Bias Analysed: 96.8%* of Maitlis Tweets Anti-Boris

Following the embarrassing apology the BBC eventually gave over the partisan and inaccurate opening monologue to Wednesday’s Newsnight, Guido decided to dig deeper into the institutional problem with the BBC’s flagship show. Trawling through the last 100 tweets and retweets of top presenter Emily Maitlis, Guido found just one that could arguably be positive about Boris (a retweet of New Statesman journalist Stephen Bush criticising Labour’s education policy), whereas 31 criticises the PM. Meaning 96.8% of tweets which were not neutral were anti-Boris.  Many of those classed as “neutral” included editorialised criticism of Donald Trump… 

Guido’s research did not pick up a single retweet of a centre-right commentator, although there were many retweets of commentators and journalists from left-wing newspapers, as well as left-wing campaign accounts, from Joe Politics to the UK Labour Party. This is before getting started on former Labour activist Lewis Goodall…

It’s now being reported the BBC has hired former executive Richard Sambrook to review how it maintains impartiality on social media as the corporation becomes increasingly concerned their left-wing reporters are “discrediting” the corporation. The BBC can pay Sambrook for the service, or Guido and his co-conspirators will continue to do it for free…

*96.875% (31/32) of her last 100 tweets that expressed a pro or anti-Boris stance were anti-Boris.

* This article was originally published by Guido Fawkes