Channel 4 News has long enjoyed a reputation as a niche current affairs programme with a markedly Leftist take on the world. I often watch it, usually in a state of contentment.
Because it is so niche, and there is no expectation of political impartiality, I find myself expostulating far less frequently than when the BBC is guilty of less egregious bias.
Auntie is so powerful, and so eager to insist on her neutrality, that when she betrays even slight evidence of partiality in her news coverage, some of us are apt to howl our objections.
Channel 4 News' veteran anchorman, Jon Snow, 71, said: 'I have never seen so many white people in one place, it’s an extraordinary story’
But it is no longer possible to be so indulgent towards Channel 4 News after its veteran anchorman, Jon Snow, last week provided some revelatory proof of anti-Brexit bias. He seemed to be speaking on behalf of a whole tribe of metropolitan liberals who regard Leave voters with a mixture of contempt and disbelief.
Flags
Last Friday there was a Leave march in Whitehall and Westminster, and the 71-year-old journalist took up a vantage point to observe it. The episode can easily be viewed on YouTube. I thoroughly recommend it.
Against a background of apparently well-behaved people, some of whom were carrying flags, Snow had a somewhat overwrought air. I was reminded of correspondents in war-torn foreign climes who, forgivably, look rather anxious as bullets whizz around their heads.
‘As we speak there are crowds rallying outside Downing Street,’ Snow informed viewers in excited tones. ‘We’ve just got these pictures in... police are now wearing riot gear. Police dogs are patrolling. The mood has changed.’
In actual fact, the police seemed remarkably relaxed and, in the coverage I saw, they didn’t appear to be wearing riot gear, if by that is meant helmets, shields and other defensive paraphernalia. Nor was there any evidence of patrolling dogs, or even of dogs hoping to be stroked.
Snow raced on, approaching his fevered crescendo. ‘It’s been the most extraordinary day,’ he announced. ‘A day which has seen... I have never seen so many white people in one place, it’s an extraordinary story.’
Riot gear. Police dogs. An extraordinary day and an extraordinary story. Above all, an unprecedented preponderance of white people. If one had started watching Snow’s report after it began, one might have thought he was describing an ugly demonstration by violent supporters of the Ku Klux Klan rather than a march of generally peaceable Brexiteers.
His remarks have up to this moment attracted more than 2,000 complaints to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. Channel 4 has said that it ‘regrets any offence caused by [Jon Snow’s] comments’, while the perpetrator himself has so far kept schtum.
It’s his contention that he had never seen so many white people in one place that is most astonishing. I perfectly understand that he lives in a multi-racial city where there are sometimes almost as many non-whites as whites in sizeable gatherings of people.
But it’s surely not yet a crime to be a white person in a largely white crowd. If those on the march were overwhelmingly white (and Snow’s observation is disputed by some witnesses), it was probably because they mostly came from outside London, where, believe it or not, there are still many white people.
The BBC presenter Andrew Marr wrote at the time that he would have been sacked if he had yelled the
