Roger Mosey`s insistence that the reason for the loss of 839,000 listeners to the Today programme is its persistence with "its new obsessions around the arts, country life and daily puzzles" is as myopic as the programme editor`s claim that "the state of our politics", in particular Brexit, is to blame (Off the Air, 17th August, 2018). Does it not occur to them that the fact that listeners are aware of the vast sums paid to the presenters, who then show outright bias in their interviews, has to be an important +NSfactor?
With real wages falling and public opinion moving to the left, chummy interviews with the likes of Gove and Hammond by presenters on £400000 a year contrast sharply with the short shrift given to arguments propounded by Corbyn supporters. Too often, concerns of ordinary people, the effects of austerity and need for income tax increases are ignored. Abrasive, interruption-packed interviews, requiring answers in far more detail, particularly financial, are the norm for politicians and union leaders from the left, and in recent weeks, there has again been a definite pro-Israeli bias. Mishal Husain`s interview with Lord Sheikh this month focussed on the latter being wrong to attend the conference in Tunisia in 2014, because the conference`s title included the words, "In the light of Israeli aggression"! That it was in September, 2014, after the death of 2,220 Gazans, 1492 of them civilians, in July and August, was seemingly irrelevant.
I fear the "compromise on impartiality", which Mosey mentions, has been made already; hopefully, Kamal Ahmed will realise it, too.
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