MAY 28
The Cummings affair also falls on the good name of the BBC, forced into an embarrassing public retraction for the alleged infringement of its sacred rules of "impartiality" due to a vitriolic monologue against Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Monologue delivered by one of the best known journalistic faces of British public television.
The incident, now a political case, dates back to Tuesday evening, when - at the opening of the Newsnight in-depth program - the conductor Emily Maitlis, Canadian-born anchorwoman who, among other things, had put on the grill months ago in a boomerang interview on Prince Andrew, the queen's third son, in connection with the Epstein sex scandal, launched a harsh indictment against the prime minister, guilty of defending his adviser Dominic Cummings. In no uncertain terms, and without contradictory, Maitlis accused Brexit's gray eminence of violating the lockdown measures, whatever the police say or Downing Street, and gave voice to "popular outrage". "Dominic Cummings - he then ruled raising Johnson even - has broken the law. The whole country has noticed it, it is incredible that the government does not see it". Words that earned her the praise of the Labor shadow minister of Justice, David Lammy, as of many people irritated by Premier Tory's defense of Cummings. But also accusations of anti-government partisanship and of protagonism not in keeping with the traditional British public service model. In the face of the controversy unleashed on the web and beyond, the top of the BBC - put under pressure by the last conservative governments for years due to the prevailing liberal inclinations attributed to its editorial staff, between punitive reform projects, cuts in funding and hypotheses of downsizing - is finally intervened with a press release in which he stigmatized the incident, evoking a violation of internal rules that prohibit conductors from expressing explicit personal opinions on political issues.
A stick not followed - at least according to the official version - by disciplinary sanctions against the journalist, whose absence from Wednesday's episode raised however more than one doubt. "I took an evening out," Emily said for now, guaranteeing the professionalism of her (temporary?) Replacement Katie Razzall. But not without giving thanks to those who defended and supported it.