Just watching the BBC debate and I'm beginning to think Emily Maitlis is running for PM, given the amount of times she's interrupting the candidates. One thing we know about Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Rory Stewart is that they were at least elected as MPs by their respective constituencies, whatever you might happen to think of them. Journalists like Maitlis have never been elected by anyone to speak on our behalf, and yet they seem to feel entitled to chip in with their observations and speak as if they somehow represent the public's voice.
I totally understand that the members of the public have pre-prepared questions designed to test the candidates on the key issues, but Maitlis clearly has a set of equally pre-prepared interventions she's determined to get in to try to trip up the candidates before they've even had a chance to reply. She's supposed to facilitate the debate and ensure each person gets roughly equal time. Beyond that job (which she's doing rather badly) she should shut the hell up. Like I've said above, she doesn't have a mandate to speak for or represent anyone.
Last edited by jackal2; 18-06-2019 at 07:56 PM.
I was thinking the same thing thing watching Piers Morgan and his co presenter on Good Morning Britain the other day.
It's unfortunately how political interviews have become, I remember Charlie Brooker on one of his series showing examples of how interviews used to be decades ago and they were longer, a lot more polite and less adversarial. Different times I know but the politicians actually said more and they were more informative to watch.
I think modern formats and behaviour contribute to making these things less pleasant to watch and less informative.
The likes of Robin Day and Brian Walden were so superior to this generation that it's actually embarrassing how far political journalism has fallen. Then again, the same could be said of most of the politicians.
In my mid-40's I shouldn't yet be sounding like a grizzled old curmudgeon harking back to the good old days, but I think it's justified. We've got politicians who have no core beliefs and who can only parrot a script, and journalists who think that their job is to be habitually rude and barely let the subject of the interview get a word in edgeways. That tw*t Jeremy Paxman has a lot to answer for.