A couple of days ago it was Emily Maitlis and Laura Kuenssberg at the BBC caught claiming that news was breaking and that they had scoops when in fact they were hours off the pace on Hinkley Point. On Monday night, as he presented Newsnight, it was Evan Davis who was caught telling what was quite simply a blatant lie. Why on earth is the taxpayer paying £500,000 plus for a man who tells lies? The lie was on Syria and compounded an earlier gross deception by Fiona Bruce (another utterly unjustified half a million) on the 10 O'Clock News. Let's start with little Evan...
Just before Newsnight went off air, at after 11 PM he stated " while we have been on air" reports have come in of attacks on an aid convoy in Aleppo Syria. That was a lie. It may have been that the dozy folk at Newsnight only woke up to these reports after 10.30 PM but the story was carried in full by the BBC 10 O'Clock news which went out before Newsnight went on air. Troll the interweb and you can find that the story was out in full on USNews at 8.15 PM GMT and on the Guardian website at 7.12 PM. I doubt the Guardian beat AFP and the other agencies but the bottom line is that little Evan was quite simply lying or misleading.
Why does the BBC and Newsnight in particular feel the need to cover up the fact that it keeps on missing the big stories and is hours off the pace. It pays its star reporters telephone number salaries to keep missing the big stories, reporting with a clear bias and then lying about its mistakes. Why on earth should the taxpayer fund this omnishambles?
Over on the 10 O'Clock News Fiona Bruce was quick to blame the Syrian Government for the attack. If some crazed Muslim goes on a shooting spree in Germany the BBC always insists that we must not jump to conclusions because the guy may well be a deranged Right winger or a chap with mental health issues driven to murder by a Boris Johnson Speech and is almost certainly a lone wolf. But if folks get killed in Syria there is no such restraint shown: accuse Assad and/or the Russians first and ask questions later. As it happens I would wager a fiver that it was Assad's planes that were responsible.
But Fiona did not leave it at that.
She stated that this showed that "the ceasefire had been unilaterally broken by the Syrian Government". Really? What about the 60 Syrian troops killed by Allied planes and a UK drone the day previously, an act that allowed ISIS fighters to make territorial gains. That act happened first and looks like a bit of a ceasefire breach to me?
The truth is that all sides are breaching the ceasefire. But please do not let the truth get in the way of the BBC pushing its own narrative.