Tuesday 26 March 2019

Laura Kuenssberg demonstrates everything wrong with BBC politics in two tweets


Laura Kuenssberg is the political editor of BBC News. She's already been in trouble for her displays of political bias before, especially when she was reprimanded for creating "fake news" about Jeremy Corbyn by misleadingly splicing his answers onto completely different questions.

In just two Tweets she managed to illustrate how far BBC standards have dropped under her watch.

In the first Tweet she casually reveals that the Tory Brextremist faction are calling themselves "the Grand Wizards", which is the title of the leader of the Ku Klux Klan (a white supremacist terrorist organisation, not just a bunch of freaky bigots in white cloaks).

Somehow Kuenssberg completely fails to point out how vile and outrageous this nickname is, which is a puzzling one to explain. Either she's so lacking in basic political knowledge she's unaware of the very clear KKK connotations, or she is aware of the KKK aspect but saw no problem.

Despite Kuenssberg's casual and offhand presentation of the "Grand Wizards" story, Twitter absolutely exploded in condemnation, with people from across the political spectrum weighing in to condemn this racist nickname.

But then in her second Tweet Kuenssberg did something even more extraordinary that the casual offhand presentation in the first.

She actually tried to row back the story that she had created by portraying the people who self-applied the Grand Wizards nickname as being so naive and innocent that they didn't realise that it had grotesque racist connotations, and making out that the seriousness of her story is diminished because it's only based on a couple of anonymous sources anyway (as if half the mainstream media's political coverage isn't based on tittle-tattle from anonymous sources).


She asks us to believe that the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Steve Baker, David Davis, and Iain Duncan Smith are all so ignorant that not a single one of them is aware that the leader of the KKK is called the Grand Wizard, and that  they came up with their "Grand Wizards" nickname with "no intended connection to anything else"!

She tries to shut down the mega-viral story that she created by asking us all to believe an absolute absurdity.

Now just try to imagine if a faction of the Labour Party had been calling themselves "the Gestapo" or something equally disgusting. Do you think Laura Kuenssberg would present the story in such a casual manner, as if she was incapable of even recognising that such a self-applied nickname is grotesque and offensive?

Of course she wouldn't. It'd be ammunition in a full frontal attack (and rightly so if anyone in Labour were sick enough to behave like that).

And do you think that she'd actually try to row the story back by creating an absurd fiction that the Labour faction were so unbelievably naive that they didn't see their "Gestapo" nickname as being offensive?

Would she try to claim that they were just "using the nickname informally" and that there was "no intended connection to anything else"?

Of course she wouldn't. She'd be repeatedly harking back to the offensiveness of it every time she mentioned anything to do with the Labour Party for months. It'd be the new endlessly repeated "brick through Angela Eagle's window" or "where's Jeremy Corbyn?" attack line.
There's absolutely no way that Kuenssberg would be trying to do free PR damage limitation work for the Labour Party if a Labour faction had self-applied such a sickening nickname.

When the chief political editor of BBC News is behaving in this extraordinary manner, the pro-Tory bias is impossible to ignore. 

But as we learned from the total lack of punishment Kuenssberg received over the Jeremy Corbyn "fake news" story she concocted, she'll continue to get away with this kind of overt political bias. And as long as she's still running the BBC's political output, it's entirely justifiable for the public to perceive the supposedly unbiased and impartial BBC News as simply the propaganda arm of the Conservative Party.


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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

A pro socialist blogger who thinks mass renationalisation is a good idea... complains of a nationalised TV channel having a bias in favour of the state. The sad irony.

Andrew Heenan said...
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Andrew Heenan said...

A Tory troll contrives to miss the point completely, and admits institutional BBC bias. The sad irony.

Pal said...

Ironically the right wing often complain that the BBC is heavily left wing bias. I wonder how many of them would note the point made in this blog!?

Unknown said...

Best thing to do stop your TV licence..change your strategy with the corporate media andacorporate councils who are raising TAX while registered companies, eeeer when will Amazon be aloud to raise tax like the council..it's a mad world fleecing motorists speed cameras massive profits from us the cash cow..stop feeding the beast and start questioning what's law and what's a scam..I wouldn't give the BBC tuppence..good riddance to their gravy train..

Mighty Drunken said...

Personally I think that this is silly to be outraged about. We can't know if they chose the name because they thought it sounded good, or if they are closet racists. Instead focus on their actual actions (which are fairly deplorable).

Otherwise we get in a sad situation where we have to be careful of any turn of phrase because some idiot in the past used it.

Anonymous said...

How do you know there a tory? Just cause one may have left wing beliefs doesn't mean you have to blindly follow everything left wing. What do you mean admits to bias? This person is not representing or speaking on behalf of the BBC, he was in agreement. The BBC tends to be biased towards the state, and always has been. But so is every news outlet including the incredibly biased AAV, the trick is to read different points of views. And I think the irony is worth pointing out, for all the Bbc's flaws and the shite they do put out, they still have so of the world's best journalists and make some great programs, approaching news analytically is the most important.

Pal said...
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Nick said...

No unintended connection to anything else ? Utter nonsense , they knew fine well what they were calling themselves. Sick.

Anonymous said...

The only bias of AAV that i can see is in favour of justice, civilization, progress and humanity.

The KKK in its heyday had 4 million members, and indulged in the delightful practice of burning black people and hanging the carcasses from trees, by the dozen.
Jacob Rees Mogg and chums calling themselves the 'Grand Wizards' is just beyond belief.
A responsible media would pounce on this and destroy their careers.

The bias *is* shocking.

Pal said...

@Anonymous 28 March, 2019 14:46

Which is why I'm such a big fan of AAV. Not many other media outlets would think of calling them out on this or countering typical right wing rubbish in the way Thomas does. It's a relief to see there is at least one bastion of common sense against the tide of populism and conservatism that seems to be dominating British politics at the moment.