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Newsnight: Beeston and Broxtowe, Griffin and Vaz
The greater part of the research I was doing today was into BNP activity. We have a by-election in a couple of weeks in a strong Labour ward in North Manchester. This is not far from the ward where the BNP polled more than 700 votes in May. There is some ancient history of NF activity. But the 700 votes came from a standing start, more than half won I'd say from people who don't regularly vote, and many from Tories and Libs who ran minimal campaigns.
The same elfin scrote is their candidate once again. More on that soon.
However the Newsnight piece was fascinating. People in Nottinghamshire, with almost 100% Labour support in the vox pop, were concerned about immigration as can be expected. But about immigration of building tradesmen from accession countries.
Newsnight then had a video love triangle with the convicted hate-merchant Nick Griffin and Keith Vaz who is a long standing MP in the East Midlands as well as recently being elected NEC Representative for Ethnic Minorities. Gavin Esler asked at one point in his video interview: "Why do we have the BNP on?" And he was right. Why did they have the BNP on?
5 comments:
I turned over as soon as Griffin appeared.
Having the fascists on live is bonkers because it gives them the chance to lie without challenge.
Mainstream journalists really struggle to understand that the BNP tell outright lies - not just half truths for the purposes of spin.
I will never understand them but unfortunately some others seem to.
Peter Allen was throughly stitched up by Griffin on Radio 5 that time when Michael Howard acted as his torchbearer in Lancashire and got the media up to the problem.
Keith Vaz is an effective anti-racist campaigner in his constituency but he is not that empathetic for the TV and if there were any of Griffin's target audience watching Newsnight on a Friday night he will have won points.
In fact with the wonders of You Tube the interview will be up there soon if it is not already. Time for the NUJ to issue robust instructions to editors and producers to avoid putting Nazis on.
As Chris said the man Griffin is a convicted hate-monger and holocaust-denier and shopuld be in jail right now. No platform on the BBC! Levae it to the bloggers! Er, is that right?
The NUJ's democratically decided policy is not "no platform" but always challenge and investigate.
I would interpret that as avoiding live interviews as it is not possible to check facts first.
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