It’s easy to predict where the Cathy Newman backlash will lead

Last week I wrote in this space about Cathy Newman’s catastrophic interview with the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. Since then a number of things have happened. One is that millions of people around the world have watched Newman’s undisguisedly partisan interview. The other is that Channel 4 has tried to turn the tables by claiming victimhood.

Any fair-minded observer might think that if there was any ‘victim’ in this case then it was Professor Peterson, who accepted an invitation to an interview in which he was then serially misrepresented. It was Peterson who, whenever he said anything got the response ‘So what you’re saying is’, followed by something that he had not said. And it was Peterson who, after he came off air, might have seen the contempt in which the Channel 4 News team as a whole held him by reading the tweet from the Head of Communications of Channel 4 News – Hayley Barlow – deriding this former Harvard professor as ‘lobster guy’. Anybody who regrets the anti-intellectualism of British public life should reflect on that tweet, which I see the Head of Communications at Channel 4 News has now deleted. As have other Channel 4 employees who originally tried to make light of the whole thing.

Anyhow, shortly after Newman’s disastrous interview went viral the Editor at Channel 4 News, Ben de Pear, announced on Twitter that the level of ‘vicious misogynistic abuse, nastiness and threat’ to Newman were on such a scale that ‘Channel 4 News are having to get security specialists in to carry out an analysis.’ He went on, ‘I will not hesitate to get the police involved if necessary’ adding ‘What a terrible indictment of the times we live in.’