‘Why are you broadcasting what you’re broadcasting? There’s bigger things to worry about.’ In that respect at least, ‘Mizzy’ – the 18 year-old TikTok prankster Bacari-Bronze O’Garro – was doubtless speaking for much of Newsnight’s audience. He had been invited onto the flagship current affairs programme to discuss the BBC’s exclusive interview with the social media figure Andrew Tate, who is facing charges of rape, people trafficking and organised crime. Mizzy, naively captioned by the BBC as a ‘social media influencer’ despite a recent track record of physically threatening members of the public, knew what was happening more clearly than his hosts. ‘I’m on BBC Newsnight now,’ he said. ‘You’re playing the game.’
The other member of the Newsnight panel, the author Laura Bates, asked why the BBC had interviewed Tate in the first place. Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank, raised the same question on Twitter about Mizzy: ‘This character simply would not be on be on any TV news shows except for his undertaking criminal intimidation of women and others, then publicising it online as if a great jape.
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