress‘ board have shared tweets from loony Corbynista accounts trolling Laura K. Press Gazette has found Impress board member Maire Davies sharing crackpot tweets calling Kuenssberg the BBC’s “chief propagandist”:
While fellow Impress board member Emma Jones tweeted out a far-left Counterfire article ranting about Laura’s supposed bias, and another cartoon with her wearing a “Vote Tory” sign.
Impress is the state-endorsed regulator backed by the government. Time and time again it has been revealed as a sham organisation made up of press-hating, party political cranks and oddballs. Total joke that the Tories haven’t done anything about this.
Nutjob Corbynista frontbencher Chris Williamson plumbs new depths by promoting a mad Skwawkbox conspiracy theory smearing Laura Kuenssberg. The Skwawkbox piece is proper tin foil hat stuff, going through Laura K’s reporting line by line trying to find anti-Labour bias. They even have to ask their readers not to resort to “violence or abuse” at the end of the post. And Williamson is delighting in riling his followers up by promoting this guff. What a shower.
@bbclaurak is not speaking at this @csjthinktank event. At Labour & Conservative conferences to report impartially for @BBCNews
— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) 27 September 2017
Tough day at The Canary: the Corbynista site’s latest Laura Kuenssberg bashing piece has provoked widespread ridicule. The site claimed: “We need to talk about Laura Kuenssberg. She’s listed as a speaker at the Tory Party conference.” Except Laura K wasn’t listed as a speaker, she was merely ‘invited’ – and indeed she had declined the offer. Rather than put a call in to the BBC to check, the Canary published and let their misleading story go viral. Their comrades at Evolve Politics went with it as well. Amusingly, dozens of complaints have been received by the Impress regulator…
Some journalists are speaking at Tory conference though. Owen Jones, for example. He’s not only invited but is a confirmed speaker at two events. We need to talk about Owen Jones. He’s listed as a speaker at the Tory Party Conference…
This 2015 interview with – Corbynista conspiracists take a deep breath – Laura Kuenssberg, where he said he was “not happy with a shoot-to-kill policy in general” has gone viral today. It is being shared widely on Facebook and has bounced to the “most watched” spot on the BBC News website. His team are briefing that he will back the police to use “whatever force is necessary”. Really?
Asked seven times by Laura Kuenssberg, Jeremy Corbyn refuses to confirm Britain will leave the EU if he becomes PM. Why couldn’t he just say yes? Amateur stuff…
Philip Hammond tells Alex Salmond the first person outside the chamber to say he had broken the Tory manifesto pledge on National Insurance was the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. An extraordinary statement – and one which Hammond is defending by arguing disingenuously that the NI didn’t breach the manifesto. Did Downing Street really not realise this would be an issue? Friends of George Osborne say they immediately knew it would be a breach of manifesto when they saw this Times story on a possible NICs rise back on 1 March. Hammond leaving himself open to complete ridicule…
As the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg questions President Trump on torture and Russia, he looks to Theresa May and jokes:
“That’s your choice of question? There goes that relationship.”
Yikes!
Remember when Nick Clegg accused Michael Gove of lying about the Queen backing Brexit at a private lunch at Windsor Castle? Well, BBC political editor Laura Kuennsberg has revealed a source came to her with the same story before she was scooped by the Sun:
“In a casual chat with one of my contacts, they said: Do you know what? At some point this is going to come out, and I’m telling you now and I don’t know if the BBC would touch it, but the Queen told people at a private lunch that she thinks that we should leave the EU. Apparently at this lunch she said ‘I don’t see why we can’t just get out. What’s the problem?’ My jaw hit the floor. Very sadly, I only had one source. I spent the next few days trying to prove it. I couldn’t find the evidence. Lo and behold, a couple of months later, someone else did. Of course then ensued a huge row between that newspaper and the Palace over what had really been said or not said.”
Who to believe, Laura K and her sources and The Sun and their sources, or Nick Clegg…
Last night Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner, who some amusingly tip as a future Labour leader, fired off a press release welcoming the government’s decision to drop grammar schools. Rayner claimed grammars have been “abandoned as a result of the huge pressure Labour has put the Government under”. Except they haven’t dropped grammars at all – Rayner’s press release was completely, 100%, wrong.
Rayner then doubled down, claiming the government were refusing to allow a vote on grammars. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg had to explain that she was wrong on this too, and that the legislation will go ahead:
Laura then had to politely explain to Angela how parliament works:
@AngelaRayner don’t think they can repeal the ban without legislation, so expect a White paper then bill with votes next year – let’s see!
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) October 27, 2016
For the avoidance of doubt, the government have confirmed there will be a vote on grammars. High level scrutiny from our opposition…
Note the timestamps…
Sources: Leadsom quitting at noon.
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) July 11, 2016
Westminster rumour mill going into overdrive over Leadsom statement and what it might be ……..
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 11, 2016
Source tells me Leadsom to pull out at 12 – not confirmed
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 11, 2016
Laura Kuenssberg follows Guido on Twitter. Her tweet was by definition not a scoop – as over 200,000 followers of Guido’s Twitter feed know. Lobby hacks were already furiously re-tweeting Guido before Laura followed up three minutes later. So this bit of bragging from BBC News is just demonstrably untrue:
Anatomy of a political scoop – how @bbclaurak broke news of @andrealeadsom‘s #ToryLeadership exithttps://t.co/tRrs6u3xrh
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 11, 2016
Mark Thompson the former Director-General of the BBC explained a truth of modern digital journalism:
“… Guido Fawkes and a thousand others may deliver their scoops and insights with less precision and restraint than their traditional counterparts, but they deliver them all the same…”
Guido’s co-conspirators know we’re #1 for fast breaking political news; last week we broke the news that Nigel Farage was stepping down as UKIP leader before any other media outlet. Embarrassing that Auntie is trying to spin otherwise…
Who’s responsible for winding up Labour lefties to the point where they boo and hiss the BBC’s political editor? This video of John McDonnell from 2013 is worth a watch – he tells activists to take “direct action” to “target” journalists they don’t like. Even going as far as occupying newsrooms…
“I don’t think we should let the traditional media off the hook… Where there is a distorted report or an inaccurate report, or where there’s a non-report by the traditional media, we take direct action against it. Let me give you an example… the IWW union were running a campaign in London… The Guardian wouldn’t cover the story… so what the IWW workers did is they went over to the Guardian offices and occupied them and insisted that they meet the editor and insisted that some story was covered. The editor came down, very angry… but in the end they said ‘alright, we’ll start looking into the story again’… Those newspapers, those media sources that aren’t covering the stories, we’ve got to start targeting them and taking direct action against them…
[Another pressure group] weren’t getting any coverage of their demonstrations by the BBC, so a couple of weeks ago they went to the BBC headquarters and did a demonstration outside and threatened occupation, eventually getting involved in a dialogue with some of the journalists… Where the existing, traditional media are letting us down, we target them.”
Labour MPs Wes Streeting, Chuka Umunna and Pat McFadden have all criticised the Laura K haters. Remember, Corbyn told Vice News the BBC “are obsessed with trying to damage Labour”. That’s why he smirked when his fans hissed at their pol ed…
Jeremy Corbyn smirks as Labour activists boo and hiss Laura Kuenssberg before she even asked her question this morning. Minutes earlier Corbyn had been riling the room up by attacking the media himself…
What did Seumas Milne achieve by flouncing off to the BBC with that complaint about Laura Kuenssberg? For months the Beeb political editor has been the victim of online vitriol from Corbynista trolls who preach their progressive values then call female journalists “bitches” and “whores“. The loonies even set up a petition on 38 Degrees to have Laura K sacked. Well, the boss of 38 Degrees has been forced to take the petition down over the level of abuse it was sending her way:
“I am really concerned that a petition hosted on the 38 Degrees website has been hijacked, and used as a focal point for sexist and hateful abuse made towards Laura Kuenssberg on Twitter. That is totally unacceptable and, with the agreement of the petition starter, we’ve taken the petition down to prevent it being used in this way.”
The progressive left…
Only one question allowed at Downing Street’s ‘press conference’ with President Xi, but it was a punchy one from Laura Kuenssberg:
LK: “Why do you think members of the British public should be pleased to do more business with a country that is not democratic, is not transparent and has a deeply, deeply troubling attitude towards human rights?”
Xi: “China attaches great importance to the protection of human rights. We combine the universal value of human rights with China’s reality and we have found a part of human rights development suited to China’s national conditions. With regard to protection of human rights, looking round the world we know that there is always room for improvement. All countries need to continuously improve and strengthen human rights protection to meet the need of the time and the people. On the issue of human rights, I think the people of our respective countries are in the best position to tell, and China is ready to, on the basis of equality and mutual respect, increase exchanges and cooperation with the UK and other countries in the area of human rights.”
Xi then read out his answer to a question from the Chinese press. Almost as if he knew what he was going to be asked…
In response to the news that Emily Thornberry described the Lib Dems as “like the Taliban” over their new revoke Article 50 Brexit policy, the former Lib Dem leader responded:
“Come on Emily, if we really were like a Middle East terrorist group, don’t you think Jeremy would’ve invited us to a conference fringe meeting before now?”
