Another day, another drama – only this time it’s not MPs in the spotlight. Now politician-turned-pundit Nadine Dorries has taken aim at journalist Emily Maitlis and her ‘cosy “centrist” podcast’ The News Agents. In a scathing attack laid out in the fine pages of the Daily Mail, Dorries slams Maitlis’s ‘neurotic’ perspective of politics, her obsession with ‘remaining “relevant”‘ and her, um, ‘orange permatan’. Ouch.
The former cabinet minister described how she had been invited on Maitlis’ podcast only to be asked, charmingly, whether she was ‘unhinged’. ‘I had no particular desire to be on The News Agents,’ Dorries fumed, continuing: ‘I won’t tolerate being spoken to like that by a woman with an orange permatan to rival Donald Trump’s.’ The ex-culture secretary went on to share her reflections from Channel 4’s election night show where Maitlis had seemed shocked that Dorries and ex-SNP MP Mhairi Black could be friendly towards each other despite their views. ‘The penny dropped,’ Nads said. ‘Maitlis truly believes that people with differing political opinions should be consumed by them to such an irrational degree that they hate each other, and don’t refrain from showing it.’
But Dorries wasn’t finished there: ‘Maitlis lives much of her life online,’ the commentator wrote, ‘She is happy to retweet random people who praise her “phenomenal journalism”, but I’m not sure how phenomenal it really is.’ Evidencing her case, the Boris Johnson ally pointed to how ‘this week, she confidently told her 600,000 Twitter followers that president Joe Biden “will continue in the role until November”. This, as an official correction swiftly pointed out, was rubbish: if Biden stays on he will remain president until his successor takes up the role in January.’
Mr S is not overly surprised at Dorries’ conclusion that ‘accuracy is perhaps not always Maitlis’s main concern’. Steerpike has been keeping track of claims made on The News Agents podcast – and has found a number of them are not always spot on.
Take, for example, the podcast’s inability to understand Scotland’s Hate Crime Act, which led to Scottish listeners venting on Twitter about the ‘ill-informed’ discussions and ‘woeful lack of engagement‘ with events north of the border. Or the hosts’ unwillingness to challenge Layla Moran’s claim that families ‘pay extortionate amounts of money particularly to entities connected to the Israeli security forces’ to leave Gaza. Or the podcast’s suggestion that the SNP ceasefire motion put forward in February this year didn’t call for the release of hostages from Gaza, unlike Labour’s.
Most notably, the podcast rather struggled to cover the police raid on SNP HQ and Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon’s home. During the hysteria, false reports claimed the former first minister’s garden was being dug up after images appeared of garden equipment being moved. Mr S contacted someone at the scene who confirmed that was not the case. The three ex-BBC journalists who make up The News Agents were not quite as quick-witted. Instead, they released a podcast episode entitled ‘Why are the police digging up Nicola Sturgeon’s garden?’ in which they discussed exactly that. Later, they quietly changed the title of the episode in the hope no one would notice, er, such a glaring journalistic error. Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?
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