Panorama tonight

They are in a difficult position with their licensing future at stake, they have to justify their reasoning in the light of such criticism so no wonder they have issued a statement. Right and left are not going to agree about this, statement aside, they still could have made a more balanced program.

There is also the issue that Unison can be quite dominant and that creates a culture where the labour HCPs get to shout loudest and the labour critical HCPs keep shtum. Nobody wants to get on the wrong side of the union rep!

It creates an illusion that doctors and nurses are mostly or all labour fans and anti Tory. Election results say otherwise though dont they? Almost everyone in the country either has worked in the NHS or has a close family or friend who has done. If they were all labour there would be no contest come election time!

Thank you MaizieD that's quite straightforward reading really isnt it
Of course people will read into it and interpret it any way they want.

I don't suppose you have to support the Labour Party to be dissatisfied with the government's handling of this crisis - especially if you are at the sharp end of a very frightening and distressing situation where the health or your patients, yourself and your family is being put at risk.

I haven't seen any rebuttals of what they claimed; have you?
Yes. I have heard a radio interview with a nurse who said they had eniugh PPE where the interviewer kept asking the question in different ways to get a different answer and in the end summed up that there probably wasnt enough in that persons workplace anyway..

.. they are cherry picking the HCPs that will give them the answers they want and discarding the rest from their line ups

I think the point he’s making is that it would have helped if the left wing approach was made clear, as it should have been according to the code of conduct for the BBC. The issue is transparency in this respect. If there had been a balanced mix of political affiliations, different views would no doubt have featured.

The BBC have issued a statement about the Panorama programme:

www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/statements/panorama-mon-27-apr

What is important is not what the political affiliations of the people being interviewed were (and, incidentally, they were experts, being qualified doctors or nurses) but that was what they were saying actually true?

I haven't seen any rebuttals of what they claimed; have you?

Tom Harwood is a rightwing journalist who can bend the truth with the best of them.

We all have our favourite publications. I read the Times, Telegraph and the Guardian, amongst other things, so that I see a broad breadth of views, but am obviously a Tory. Just because he wrote it doesn’t mean that the people in the program are not who he said they are and therefore will reflect a particular bias.

I’m aware that this article is behind a paywall so not totally accessible, here’s another bit worth reading - ‘Examining the remarkable list of medics given the spotlight up you would be forgiven for thinking that the entire health service was staffed exclusively by Tory-bashing, Corbyn loving, political headbangers. You would be shocked to discover that in fact survey after survey finds that fewer than half of medical professionals support the Labour Party, and of the ten doctors elected to parliament in the last election, eight were Conservatives.’

It could be that journalists like Tom Harwood are part of the reason people's faith in journalists is low.

Tom Harwood works for Guido Fawkes and is a former member of Turning Point UK, a right wing student organisation, is strongly pro-Brexit and has written in support of Johnson.

That doesn't like a very neutral, non-partisan kind of person to me. It's not surprising he should oppose the Panorama programme. Freedom to express different opinions is the bedrock of democracy.

If only the Torygraph was so concerned about the BNP participant and member of staff on Question Time a couple of months ago. I don't recall them being in high dudgeon then.

The majority of NHS staff are left wing. If they aren't when they go into the job, they are eventually. Same with teachers. You see cuts and underfunding year in, year out, it makes you veer left even if that isn't your initial inclination.

The journalist is a chap called Tom Harwood, who was quoting GF, he concludes - ‘The argument here is not that television programmes have no right to interview partisan guests – of course they do. News with views is in many ways a more honest and healthy way to conduct a political conversation than the faux-impartiality half-heartedly pursued by so many of our broadcasters. The point is not to shut things down but open them up. Audiences have a right to know, and broadcasters have a duty to say, who their ‘experts’ really are.’

While trust in every other profession has risen, confidence in the media has collapsed over the last month. With egregious errors of judgement like these, it’s easy to see why. It’s clear that things need to change. Transparency has to increase.

Guido Fawkes ! Enough said.

Interesting comment in the Telegraph today under the heading ‘The BBC's unforgivably Trot-dominated Panorama shows why we need transparency’

an excerpt- ‘Research from Guido Fawkes yesterday remarkably revealed that every single doctor interviewed for Panorama had a history of left-wing political activism. The Labour Party links were so deep that the programme turned into more of a Party Political Broadcast than a piece of serious journalism. It even shared the same cast as one, as Panorama’s trainee GP (and wannabe MP) Sonia Adesara genuinely appeared in the Labour’s 2019 TV adverts.

Instead of representing a range of voices, the critiques that certainly exist from the pro-market perspectives were simply ignored. Panorama instead favoured highlighting the views of longstanding far left members of the Labour party, union organisers, and even candidates. To cap it all off, none were flagged up as such to the audience by the BBC, directly breaching the organisation’s code of conduct commitment to disclose what the Beeb calls ‘Contributors’ Affiliations’.’

There have been NHS staff who died after being off on leave or from working in very low risk areas whose family will get the payment regardless which is a good thing surely?

You are welcome Eloethan I agree thanks

And with a "full and final settlement" clause inserted.

Who is betting the compensation money comes with a non disclosure agreement?

Grany Thanks for posting the link to James O'Brien. It was so articulate and so rational, in the face of much irrationality.

Thank you growstuff for explaining earlier about the Jennifer Saunders sign off. I'm not on Twitter so had no knowledge of this.

May7 The shortage could be connected to the need being so great, which then becomes a vicious circle.

Worth a listen

James O Brian not too long

Panorama Newspapers PPE Drs Nurses

amp.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/monologue-dismisses-claims-no-ppe-shortages/?__twitter_impression=true

curlywhirley
Maybe then the PPE shortage is worse in the Northwest area ? This has been my understanding too. The Northwest has the highest no of infections outside of London to date according to the Briefings Graphs that we are being shown daily. Must be linked somehow surely