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May 6, 2005
This wasn't journalism
Arrogant BBC Presenter vs Self-righteous Candidate
Last night, Britons gave Prime Minister Tony Blair an election victory and a kick in the teeth. Mr. Blair's Labour government was re-elected but their Parliamentary majority was slashed by about two-thirds while the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats made significant gains. None of this was much of a surprise.
What was a surprise, was the election of the Leader of the single-issue Respect Party in what was a comfortable Labour seat. George Galloway, the former Scottish Labour MP, split from his party over the Iraq war and took on a Labour Minister in her London riding of Bethnal Green and Bow. Mr. Galloway's 900 vote plurality unseated Oona King whose won her last election by more than 10,000 votes.
In his election night speech, the Respect Party Leader attacked Tony Blair for his support of the Iraq war but went on to accuse local election officials for what he called a "shambles of an election which would disgrace a banana republic". Mr. Galloway stopped short of calling the East End London municipality of Tower Hamelts a 'rotten borough' but only just barely.
The new MP for Bethnal Green and Bow was accused of exploiting racial politics during the campaign. His anti-war party actively solicited the support of Muslims and he chose to run in a constituency with a very high Muslim population.
Which brings us to his interview with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman. Mr. Paxman has a reputation for being a combative interviewer, but his chat with George Galloway was unlike anything I have seen.
After asking Mr. Galloway if he was proud of having "got rid of" one of the few black faces in Parliament and getting an angry response, Mr. Paxman persisted asking it again three more times. He then asserted Mr. Galloway was a "demagogue" and mocked him for not remembering one of his 400 former Labour caucus colleagues.
The BBC Election blog has a transcript of the fiasco and a link to the video of the interview. No description does it justice - watch the video.
The interview smacked of a settling of scores rather than an attempt to provide viewers with any useful information. I guess that's what happens when you mix an arrogant interviewer, a self-righteous politician and a bunch of television cameras.
Posted by maxthecat on May 6, 2005 at 08:41 AM | Comments (1)
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Posted by: Just saying... on May 6, 2005 at 11:34 AM
Oh, of COURSE you've seen this kind of behaviour before, Max... Adam Vaughn on City pulls these sorts of bizzare stunts all the time!