Although Nick Robinson once accused the BBC of displaying anti-Corbyn bias, producers are keen to show that the Corporation is a broad church after all. On last night’s episode of Question Time in Hastings, Liam Fox, Stella Creasy, Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes and LBC radio host Nick Ferrari were joined by Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the founder and editor of the ‘alt-left’ site The Canary.
With The Canary having earned a reputation for often only showing one very specific viewpoint, tensions between Mendoza and MSM (mainstream media) hack Ferrari boiled over when an audience member asked whether traditional media was now redundant. While Mendoza said publications like hers were the future, Ferrari took a rather different view:
NF: Right, it will be an unpalatable fact for you but the reality is the people that were involved in the brutal racist killing of Stephen Lawrence would not be behind bars without the power of the Daily Mail and that’s a fact. And the editor could have gone to jail for that. The other thing is we talk about young people, actually I have been in and around the newspaper business for about 50 years. Never has the mainstream media been more important, because while I respect what people like Kerry are doing and it’s great and it gets kids involved which is fantastic, don’t forget that when you go to these sorts of utterings, which at times are like the mad rantings of the man on the top deck of the bus speaking into his hand, they have no journalistic back-up whatsoever.
KM: That’s nonsense.
NF: Which is why we heard the pope was endorsing Donald Trump. So that is why we need to keep journalists because when you hear it from us it will be true, or to the best of our endeavours it will be true.
KM: What about Katie Hopkins, Nick? That is outrageous
Mr S can’t see Ferrari getting a Canary column anytime soon.
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