Newsnight editor defends Paxman over Tory complaint

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Jason Deans, broadcasting editor
Friday November 26, 2004

The editor of BBC2's Newsnight has sprung to Jeremy Paxman's defence following a formal complaint by Conservative leader Michael Howard about a report he presented, insisting it was "fair and accurate".
In the formal complaint, Mr Howard's press secretary, former Press Complaints Commission director Guy Black, accused Paxman of making "cheap jibes" in a Newsnight report in which he accompanied Mr Howard on a campaigning trip to Cornwall and of unbalanced, partisan and biased journalism.
But today Newsnight editor Peter Barron responded robustly, saying the Conservatives had not delivered the access expected during Mr Howard's Cornwall visit, despite "many months" of negotiations, and Paxman had therefore been forced to "interview people he found" and ask them what they thought of the Tories.
The Conservatives have threatened to take the matter up with the BBC governors if an apology is not forthcoming from Newsnight, in what will be a test for the corporation's new post-Hutton complaints procedures.
Paxman's report on Mr Howard's trip to Cornwall, broadcast on Newsnight on Monday night, has re-opened a seven-year-old feud between the pair.
This goes back to the famous encounter on the BBC2 current affairs show when Paxman asked Mr Howard, then home secretary, no fewer than 14 times if he had threatened to overrule head of prisons Derek Lewis.
The Newsnight presenter returned to the Lewis issue in Monday night's broadcast, throwing in a question about the former prisons boss during a short sit-down interview with Mr Howard in Cornwall.

During the report, Paxman was also shown interrupting Mr Howard while he is talking to a group of Cornish people about gypsies and telling a prospective Tory MP that he is "rather toadyish".
Mr Black's letter to Mr Barron claimed that the Newsnight crew was rude and had acted in bad faith.
The Conservatives believe that Newsnight also made no attempt to balance negative comments about Mr Howard made by people Paxman interviewed with more positive ones.
"One of the things we're complaining about is the vox pops. We can't believe they didn't find a single person to say positive things about Michael Howard or the Tories," one Conservative source said.
"Another is the way the interview [between Paxman and Mr Howard] was edited. They left out topical issues - such as MRSA and Iraq - but included Derek Lewis, which is about as ancient as you can get. It was biased," the Tory insider added.
"The piece also didn't reflect the reality of the day [Mr Howard spent in Cornwall]. For instance, the report started by saying Mr Howard's helicopter was late. That was because the weather was absolutely dreadful. The Conservatives may be responsible for many things, but they are not responsible for the weather."
However, Mr Barron defended the Paxman report in a posting on the Newsnight website.
"The film was a fair and accurate reflection of what he found. In the piece, Jeremy stressed that his findings were unscientific and impressionistic, but in politics it is often impressions of political leaders which matter most," Mr Barron wrote.
"It included two interviews with Mr Howard, which accounted for about half the running time of the entire item - I believe that is ample time for a senior politician to get his views across," he added.
"The piece had been negotiated with the Conservative party over many months. We hoped to have unfettered access to Mr Howard during his trip to Cornwall but, as it turned out, once on the ground our access was very limited. Jeremy therefore interviewed the people he found and simply asked them what they thought of current Conservative fortunes."
Mr Barron admitted the Cornwall report had provoked "a large response from viewers", but said the feedback had been a mixture of people complaining that it was unfairly biased against the Conservatives and those congratulating Paxman on a "refreshing change to the usual political coverage".