Forget the Tory Birmingham husting, Guido was privileged to have a ring-side seat at the internecine BBC-on-BBC bias row of the year last night. In the red corner, doing his job and defending BBC impartiality: Neil Henderson, Home and Foreign News Editor & Tomorrow’s Papers Today tweeter; in the blue corner, doing his damndest to undermine the entire BBC: crisp muncher Gary ‘overpaid’ Lineker. Ding ding…
The row started over a day-old tweet from Lineker, who put all his little grey cells towards political commentary to come up with the fair and not-at-all-oversimplified take: “As a politician how could you ever, under any circumstances, bring yourself to vote for pumping sewage into our seas? Unfathomable!” Obviously no politician could – and they haven’t – though the tweet did its job by getting 44,000 likes…
Guido remembers the new BBC director general Tim Davie coming in on a promise of cracking down on BBC stars flouting impartiality rules, such as taking them off Twitter. Fellow BBC employee Neil Henderson made this exact point to Gary, saying he’d be sacked if he tried tweeting such political propaganda:
Unfortunately, it seems Gary is blithely unaware of the fact BBC impartiality applies across all colleagues, not just those in news and current affairs. Guido would be happy to take a look at Lineker’s contract on his behalf…
Neil had one last bite before deleting his spat entirely, probably realising the row was just as bad a look for the BBC as Gary’s unbridled politicking. Henderson correctly asserted:
Guido looks forward to hearing Tim Davie’s thoughts on all this the next time he’s up in front of the DCMS Select Committee. Usually Guido leaves it to co-conspirators to decide who wins a bitch fight, this time there’s only one answer…
The two egos guilty of ruining Sunday night Twitter this week were the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges and Neil Henderson of the BBC’s #TomorrowsPapersToday. Henderson kicked things off by countering criticism over his failure to tweet last week’s MoS Brendan Cox front page citing “legal advice”. Dan then reached Peak Hodges when he proceeded to attempt to explain libel law to specialist libel barrister Greg Callus.
Isn’t a simple solution merely a commitment to retweet the headlines that the national newspapers print. I can’t quite see the circumstances where a court says “Neil Henderson retweeted this front page, let’s get him”.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) February 18, 2018
OK. So what legal advice to secure before you retweet your headlines. Which company. What processes do you go through.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) February 18, 2018
What intermediary.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) February 18, 2018
There hasn’t. But if you’re entirely confident it won’t ever happen, the easy thing is for you to publicly indemnify @hendopolis against the costs of it happening…
— Greg Callus (@Greg_Callus) February 18, 2018
Well, *I* won’t, but that’s because I’m a specialist libel barrister. If you’re not a specialist libel barrister, then like a dentist recommending tooth-brushing, I heartily recommend getting advice from one of my colleagues!
— Greg Callus (@Greg_Callus) February 18, 2018
Lots of things are possible Dan. I didn’t fancy – and don’t fancy – being a test case. Is that unreasonable ?
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 18, 2018
Go back in the garage Dan.
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 18, 2018
It ended with Dan unfollowing Neil and Neil then blocking Dan…
Here’s the Mail on Sunday splash which for some reason @hendopolis hasn’t tweeted out. (It was distributed an hour ago and he’s tweeted out their sports page) #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/Xw2aNBby57
— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) February 10, 2018
For some reason the BBC’s on-duty #TomorrowsPapersToday tweeter Neil Henderson forgot to send out the Mail on Sunday front page last night. It featured on the BBC News Channel paper review and the Marr paper review, but not #TomorrowsPapersToday. This isn’t the first time Henderson has refused to tweet out an “uncomfortable” newspaper splash – last year he censored a Sun story about diver Tom Daley.
I’m uncomfortable with what the Sun has done this evening so I won’t be tweeting it. I leave it with you to judge.
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 20, 2017
Why are the BBC’s #TomorrowsPapersToday tweeters making personal editorial decisions about which newspaper front pages licence fee payers can and can’t see? Who made @hendopolis news editor of the internet?
