Labour bias accusations

Bully boy tactics are so much the pro forma for journalists who believe, I think, that they appear to be pursuing truth. A) yes he was a Labour politician B) yes he is married to a Labour minister C) the subject becomes him because this time wasting aggro is better for Labour than Polanski's answer

Burnham has reinvented himself as a hero of the far left, but when he lost to Corbyn he was very much on the centre. He and Polanski are cut from the same unprincipled cloth. But there’s no chance of Burnham winning the Labour leadership. At his third attempt!

Polanski ran rings around the loud and surprisingly poorly informed former minister turned TV presenter. Labour are dying on their feet. A sinking ship with a captain and crew oblivious to all but their former greatness

Because Polanski still hasn’t given an acceptable answer. Either he was a credulous fool who really believed he could make women’s boobs bigger with his mind Or he was a manipulative fraud scamming insecure women. IMHO both disqualify him from leadership. Happy to listen to his explanation tho.

I hadn't thought of the exchange in those terms. It's an interesting perspective. It certainly seems like Balls lost all sense of objectivity over this, and suddenly the interview was about him, not Zack. His leering face when objecting to being "accused" of being a Labour politician was grotesque.

A person behaves in a particular way on an occasion, so that person is always like that Polanski appears not to want to answer questions from people who aren’t Green Party members, in one instance, therefore he doesn’t want to answer questions from non Green Party members full stop.

I would love to see someone say "the Foreign Secretary is a racist" live on air, just to see him struggle with his journalistic ethics. Or whatever it is that he calls them.

Ed Balls got upset when Polanski referred to him as an ex-Labour Minister because it was 14 years ago. How long ago was the hypnotherapy story? 13 years (2013).

The trouble is that there are so many connections that we don’t know about At least we know Ed Balls was a Labour Minister

"how dare you accuse me, ME, a former front bencher and leadership contender and married to a serving cabinet minister, of bias". yes, how dare, how dare indeed

Balls is scarcely an objective figure to be interviewing a non Labour politician unless it’s his old ideological chum Osbourne

Ed must have spent the evening with his wife making notes on how to not ask sensible questions on the upcoming election but instead try to embarrass Zac.Surprised Ed did not bring up antisemitism to try and silence Zac on criticising Israel. Seeing Ed’s wife is funded by the Israeli lobby

I realise Balls is an extreme example but the belief that impartiality means never having had an opinion in your life is really unhelpful and deeply silly. Who are all these people who know enough about politics and policy to do a good interview but don’t have any opinions on it?

'Soft' interviews are underrated! On a transcript, I don't think either Ferrari or Ridge are that 'tough', but they are the interviews politicians most frequently say to me were horrid to live through. (In a good way)

Balls is pathetic here. The point is that as an EX-Labour politician married to a Labour minister, he may be deemed to be biased and to ask questions accordingly. All Balls is doing is making as much play as possible out of the fact Polanski missed out on the 'ex-'. This will now doubtless do...

of course the mistake ZP makes here is thinking that somehow people do not know who ed Balls is, who he is married to and he was a labour MP and Cab minister, got to be rather dumb there not to know that ? ITV must think he adds value been doing this for a while now

Yes he is married to the foreign secretary and I am sure she will discuss things with him, or it is likely that she does. Nevertheless I wouldn't call that being a Labour politician. He may be biased towards Labour but that is different.

Interviewers are falling over their own sentences before the first question because they are desperate to be the one who trips Polanski up. This was a master class. Balls ended up agreeing with Polanski but simultaneously thinking it was Balls 1 : Polanski 0.

nobody seems to bat an eye lid to the fact the Ed Balls is married to a senior Labour minister

The fact that one of our major, supposedly impartial political interviewers in the UK is a former major politician and married to a leading member of the government is one of the most overt displays of clown show corruption, not just in British history but in the history of global democracy.

This says everything about Why Ed Balls is no longer a politician, just a second-rate interviewer.

At the end of the day, one of the main political interviewers for one of the main TV stations should not be a former MP (especially one who's married to a current one) I can't think of a more blatant example of bias in UK media

Never liked Balls but that is neither here nor there. The very fact his wife IS the FS means he is TOTALLY compromised @itvnews.bsky.social and should be shunted off to some reality or game show. His arrogant & aggressive response was out of order and merely indicated he KNEW Polanski was right.

When one presenter claims to read body language for answers and the other is married to a government minister, still living on MP benefits, GMB shouldn’t be interviewing politicians. 🤷‍♂️

Yes. Certainly more so than the leaders of more established parties. Farage gets an unreasonably easy ride too. The BBC has a problem questioning politicians who lead on gesture policies without thought for consequences, not least because the journalists don't do the homework to have the facts.

‘Ooh I don’t like how negative he’s being! This doesn’t look good!’ Maybe stop for one second and consider that looking like you’re comfy with the dickheads everyone hates is a bad thing

"Oh fucking dare you, don't you know who I am?" Ed Balls. Yes Mr Balls, that's exactly the fucking problem. We do know who you are. You're a Labour outrider married to a fucking Labour MP interviewing people of other parties. You're biased as fuck.

The trouble is Balls thinks he is cleverer than he actually is. That’s the problem when you’re used to interviewing ex-colleagues and mates