The BBC has announced that Laura Kuenssberg is to be its new Political Editor, succeeding Nick Robinson who is moving to the Radio 4 Today programme.
Delighted, shocked and in awe of following the peerless @bbcnickrobinson ! Thank you so VERY much for all the kind messages and tweets
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 22, 2015
Last year she wrote for Politics Home It’s time politicians re-examined their early instincts, asking:
Are politicians making decisions based on their own experiences of a family doctor, when in fact swaths of patients now have never seen the same GP more than once? Are they trying to rebuild banking based on a nostalgic notion of the bank manager when it’s a service fewer of us actually want, let alone something the banks will feasibly want to provide?
How can we make decent decisions about how to make the country better unless our own perceptions are left at the door? Surely we must all look at life as it now is, not as it shaped us.
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6 Comments
Getting coverage for us is not going to get any easier then.
I remember her, after the challengers’ debate from which we were excluded, exclaiming with almost pant-wetting excitement “The real losers tonight are the the LibDems who have been *completely* ignored!” and she went onto to discuss the debate with representatives from Labour, SNP and the Tories (who weren’t in it either). She kept making the assertion that we had declined to attend and even when some of the politicians from the other parties tried to correct her, she said “er we’ll get onto to that later” and of course never did.
Maybe I’m over sensitive…
Nick Clegg used the National Liberal Club to make a speech, took a few questions and moved on.
Laura Kuenssberg was there for BBC TV (before she went to ITV) and stayed, ith a camera crew.
i was in the audience, did not have much to say at the time, but she interviewed me anyway on camera.
My relatives in the media say they look for bad news, not only for ours.
i was boringly loyal and not looking for personal publicity. The BBC did not use the tape.
The rumours that the sensitive and careful Nick Robinson has fallen out with David Cameron makes others beware.
What was it Lord Acton said?
Part of me wonders if we should treat the BBC as a serious news organisation any more.
Does it matter who the new Political Editor is?
Since the election in May there has been a disproportionate amount of BBC so-called “news” time devoted to the future of the BBC, government funding of the BBC etc etc.
The Andrew Marr programme on a Sunday morning now seems to have a regular slot devoted to this self-obsession. Marr interviews Cameron about the BBC, Marr interviews Whittingdale about the BBC etc etc .
The Today programme on Radio 4 has shown signs of the same obsession and Andrew Neil has seldom got through an episode of The Daily Politics or This Week without some reference to it. To be fair to Andrew Neil he does at least approach the subject with a sense of the ridiculous.
Whoever the Political Editor is, this bloated, unaccontable state broadcaster will continue to be obsessed with itself and with preserving its own very privileged position.
What could possibly be wrong with an undemocratic, unaccountable, near- monopoly?
It continues to amass the obscene sum of almost £4 Billion of license fee money every year. And what do we get for this? Weekly repeats of Dad’s Army (made 40 years or more ago) regularly churned out as prime time Saturday night TV “entertainment”.
Perhaps Laura Kuenssberg is a big fan of Dad’s Army.
Perhaps it is an example of public service broadcasting at its best.
But can we really take the BBC News seriously any more?
we can get coverage if we are confident-confident and focused on media-I have generated tens of thousands of words of coverage dfor us-purely on a voluntary basis by applying professional methods properly-the journalists change-what they want doewsnt
Tory politicians seem to think that the BBC is biased against them. They may have a point occasionally.
For instance this week the Daily Politics had Owen Paterson MP for on as guest of the day for a whole hour.
He supports the Chancellor’s policy on wind farms because of what happens on one day a year. They brought in a Green peer who knew her stuff on the environment, but he continued with his views.
When he was a Northern Ireland minister he asked how he could help. He was told to go his constituency, in England.
As Mark Twain said and Dennis Thatcher repeated, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt” .
@ Richard Underhill,
You may be interested in a study carried out by Cardiff University and published in The Conversation.
‘Hard Evidence: How biased is the BBC” . August 2013.