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There is really only one place to start this week and that’s with events that surrounded BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg last week.
Kuenssberg's Boris blunder
Late on Wednesday evening, less than 24 hours before her big interview with ex-MP, ex-prime minister and ex-Conservative leader Boris Johnson, she was forced to cancel on him after allegedly sending him briefing notes by accident.
She claimed she spilled the beans on the content of the interview in a message “meant for her team” in what she described as an “embarrassing and disappointing” error.
Some felt for her – we’ve all had our shockers at work and we will continue to do so. Others simply laughed. How could such a big name journo drop such a howler?
But of course, the majority were not prepared to take this explanation at face value. The world of social media grew instantly suspicious. Why couldn’t another BBC presenter step in with a different set of questions? How on earth do you manage to accidentally send a message for your colleagues to the former prime minister?
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Author Edwin Hayward reacted to the news tweeting: “Staggering. Just staggering.
“Feels like a mistake too huge to brush under the carpet in a single tweet.”
Former academic and author Dan Evans asked whether there would be further investigation into the cancellation of the interview.
He said on Twitter/X: “Think most people- and not just lefties- would assume that LK [Laura Kuenssberg] got caught out/slipped up and is now trying to spin it as an innocent mistake.
“Can’t remember a journalist so openly, embarrassingly, enamoured with a politician in my lifetime. Wonder if there will be an investigation?”
The interview with Kuenssberg was set to be Johnson’s first serious grilling about his time in Downing Street since his departure and coincided with the imminent release of his book, Unleashed.
In said interview hosted by Tom Bradby, Johnson was faced with being asked about being labelled “the worst prime minister in history” by renowned historian Anthony Seldon. He mumbled and bumbled, saying he didn’t really know the chap and thought it was total nonsense. It was highly entertaining, and most speculated it’s a moment we wouldn’t have got had Kuenssberg been asking the questions.
In the midst of all of this, Sky News’ Beth Rigby also pulled out of an interview with Johnson after she was told she could not make an audio recording or transcript of the talk.
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Rigby said: “I was looking forward to interviewing Boris Johnson at Cheltenham but regrettably I can’t go ahead with the event because I am not allowed [to] make an audio recording or transcript of the interview.
“As a journalist in conversation with a former PM at a public event, I can only proceed if we do it on the record. I’m sorry to have to pull out.”
Where Johnson goes, drama follows, we understand this by now. But you do wonder whether Kuenssberg will ever live down her “mistake” with viewers, even if nothing further is said on the matter.
GB News loses bid to have sanctions blocked
In other news, GB News lost a High Court bid to temporarily block Ofcom from sanctioning it after the regulator claimed that a Q&A with Rishi Sunak broke impartiality rules.
The channel asked a judge to order that Ofcom could not complete its “sanctions process” amid a legal challenge over the regulator’s finding that the show with the then-prime minister in February breached its code.
Barristers for GB News said that the publication of the sanction would cause “irreparable damage” to its reputation, but in a ruling Mr Justice Chamberlain said that the “likely impact” on the channel had been “overstated”.
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But he gave the channel the green light to challenge the finding that it had breached Ofcom’s rules in the High Court, and added that Ofcom has already pledged not to publish its sanction until the case had been heard.
Ofcom began an investigation into GB News three days after the airing of a programme titled People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, which saw Sunak answer questions from a studio audience and a presenter.
The regulator said that it received 547 complaints about the hour-long programme and that it found that the programme had not “challenged (Sunak) or otherwise referred to significant alternative views”, and that GB News should have “taken additional steps” to ensure impartiality.
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