Friday 3 July 2015

Biased interviewing from Jeremy Vine



Maybe I ought to start monitoring Jeremy Vine's programme on BBC Radio 2, because this lunchtime's edition began with one of the most biased pieces of BBC broadcasting I've heard in a long time.

I was going to transcribe the biased section, to show you it in all its horror, but that would take far too long and I'm off out soon. So please listen for yourselves. It's near the start of the show (beginning at 6:53).

The question was: Should the UK bomb IS in Syria?

There were two interviews. The first was with the SNP's Alex Salmond (against UK strikes on Syria), the second with Colonel Richard Kemp (for UK strikes on Syria). 

They could not have been handled more differently. 

Mr Salmond wasn't interrupted and was treated with good-natured respect by Jeremy Vine. 

Colonel Kemp, in contrast, was relentlessly interrupted and contradicted, sometimes with a disrespectful laughing tone. 

Jeremy Vine got far too emotionally involved here, frequently raising his voice against Colonel Kemp. 

And he did that thing that no professional BBC interviewer should do (in my opinion) - ending the interview by firmly contradicting his interviewee and then bringing the interview to a close, not allowing his guest (Richard Kemp) to reply. 

He even cited Russell Brand's denunciation of Western foreign policy for ultimately causing the terrorist attack in Tunisia at him.

Dreadful interviewing.

"This is a peace-loving kind of song", said Jeremy soon after, introducing Robert Palmer's Every Kind of People

6 comments:

  1. For the first few moments, before I scrubbed forward to the 6:53 mark, I thought Jeremy sounded a bit raspy, low energy, maybe a little under the weather. But he sure became instantly animated when he introduced this segment.

    The first appeal to authority is Paddy "Talk to the Taliban" Ashdown? LOL. The second is Alex Salmond who is well known to be on the same side of the issue? Who booked this, the Dateline producer? I couldn't listen to Mr. Toad more than minute, and scrubbed forward again.

    The bit I landed on was Col. Kemp saying he agreed with Ashdown that it can't be just a kai-netic approach (the English can't pronounce anything properly), and venal Vine didn't understand what he meant, already had his mind made up. The rest of it was equally biased. The response to any complaint will, of course, be that Vine merely gave a challenging interview

    And he couldn't even understand what Col. Kemp was talking about regarding Iraq and 9/11! Thick as too short ones. We didn't have a reason to go into Iraq?

    Kemp is slightly wrong about how much 9/11 had to do with the ultimate decision to take out Sadaam, but it was certainly part of the initial reasoning.

    So Vine's mentality directs him to appeal to the following authorities to defend his position of 100% hands-off:

    Paddy Ashdown
    Alex Salmond
    Russell Brand

    What really made me realize that Vine is a narcissistic ignoramus was watching him present Eggheads. He constantly reveals his shocking ignorance of all sorts of issues and topics about which he probably nods his head in agreement at dinner parties, and very often turns the discussion of a question topic to himself.

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    Replies
    1. Dermot Murnaghan was always the better Eggheads presenter. And political interviewer too. The only thing he lacks that JV has is a brother who's a comedian.

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  2. You can go straight to the 6m53s point using http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05zh1kv#t=06m53s

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  3. Vine is a much loved BBC presenter - much loved, that is, by BBC management who slot him into every programme they can. But he is too stupid for words. Stupid and prejudiced. As soon as I hear his voice I turn off. I cannot help but contrast him with Jimmy Young (who was sacked from the R2 morning show and replaced by the ignorant Vine). Now JY gave us a delightful show, full of variety and interest. I never discerned bias there.

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  4. I listen to the Vine show now and again and always turn it off within fifteen to twenty minutes because of his constant interference or butting in when he doesn't agree with either his guests or his listeners and then going off in a tangent to put one of own thoughts into the equation, the sooner the BBC take this self opinionated twit off the better for what could be a great programme.

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  5. He's at his worst (or best depending 0n how you view these qualities)with "Eggheads". Sublime patronising towards the challenging team coupled with an equally high level display of sycophantry but also superior smugness and bias to "possibly the best Quiz team in England". The guy is undoubtedly the best in terms of smooth offensiveness; his brother would have been a way better choice though in terns of audience engagement with the programme.

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