The real problem with Newsnight

The Twitter feed of BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren (remember, I read this stuff so you don’t have to) is full of plaintive whining that no cabinet minister will agree to appear on her benighted programme. The Twitter feed of her chief presenter, Emily Maitlis, is largely a screed of bile and petulance directed at the government, some of which is usefully later recycled into her opening programme monologue.

Unless Esme has had her brain scooped out with a soup spoon you might expect her to have found a connection between these two facts. Not a bit of it. ‘Cabinet minister, what is it about Newsnight, with its left-wing presenters, left-wing reporters, left-wing agenda and loathing of the government that makes you reluctant to travel across London for a late-night interview?’ It’s a tough one, isn’t it?

The BBC’s commendably swift decision to upbraid both Maitlis and Wren (rather than forcing the thousands of angry viewers to go through the labyrinthine complaints procedure) just might be a sign that even the corporation has grown tired of its overpaid, grandstanding, virtue-signalling presenters and their inability to tell the difference between fact and their own adolescent opinions, as reflected back to them via their social media groupies.

I think I detect the hands of Fran Unsworth, director of news and current affairs, and David Jordan, director of editorial policy and standards, in the swiftness of the reprimand, although I cannot be certain. They are both good journalists who I know worry about the impartiality of the BBC and the distance it has moved from the core values of its benefactors, the licence fee payers. But what will come of it all, do you suppose? My guess is nothing, pretty much, in the end.