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Newsnight propagandises interview with working single mum

When did single parent become an insult? I vaguely recall it was the Sun and the Mail who delighted in using it in the early eighties and it's a great shame for lazy journalists to pick such a group to bully and create such a mythical monster. Single parents can be so many different types of folk with a whole range of circumstances yet the media likes to portray them as Vicki Pollard type characters who only ever got pregnant to get a house etc. Sad to see the Beeb devolve to 80's tabloidism.
 
I've been wondering if it wasn't Allegra / Newsnight that got stitched up a bit in the first place...

As in: researcher phones up Tower Hamlets council to find them a "single mum on housing benefit", assuming that would automatically mean workshy dolescum. Council finds them a "single mum on housing benefit" which is just what they asked for, but when they turn up for the interview she turns out to be working full time & there isn't time to find anyone else so they have to wing the interview.
IF that's what happened (pure speculation), it would be their own stupid fault for being so clueless.
 
Sorry, you're suggesting that despite lazy research, poor interview preparation, editorialising, misrepresenting a member of the public through editing and voiceover etc expensively-educated cross-media political editor Allegra Stratton might in fact be the victim here?
 
Thora said:
The story should be about how low wages are, and how high housing costs and childcare are. I also work for a council, and if I worked full time my wage would be 3k less than the cost of rent+childcare.
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There's a programme on this week sometime (maybe tonight??) on ITV on this subject.
The BBC prefer to stick with lazy cliches of being a single mum, though. Sad.
 
DaveCinzano said:
Sorry, you're suggesting that despite lazy research, poor interview preparation, editorialising, misrepresenting a member of the public through editing and voiceover etc expensively-educated cross-media political editor Allegra Stratton might in fact be the victim here?
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Only a 'victim' (not my word) of her own stupidity (or that of the researcher or whoever found the interviewee for her).
It was more a thought that people often do assume that a single parent claiming Housing Benefit will be someone that isn't working, rather than that anyone had tried to set them up.

Lazy research & poor interview preparation would cover the scenario I described, the rest we know she's done.
 
Its very possible. I doubt Allegra Whatsherface even knew housing benefit could be claimed by people in work.
 
How is Allegra Stratton having preconceptions and presenting falsehoods as truth in any way her being 'stitched up'?

Bizarre.
 
I mean, I've no doubt they are cynical fucks who would manipulate the interview & assume they would get away with it, but surely in the whole of London they could have found a single mum on Housing Benefit who wasn't working.

Stitched up was just a bad way of describing it.
 
You'd think so, but again that's not Allegra Stratton being stitched up, that's Allegra Stratton being a shit, lazy, ideologically-motivated hack!
 
There was ironically a very good discussion on Newsnight about how many politician love and seek to replicate the Victorian era, Kate Williams the historian was fierce in saying we are going back to that time, now, with many welfare policies and attitudes informed by that of the workhouse..

Tristam Hunt however, thinks there are things to learn on welfare from the periods...
 
Ms Ordinary said:
I mean, I've no doubt they are cynical fucks who would manipulate the interview & assume they would get away with it, but surely in the whole of London they could have found a single mum on Housing Benefit who wasn't working.

Stitched up was just a bad way of describing it.
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Likely to be harder than you think, given that more than 85% of HB claimants nationally are in work.
 
Nice that the Graun have given her a platform, shame about the usual cast of smug boneheads that infiltrate the comments section below though...
 
Ms Ordinary said:
I've been wondering if it wasn't Allegra / Newsnight that got stitched up a bit in the first place...

As in: researcher phones up Tower Hamlets council to find them a "single mum on housing benefit", assuming that would automatically mean workshy dolescum. Council finds them a "single mum on housing benefit" which is just what they asked for, but when they turn up for the interview she turns out to be working full time & there isn't time to find anyone else so they have to wing the interview.
IF that's what happened (pure speculation), it would be their own stupid fault for being so clueless.
Click to expand...
since when was it TH's job to do the legwork for smug, lazy patronising journalistic who substitute proper newshoundery for their own preconceptions?
 
Ms Ordinary said:
Only a 'victim' (not my word) of her own stupidity (or that of the researcher or whoever found the interviewee for her). Lazy research & poor interview preparation would cover the scenario I described, the rest we know she's done.
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I've done a handful of interviews with different BBC radio programmes over the years, I guess because of my job and that I'm easy to find on Google. I'm the first one who pops up. They never give you any warning, they will call and they'll give you like an hours notice for radio.

I've also been asked to be interviewed on TV, but it's always been too short notice, like, 'in a couple of hours' sort of thing.

The researchers are so last minute with finding people, it's unbelievable. They always have an agenda and if you don't fit it, they do bend you to fit.

So I agree, hurried researcher needed to find someone at short notice but couldn't, so with Shanene they made do. Shit isn't it?
 
pinkmonkey said:
I've done a handful of interviews with different BBC radio programmes over the years, I guess because of my job and that I'm easy to find on Google. I'm the first one who pops up. They never give you any warning, they will call and they'll give you like an hours notice for radio.

I've also been asked to be interviewed on TV, but it's always been too short notice, like, 'in a couple of hours' sort of thing.

The researchers are so last minute with finding people, it's unbelievable. They always have an agenda and if you don't fit it, they do bend you to fit.

So I agree, hurried researcher needed to find someone at short notice but couldn't, so with Shanene they made do. Shit isn't it?
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I was once interviewed for Newsnight (well Newsnicht - the Scottish opt out at the end). I was treated very well, they didn't stitch me up at all. The interviewer was a very nice man whose name escapes me for now. Someone on here dared me to see how often I could bring Chomsky into it. I got a few in, but they only used one.

But I've also been interviewed for newspapers, and badly misquoted. Once I was even quoted without having been interviewed! It wasn't anything I wouldn't have said if I'd been asked, but I wasn't. They'd made it up.
 
There is an interview with me on some journalists blog and it is such a crock of shit, I don't think she took her notes down properly.
 
It's actually almost funny that they pick on someone who is doing exactly what 'they' want ie working regardless of whether or not they are paid enough money to live on ;)
 
danny la rouge said:
But I've also been interviewed for newspapers, and badly misquoted. Once I was even quoted without having been interviewed! It wasn't anything I wouldn't have said if I'd been asked, but I wasn't. They'd made it up.
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I trust you sued them and won squillions.
 
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