When: Tonight (30th March 2009) Channel 4, 8pm
Dispatches, the current affairs investigative programme, is devoted entirely to Boris tonight. Rumours abound that the showing won’t be as pro-Boris as Boriswatch hoped – the byline “Do Boris’s ideas really stack up” doesn’t ooze confidance – but it should still be an interesting programme.
Not least because it plans to stir up the Guppygate controversy by airing the recording of Boris considering beating up a journalist for his friend…
Update 8.20pm: In fact, it couldn’t be more anti-Boris. Their process: Gather together Boris-detractors, film their complaints, air them…
Update 9:10pm: Can anyone say “hatchet job”? Write in to www.channel4.com/contact if you feel the need to complain…
Update: 9:20pm: Awesome twitterage on the programme (follow Boriswatch.com here). Favourite: “it’s like a 19 year old ranting 1st year journo student doing his 1st camera piece after writing for Socialist Worker”.
Update 9:30pm: Just sent my complaint in to Channel 4 – I suggest all Boriswatchers do the same: http://www.channel4.com/contact/ .
On the Darius Guppy conversation, to me it is clear that Boris was just letting Guppy let off steam. It’s like when a girl friend has been dumped and you are agreeing with everything she says and agreeing with ever more dramatic revenge schemes….. like “that bastard! He deserves everything you are planning to do to him! Cut his tabs off! March into his local and pour a pint over his head!” “Have his perfidy revealed on national t.v!! Let’s ring up the new girl friend and tell her what a louse he is!” YOU DON’T DO ANY OF IT.
The crucial thing is, Boris did not give Guppy the information he was asking for, and nothing happened. But it has provided fodder for dark comments from Boris’s detractors ever since, and it is Ken’s favourite bedtime story, that is for sure!
reporter could at least try and pronounce vin chaud correctly.
what a twit.
The most one-sided terrible piece of “journalism” I’ve ever wasted 40 minutes watching. I’ve given up now.
As we have had an hour of left wing propaganda regarding Boris Johnson, will there now be an equivalent programme concerning the previous mayor?
As I was watching it, I thought “is it just me who sees sloppy journalism here?”. So I setup a twitter search, and people were saying
“ Looks like Dispatches just said “Who hates Boris as Mayor?” and filmed the results… Who needs balanced nowadays, eh?” and “sounds more like an unjustified personal attack” and “It’s all a bit one-sided.”
My girlfriend thinks Boris is great “as a person” but doesn’t like his mayoral role, but even she said it was “like a 19 year old ranting first year journalism student doing his first camera piece after writing for Socialist Worker”!
Dispatches is usually very good, but to me it looks like they took the abovementioned journalist and crossed it with the kind of youtube-quality documentary you might see on Edge TV or something. Very very poor.
Exactly, the idiot presenting the programme couldn’t even pronounce “vin chaud” and probably thought it was something to do with a motor vehicle.
Sometimes a programme hits our screens which is so ludicrous, so far from the truth, so biased and so exaggerated, it has to be a spoof! If that were true of DISPATCHES on Boris Johnson, it would really be very funny. The way facts were brazenly twisted and misrepresented could be explained away as a JOKE.
Unfortunately this programme on Boris was a hatchet job, and it sunk pretty low in its attempt to deride and diminish the Mayor.
There was even a clip of Boris tripping on his way to the podium…. pictures of Lady Porter. Boris’s famous rugby tackle, no depths, in the absence of real criticism, were left unplumbed. I am putting in my complaint to Channel 4 now…….
I watched the programme with interest. Totally unbalanced with the only commentators being Simon Jenkins (Guardian), Tony McNulty (Labour Expenses Fraud), the Loudmouthed Green Lady from the Assembly, the Loudmouthed Labour bloke from the Assembly… and ex-police head of Anti Terror Squad, Andy Hayman, the friend of Ian Blair who quit due to some scandal or other.
What I am interested in however is who are SNAPPER TV LIMITED? They made the film but were only registered as a company in October 2008. Some research on the internet suggests they are the same as CHANNEL S – the London Bangladeshi community channel. What does this lot have against Boris? Or are they basically a Labour Party front?
Disgraceful Journalism.
Ooooh, good call on Snapper TV, Martin.
It really was a pathetic piece of jounalism, not worthy of an hour of airtime and widespread promotion before broadcast.
Watched it and it just reminds me of the many hardcore Labourites who can’t stand the fact that Boris beat Ken. This program sums up their almost childlike obsession with trying to get rid of Boris and bring back Ken.
Because, obviously, Ken and Ian Blair were absolutely amazing people. Get this guys: they weren’t. Obviously the likes of this reporter didn’t get the memo…
This programme was an absolute travesty.
How can Channel 4 expect to get away with such a biased, ridiculous programme! No-one who knows anything at all about the Mayor’s work could take this seriously.
It did remind me what an absolutely terrible Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is. The Damien Green affair happened on her watch and was the most dreadful abuse of the rights of MPs.
The programme made the point that Boris makes use of PR! So does everyone in politics, but in Boris Johnson’s case, the PR is wildly successful, because they have such first class material to work with. Boris Johnson is the most popular politician in Britain and he would be that even without any PR.
My heart bleeds for Gordon Brown’s PR people and nothing can make the rest of the government look good.
I have never watched such a one-sided load of left wing socialist rubbish presented by such a half-wit.
I have written to channel 4 and Ofcom to complain. I suggest that others do the same.
Link to channel 4 complaints is above and ofcoms is here – complain under “Section 5: Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions”
Were you all complaining when the programme about Ken Livingstone, presented by Martin Bright ,was made last year? That too was just a one-sided load of right wing rubbish presented by a half-wit.
Thought not.
We would have thought it was a little unfair if it had been broadcast 11 months in to his mayorship.
However, Dispatches waited eight years to stick the boot in to Ken.
Pete, I never saw the programme on Ken presented by Martin Bright. Not so many people watch things with Ken on them as they do when Boris is on.
Absolutely appalling program About as inept, juvenile, and unbalanced a piece of reporting as I have ever had the misfortune to watch. I very rarely complain but after watching this rubbish I felt I had no choice but to vent my feelings to both Channel 4 and Ofcom. To perfom a character assassination by innuendo and smear without any opportunity for the subject to respond is totally unacceptable. The criminal liar Mcnulty asked to comment on other peoples competency ?????. Just about sums it up.
Boris Johnson was meant for the world stage. I would like to see him at the G20 summit, he needs a bigger stage. I bet we do see that one day.
When you analyse the programme, there was nothing new in the way of criticism whatsover. It was just a stream of unpleasant comments from unpleasant biased people, with chips on their shoulders and axes to grind. That Green woman came over as appalling. But they were all appalling frankly.
What is Channel 4 thinking putting out this standard of journalism? Like Edward Scissorhands, they carve up quotes and video clips, to tell a truth that exists only in their imaginations. They have all been sent crazy by BIG BROTHER, where they can make anyone look like anything they want by cutting and splicing. But it still didn’t work. Boris is just too strong a character.