Amol for The Sun

The Today presenter's chummy promotion of today's newspapers was revealing.

Previously: Amol Nitrate: Why the BBC is so high on Amol Rajan's client journalism

One of the first things I heard this morning, along with the crash of the binmen and the angry sound of hooligan geese on the river, was Amol Rajan running through the papers on the Today programme.

As the editor of The Independent who ushered its print version into the grave, a former presenter of Radio 4’s Media Show as well as still holding the role of Media Editor at the BBC along with his many other jobs, it’s not surprising that Rajan slips easily into a chummy tone when discussing the press.

But this morning’s effort was a particularly egregious example. I’ve transcribed it but if you want to hear it yourself scrub through to 1 hour 41 minutes into today’s edition of… err, Today.

He began by praising Henry Mance’s FT interview with Peter Hennessy…

A couple of highlights from inside the papers today: There’s a terrific interview in the FT with the great Peter Hennessy — Lord Hennessy — historian of post-war Britain. If you haven’t heard his Reflections series, by the way, it’s pure gold and available on BBC Sounds. It’s fair to say that he suggests to the FT that he doesn’t have a high opinion of the Prime Minister but in this interview, he much more broadly bemoans the calibre of people going into politics today and one consequence of the deterioration in the parliamentary gene pool is that we now struggle to find the rousing language of yesteryear and I adored this line: He said, “If management consultants had drafted the Sermon on the Mount there would be no Christians anywhere, would there?.” And he applies that to politics.

You might say there’s nothing wrong with highlighting a good interview (Mance’s interview is good) but consider how Rajan does it.

He begins by implying he and Hennessy are on first name terms (“the great Peter Hennessy — Lord Hennessy…”) then moves on to ladling on the praise like a wayward dinner lady (“I adored this line…”). Rajan’s taste for editorialising makes the illusion of impartiality ever less convincing.

It is also instructive that Rajan “adored” the interview’s most glib quote. Elsewhere in Mance’s interview, Hennessy notes:

We haven’t got time to muck about in this country any more. There are so many deep-set problems. They need the best attention and effort of the best of the political and administrative classes all the time, and we’re not getting it.

There’s also an irony to Rajan, arguably the worst presenter in Today’s long history, chuckling about the low calibre of people entering politics. But the real problem with the segment came when he turned to the Murdoch papers:

Just on the cost of living crisis, briefly. Paul Johnson of the IFS writes a brilliant column in the business pages of The Times on a Monday and today he demolishes the idea that cutting the cost of childcare will fix the cost of living crisis. He says, “If the government wants to help with the cost of living, there will be some families that benefit from cheaper childcare but not a huge number of them, not very soon, and not, on the whole, those on the lowest incomes.”

And worth quickly saying that many papers, not just the tabloids, have really stepped up with practical advice for getting through the cost of living crisis. And The Sun has a ‘Squeeze Team’ that does very well today on pages 26 and 27 there’s a huge amount of information which you might find useful.

Having established that he considers Johnson’s column to be “brilliant”, Rajan goes way beyond sharing the economist’s argument with the listener, he endorses it. Word choice matters hugely when you’re a BBC presenter. Had Rajan said that Johnson “argues” or “suggests” that cutting childcare costs would be ineffective, he would have avoided that sense of agreement, but “demolishes” makes it obvious.

Rajan’s mention of The Sun is far worse though. It goes beyond reporting what’s in that paper and instead becomes an advert. It’s also deeply patronising to hear a BBC presenter in the £240,000 to £249,999 pay bracket pointing to a double-page spread in a tabloid and saying “you might find [that] useful”.

Not the end of the Piers show: Rupert Murdoch abides and his new TV channel's insidiousness will draw on The Times as much as The Sun...

It would be a breach of impartiality, of course, to make any connection between The Sun’s political positions and the cost of living crisis. After all, it’s a benign entity with a helpful ‘Squeeze Team’ and not a loss-making tool of political influence for an Aussie billionaire who took American citizenship to gobble up TV stations but who headed for Britain when he wanted the Covid vaccine.

The ‘Squeeze Team’ is a patronising joke masquerading as service journalism

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. That Rajan doesn’t see that is unsurprising. It’s not in his interest to do so. In the world view to which he’s signed up wholeheartedly, the British press is the best in the world and The Sun is a knockabout part of it. That’s why he’s so comfortable promoting it on the BBC in the chirpy tones of a podcaster doing an ad-read for a mattress company.

Burning down a burgled house

1. … and one that’s being effectively relaunched now after being announced back in January.