I never watch Newsnight Review as its guests are usually so far up their own arses they speak a language normal mortals don't begin to understand. But so many people have emaled to ask if I saw it last night that I thought I'd take a look on iPlayer. Reviewing IN THE LOOP and STATE OF PLAY were Michael Portillo, Ian Hislop and the fragrant Clemency Burton-Hill.I don't now what had happened in the green room, but Ian Hislop clearly took a dislike to Michael Portillo. He then launched into an attack on bloggers, and Guido Fawkes in particular demonstrating a woeful misunderstanding of what had happened in the McBride affair. It's exactly the kind of story which PRIVATE EYE specialises in, yet he seemed to think it not fit to publish either in a newspaper or on a blog! That particualr section is at about 16 minutes in.
Watch the programme HERE.
Andy C, thanks for your helpful tip (!).
ReplyDeletePoor, poor Ian. His game's over.
ReplyDeleteNo-ones gonna wait for Private Eye to spill the carefully-legally-checked version of a leak or rumour two weeks after the event, when they can read about it as it happens on teh Interwebs.
I'd be bitter too...
I saw this. I thought Hislop looked and sounded past his sell-by date. Pity.
ReplyDeleteI can't help wondering if the fragrant lady had hailed from the less fragrant parts of, say, Liverpool she might be called Parole Topshop-Farm? No matter. A meagre aside compared to the LOL caused by your comment: "I never watch Newsnight Review as its guests are usually so far up their own arses" Hee hee, so true.
ReplyDeleteGood comment by Portillo about Private Eye missing out.
ReplyDeleteMr Hislop came across as the typical older person who loses touch with the rapid progression in technology so doesn't understand its significance, and also as part of the very 'lobby' he often criticises.
A shame, as generally I'm a big fan of Hislop
Ian Hislop is a pathetic HOON.
ReplyDeleteThe moral high ground really doesn't suit him.
Portillo summed it up: "Private Eye missed a story".
ReplyDeleteHislop just painted himself into a corner...OAF
ReplyDeletePerhaps its a bit of professional jealousy on his part after all his magazine has about 3 readers and has thus far brought down a total of 0 labour mp's or special (loony) advisers.
ReplyDeleteAs far as his dislike or Michael portillo goes I doubt Mr Hislop even likes his own children.
Must say Iain that I found Portillo even more annoying than smug-arse Hislop. I found myself saying that if he hates this country and its people so much he should f...ing leave. He managed to out pompous nob the king of pompous nobs, which is quite an achivement.
ReplyDeleteHislop: Blog - lie
ReplyDeletePortillo: Sounds like Private Eye missed the story.
Hislop - as the blogs only lie is it alright if I call you a fool - ha, ha.
A very prickly appearence by Ian Hislop. He is obviously on the side of the MSM on this one. I think he was summed up accurately when Michael Portillo made a comment about it sounding like IH was annoyed because he had missed the story.
ReplyDeleteProfessional jealousy showing through rather than a reasoned criticism of the Bloggers!
It's ironic. Private Eye was founded as an iconoclastic journal and in the sixties it attracted just the same kind of opprobrium and censure that Hislop is now trying to dish out to Guido.
ReplyDeleteGuido is the new Private Eye.
Hislop has become "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".
Oh come on.. he had a wee poke at bloggers and suddenly he is an old man, out of touch, blah-di-blah...sheesh, sometimes the keyboard warriors really do need to get out more. This really wasn't something worth posting about Iain, and says as much about bloggers as about Ian 'story-misser' Hislop.
ReplyDeleteI have just posted a little bit of fun on Digg
ReplyDeleteIf you would like to use this as an opportunity to tell Nick Robinson what you think of Her Majesty's Government - be my guest.
Its not news until it is main stream TV.
ReplyDeleteIf the BBC/MSM, ignore a certain issue, you can bet the establishment and its selected government will.
The BBC should never be ignored, however exposure to BBC propaganda should be limited to no more then 5 min's per day, for health reasons.
Paying proper attention to The BBC, is the most effortless and enlightening method of understanding what our establishment have planned for us all.
The trick with the BBC, is to always ask yourself WHY the BBC is telling you this or that. When the BBC hardly ever mentions other things, and never goes anywhere near anything really important, if it can possibly help its self.
Atlas shrugged
The belief that classical music and music in learning to play an instrument and understand music notation is not taught in this country or is not available to disadvantaged families is wrong. Local primary schools provide an instrument and tuition, free. Intruments and tuition in addition to normal lessons are also available through the council music services for a small charge. The cost can be spread over time making it more affordable and concerts at the Town Hall are organised and free for players so they can showcase their learning and have an end-product to practice and strive for. It's very succesful. Boris Johnson has also lately published an initiative for people to donate unused/unwanted instruments so that the more disadvantaged children of London can have access to music and learn to play. There may be other such schemes across the country. Perhaps it's not just the films that are out of date?
ReplyDeleteSadly Neil James's comment (April 18, 2009 6:20 PM) somewhat confirms Hislop's derision of bloggers.
Hislop may have been worryingly wrong about the role of the blog, but was nonetheless far less remarkable than Portillo.
ReplyDeleteBitterness oozed out of him throughout the programme.
Ken Livingstone should observe and take note of the fate of those who fail to recognise that their time has been and gone.
"Mr Hislop came across as the typical older person who loses touch with the rapid progression in technology so doesn't understand its significance, and also as part of the very 'lobby' he often criticises."'What of the king stag, when the young stag is grown?'
ReplyDeleteMarion Zimmer Bradley - 'The Mists of Avalon'
Of course Hislop attacked Guido. He did what PE ought to have done, and once did.
ReplyDeleteJust waiting for Sir 'Mickey' White to have his halfpence worth.
Ian Hislop seems to sum up the old days of establishment satire, where Guido is on the pulse and the reactions of the posters are saying what the majority of the country is thinking.
ReplyDeleteIt was a bit of a shambles. I loved Wark's entry in the annual gurning championship whilst interviewing Ianucci. Someone has obviously spooned coordinating her on camera with what was being said - very odd.
ReplyDeleteI thought Ian Hislop was on the ball politically? He seems to have lost his edge.
ReplyDeleteI don't even think he understood what happened with regards to Mcbride and Guido Fawkes.
Check out my blog if you can:
www.richard-wilkins.blogspot.com
Thanks.
Yes thanks Andy C for drawing this to Iain's attention.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Portillo made the most insightful remark when he observed (paraphrasing somewhat) that people who think that Cliff Richard is a giant of the musical world are never going to educated to a higher understanding by people who dismiss the concept of high and low art as elitist.
Which reminds us that when Lenin declared that the heart of his political programme is "Education, Education, Education" he meant of course precisely the opposite.
Private Eye has been going off the boil for a while now. It still has the occasional good piece of investigative journalism, but the attitude it reflects is increasingly part of the left-ish media consensus. I've seen quite a few stories in there in recent months which seem to highlight nothing more than conservatives advocating or implementing conservative policies, with the subtext that the readership will find this scanadalous.
ReplyDelete"In The Back" is still mostly worth reading, while among the specialist columns, Down on the Farm is still more hit than miss. Signal Failures, on the other hand, has become a bit of a running joke, endlessly repeating the same old bits of saddo trainspotter propaganda. Street of Shame tends to mostly contain stories so frothy and gossipy that even Guido wouldn't bother to look twice.
It's a real pity, since the magazine has, in fairly recent times, been absolutely fantastic.
Some of the comments about Hislop are ridiculous. Both he and the critics have missed the fact that the McBride story, while Guido played the principal role in distributing it, was broken in the mainstream press. I imagine that if the source had gone straight to the NOTW or Times, it might not have worked out like that, but who knows?
ReplyDeleteBlogs like Iain's and Guido's, and Private Eye, should have a common purpose when it comes to politics, in poking fun at the corrupt and exposing wrongdoing where it exists. Private Eye is a great example of investigative journalism, and covers stories in a whole range of areas that individual bloggers can't. One also has a degree of quality control - knowing its legal checks - that one doesn't always have with the blogosphere. So let's not trash PE just because Hislop made some grumpy and unfair remarks.
Portillo's remarks about the British people do suggest a certain amount of bitterness.
i'm thoroughly diappointed in hislop. i've read the eye for about five years and in the last couple of years, reminders of where stories first broke have multiplied in the mag. It does appear that he resents the fact the eye wasn't there first.
ReplyDeleteStill, all this having been said, the Eye still provides a valuable service for those seeking non biased current affair reporting...on paper.
Mr Hislop looked like he sucked a lemon.
ReplyDeleteMr Portillo owned him completely.
I have no idea why PI are so far behind teh interweb curve - I had a great story for them this time last year and struggled to find a way to send details on line.
IMHO, PI has really lost its sense of humour and edge - every week I used to laugh out loud/gasp every couple of pages.
My last one turned up and after a brief flick through, I used it to mop up cat wee. Yup. 100% true.
Will not be renewing my subscription through boredom.
The Ancien Regime is prime for being overthrown! Down with Fleet Street!
ReplyDeleteWhat Hislop meant was that the orginal stories were so pathetic that it was only through the blogosphere that they would have been published as no 'mainstream' media outlet would give them credence. That was his criticism of the blog, rather than an antiquated position some people are trying to portray.
ReplyDeleteAs for your comment on Newsnight Review, Iain, it has the tinge of the worst sort of Middle England contempt for intellectuals.
In common with many other posters, I am a fan of both Ian Hislop and his organ.
ReplyDeleteFor that reason I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But his attitude to bloggers leaves him dangerously aligned with the other dinosaurs of the MSM of whom the Eye used to be the scourge.
Come on Ian, Evolve or risk become Extinct.
I was interested in the discussion of State of Play: it's a very well-made film, and entertaining, but it's come out at least six months too late. It seems stuck in the Bush era. That's my worry about In The Loop, too.
ReplyDeletePortillo seemed humourless and riled and Hislop though priggish doesn't pull his punches or dissemble like a politician. Worth bearing in mind Paul Merton's comment concerning Ian's knowledge of the contemporary: "you must think of Ian as a sort of high court judge."
ReplyDeleteHislop is a deadwood journalist that knows bloggers are the future and he is an endangered species.
ReplyDeleteI need Private Eye - what else would I read on the loo?
ReplyDeleteHislop's just bitter that he didn't get the story.
Weasel's current stapline is
ReplyDeleteThe Establishment has lost control of the media. They know it, and frankly they are increasingly looking like an aetheist who wakes up one morning to find God sitting at the end of his bed.
Hislop depends on the BBC for his nice lifestyle. He is yesterday and he has gone from protege to prosi in one decade.
By the way, I am in 100% agreement with Iain's assessment of Newsnight Review. They are so up themselves they could lick the back of their eyeballs.
Except reference by Major through his "bastards" comment, can't remember what Portillo did in his years in the cabinet. As for Hislop he looked like me when my son as a 6 year old showed me in 10 mins how to set up a pokeman for attack in the handheld gameboy, after I failed in my effort which lasted an hour! The blog as a technology has skipped Hislop, the cave man.
ReplyDeleteIan Islop has done very well with the BBC.Would not want to rock the boat.
ReplyDeleteHislop has wrecked Private Eye. He was never going to be an adequate replacement for Ingrams, but the real disaster was HIGNFY going mainstream. His persona there is what I suppose you would call roguish, impish, twinkling or some similarly emetic term and he simply cannot afford to get Private Eye involved in anything remotely controversial or interesting because of the danger that his mainstream audience would drop him as fast as Gerald Ratner's customers dropped him if they found out that he was mixed in in any real world nastiness like proper investigative journalism. The result is that Private Eye is the new Punch; though that is unfair to Punch which at least had decent cartoonists until the very end. The present PE lot make that woman on politicalbetting look like Honeysett. Look at the one headed "apparently...", if it is still running, to see what I mean.
ReplyDeleteAnd he realises all the above, and therefore hates bloggers.
First they came for the msm, then they came for Private Eye... bloggers next.
ReplyDelete'Hunter' where are these supposed "Intellectuals"? I see a bunch of journalists and a washed up politician.
ReplyDeleteHoons' the lot of them!
Iain, will you remember your words when you receive your invite to go on Newsnight Review? ;)
ReplyDeleteA Very ... I suspect hell will freeze over first!
ReplyDeleteI forgot to include Kevin Maguire with Hislop as another cave man who
ReplyDeletelike me with my son's gameboy ( my previous posting) does not know a thing about how to use technology. Whenever the intensity of my work gets me, I visit "Kevin Maguire & Friends" just to read how much kicking Kevin gets from posters responding to his deluded comments!
There must be something wrong with my internets coz what I saw was very different to what you and other posters reckon: He was grumpy, but he accepted he had been scooped by Guido, his criticisms to me seem more aimed at McBride et al strategizing that blogs can get media traction for their pernicious inventions.
ReplyDeleteGuido had a blinding week and has helped the blogosphere towards coming of age, but it also reinforced the role of the main stream media - that story was nowhere without Murdoch turning on Labour, blogs can't afford the legal teams for a start, but with MSM pairing back budgets trawling blogs is a cheap way of generating copy.
I think I've fallem in love with Clemency Burton-Hill. The Hislop/Portillo love scenes may have more to do with an old score between them and mean nothing by compare.
ReplyDeleteAs Michael Portillo said seems like Private Eye missed a big story.
ReplyDeleteI think it's pretty unlikely that Private Eye wouldn't publish it. Afterall, on page 7 of the very latest issue we have "Man In The Eye" about one "Dolly Draper". A column about several incidents involving him in the psychotherapist industry. Private Eye would run that but they wouldn't run a column about him running a dirty tricks campaign for new labour with the chief labour spinner and that generated an actual apology from the prime minister? Hmm..
ReplyDeleteI remeber a few years ago he also had a go at people who used the internet, saying 'get a life dot com'...
ReplyDelete"Atlas shrugged"
ReplyDeleteOh no, not you again.
"fragrant Clemency Burton-Hill."
Is that a polite and civilised way of saying f****** hot?
Rogueywon said... “Private Eye has been going off the boil for a while now. It still has the occasional good piece of investigative journalism, but the attitude it reflects is increasingly part of the left-ish media consensus.”“Leftish consensus” my arse. Hislop and the Eye have always been on the right. They still are. So it’s a broad church with people like Footie et al tolerated. But the Eye has ever been anti-politico and generally on the right.
ReplyDeleteHislop himself is a High Church Tory and always has been. He was a young fogey and now he’s an old one.
I think you have been a bit over sensitive about Hislop's remarks.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who spends hours on political blogs - It seems to me he has a reasonable point of view.
Ian Hislop's problem is that, after the long Easter weekend full of the email story, Private Eye came out on Wednesday with nothing at all about the story. Indeed it had a longish piece about Draper which was by then completely out of date. No wonder Hislop had a face like a slapped arse.
ReplyDeleteHislop is of course in no position to cast aspersions, but his general point that the whole story points to the fact that blogs are places where groundless tittle-tattle are circulated as fact.
ReplyDeleteSeeing Paul Staines, a man who has spent years trading in tawdry innuendo about the Prime Minister's sexuality, taking the moral high ground about 'poison' in politics sticks in the craw a little bit to be honest.
Portillo said "Sounds like Private Eye missed a story to me" and that hit the nail on the head for me. PE's website lingers on in old form, unaware of the need to update more frequently than the weekly printed publication. That's why it ain't gonna get at current and developing stories. This also leads me to think that weekly publications may be the first to disappear in this new media epoch.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but I have to ask, I've seen Kirsty on many a quiz programme of late and wondered about her choice of clothes, but why a top that appeared to be a straight jacket without the arm control for this programme? Never thought I'd say this in my lifetime, but send Gok Wan round quick!
That would be Ian Hislop the public speaker advertised widely on................blogs! Perhaps thats how he found they don't work........for him.
ReplyDeleteNewsnight Review has always been an onanists convention for the intellectually challenged. It is therefore a far fetched expectation to seek intelligent discourse from it's participants.
ReplyDeletecrimeficreader said... “Private Eye... ...the weekly printed publication.”Weekly? I don’t think so.
ReplyDeleteI feel like most of you were watching a different programme to me. Portillo's performances on This Week have been sufficiently substantial, measured and sometimes insightful that I had begun to overlook his obvious deep self-love and pomposity. That Newsnight performance revealed that the balanced, This-Week Portillo is merely a charade, or a face he can reveal in the comfort of friends. I don't know whether In The Loop is a good film or not, but the reasons he gave for attacking it, and the vitriol with which he did it, seemed seriously deranged. I sensed that, despite his protestations, the film was too close to reality, and he didn't like what he saw in the mirror. There was only one sour person on that sofa, and it wasn't Hislop.
ReplyDeleteJust watched it.
ReplyDeleteI can understand Hislop's point with regard to why the McBride story wouldn't have made the pages of the mainstream media, but I don't agree with him.
Interestingly, he made the point that political satyr has a long history in this country yet he seems to miss the fact that the likes of Iain and Guido are a part of that history.
From a personal perspective, I think that political blogs and PEye offer a lot.
The blogs, apart from providing up-to-the-minute scoops, give all of us the opportunity to comment on, and discuss, what is going on - great stuff!
With regard to PEye, I will always be grateful to it's Rotten Boroughs section for actually running with stuff that I passed on about my local council (Newham) - parks constabulary, Housing Department fiasco, etc. The one and only local rag (the Newham Recorder) knew full well what was going on yet refused to print a word.
A reporter for the Recorder (who has recently left) had the will to run with the above mentioned stuff, but was constantly blocked by the editor (much to the reporter's dismay).
I never had any problems with regard to making contact with PEye by phone or by e-mail.
PEye, blogs, mainstream media.. who cares as long the information is out there, is verifiable and is accessible.
Its a pity that Dale devotees take a pop at Hislop & the eye..Guido may revel in the big stories that get the journos salivating but does f**k all for the daily injustices commited by the rich & powerful in this country. Perhaps when Guido's tackled Carter-F*ck and put his cojones on the line for a couple of decades he'll have the same respect from me as I have for the hard working scribes at Gnome towers.
ReplyDeletePrivate Eye. RIP.
ReplyDeleteIf Peter Cook was alive he'd be turning in his grave.
I'm a little surprised to see the attacks on Ian Hislop and PE here. I agree with Alex Creek - any single page of PE diggs more into crap governance in this country than a month of Guido.
ReplyDeleteIt remains, as far as I concerned, the most essential reading matter published in Britain.
Erm, I don't think any of you have much in the way of a memory.
ReplyDeleteHislop said the words "oh absolutely" in response to Portillo saying "I think the eye missed a story".
What he was saying, and what's been shown, is the bloggers make use of the blogosphere's nature to print things that aren't true.
Oh, admittedly, the bloggers may eventually second source it, or in a recent case (ahem, Iain) realise they're wrong and call up the Daily Mail but sadly too late after it's gone to print and can make a correction, but often the blogosphere doesn't have to worry about corrections because there is no accountability... to anyone or anything.
As Iain and Guido often say - and you lot back him to the hilt - "it's my blog... I do what the bloody hell I like on it".
Portilo: "British people are basically envious and resentful and sceptical and cynical and in this country scepticism passes for a sophistication whereas it's actually an intellectual laziness."
ReplyDeleteJust to remind you, that's US he's talking about.
And you think he's such a lovely man? I can't imagine why so many people cheered when he lost his post.
Private Eye has the credibility that comes with being genuinely at risk of libel proceedings, whereas Guido can publish fiction with impunity. there is no comparison.
ReplyDelete"British people are basically envious and resentful, and sceptical and cynical, and in this country scepticism passes for a sophistication whereas it's actually an intellectual laziness."
ReplyDeleteIf many of the remarks in this forum are anything to go by I would say that it is a fair comment, but then again I did not cheer when Portillo lost his seat, I just found those who did so pathetic.
I still do.
Not that I minded a New Labour government (although it took rather longer than I expected for the penny to drop that they were nasty and incompetent) because in a democracy it is not good to have a single political party in power for too long - not that the totalitarian Left will even understand that argument, but then again caring about anything other than themselves has always been something of a struggle for the Left.
I remember noticing that amongst Postgraduates it was those on the Right (usually Christians) who did voluntary work to help the disadvantaged, the Leftist just talked about how much more tax other people should be forced pay in order to fund the public sector - which is of course where most of them ended up.
Sorry to disappoint but the Conservatives after the next election (if they can form a government at all) are going to have to spend most of the time clearing up after Labour. Some of the damage will be irreparable needless to add, but if you vote for a Labour government three times just be grateful if you still have the opportunity to eject them from power.
Coming to this late, but i thought Burton Hill was the best of the lot. clear and thoughtful and just less jaded than her co-guests. shame you only got as far as (dismissively?) fragrant Mr Dale.
ReplyDeleteMr Portillo looks particularly relaxed.
ReplyDelete