A group of Indy supporters behaved appallingly. Cook initiated an exchange which got out of hand. Instead of ending the exchange and walking away, he continued to engage, smirking at the group and filming them on his mobile phone. The reporter, unwisely, approached the group and initiated an exchange.
A handfull of pro-Indy protestors and a BBC reporter. We thus have two players in this sorry pantomime. The episode was more complex than that, with a variety of dynamics at play. So, was this an example of a reporter being targeted by a mob of unhinged nationalists and subjected to vitriolic abuse as he went about his job? Not quite.
Someone in the group, clearly enraged, responds by shouting “traitor” at Cook. This was an unprofessional, and arguably, provocative act. The reporter responded by taking out his mobile phone and, smirking, he began filming the group. Instead of ending the interaction, Cook continued. Had he walked away then that would have been that. The group were firmly penned behind a barrier.
Bbc news one minute full#
James Cook was in full control of the situation.
Bbc news one minute professional#
The professional thing to do then would have been to offer a polite excuse and disengage. Whatever the reason, the mood turned hostile almost immediately Cook engaged. Was Cook doing this? Maybe, but why engage folk from a movement known to be hostile to the BBC? Many reporters will engage in informal chat in order to gauge mood and feeling at a protest. Was it professional? It’s difficult to say. Was this wise? Some may question the wisdom of such a decision given the well-documented hostility towards the BBC by many in the independence movement. The reporter appears to have decided to engage the group informally for reasons known only to himself. However images and footage show Cook with no microphone and no camera crew. Some have suggested the BBC reporter was seeking to interview the group. Thus, James Cook himself made the decision to walk towards them and engage them. The protestors are penned behind barriers and can’t move forward. Video footage and images of the episode appears to back this up. How did the altercation between James Cook and the protestors start? Who initiated it? According to one eye witness it was Cook himself who approached the group and initiated the exchange. It’s against this backdrop that we have to examine the altercation between Cook and a handful of pro-Indy protestors in Perth and ask whether James Cook, as is being claimed, acted in a professional manner. Irrespective of who is correct, James Cook is well aware of the situation and what the likely outcome would be if he engaged pro-Indy protestors at a highly charged political event. It’s a claim regularly rejected by the broadcaster. She added: “I’d later learn that the ungainly name for this myopic style of journalism: ‘both-sideism’, which talks to the way it reaches a superficial balance while obscuring a deeper truth.It’s widely known that independence supporters view the BBC as biased. “But by the time we went on air we simply had one of each we presented this unequal effort to our audience as balance. In one striking passage that won praise on social media, Maitlis said: “It might take our producers five minutes to find 60 economists who feared Brexit and five hours to find a sole voice who espoused it.
Bbc news one minute tv#
Maitlis, who left the broadcaster this year for rival media group Global, was addressing the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday. The former BBC journalist also argued the BBC and other media outlets are failing to tackle the impact of leaving the EU today, saying that “sidestepping” the issue “feels like a conspiracy against the British people”. Emily Maitlis has criticised the BBC for “both-sideism” in its coverage of Brexit – suggesting its attempts to hear both sides of the argument led to “superficial balance”.
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