Steerpike at The Spectator has a 'scoop' today:
He's 'revealed' that the BBC has 'vanished' an episode of Panorama - the one featuring U.S. pollster Nate Silver faring as badly as the UK's very own pollsters at predicting the 2015 UK general election.
Steerpike accuses the BBC of "trying to cover it up" after having "lapped up" Nate Silver's predictions and "worshipping at the shrine of his date machine".
Steerpike's piece of evidence to back this accusation up is a screengrab of the Panorama episode list on iPlayer showing that the 'withdrawal' of that episode is exceptional. Panorama has kept its other episodes available to re-watch for a year, not just a month.
Faithful readers of this very blog may be experiencing deja vu here. We posted an almost identical post back on 31 May under the title The Curious Incident of the Panorama Episode that Disappeared in the Night (though we noted that there was another exception - an episode on Ebola).
Mr S. is somewhat late on parade here.
I don't doubt that Nate Silver would have had absolutely no problem keeping this edition on iPlayer. The problem doubtless lies with the BBC.
Someone at the BBC decided to remove this episode from the iPlayer, for some reason.
And that reason could be embarrassment at the programme's "hubristic" tone (as Steerpike puts it)...
...or it could be because some of its local coverage (especially the bit from a constituency in the South West) struck me (even as I watched it) as being decidedly biased against the Tories (who, in the event, won in that particular constituency), possibly embarrassingly so for the BBC now...
...or it could be for some other legal reason we don't know about.
Anyhow, it's gone.
It's an open wound they want to cover up. Classic BBC. A Tory majority plus they had no idea it was going to happen and had the champers on ice, until the fated hour when the messenger brought news of the exit polls.....It burns still.
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