Mouse squeaks, lion roars back

There’s something faintly surreal at the lengths Helen Boaden goes to, to rebut Iain Dale’s claims that the BBC was biased in its reporting of the weekend’s Tory red tape review. If you wanted evidence of how ‘proper’ media is taking bloggers seriously, here it is.

2 thoughts on “Mouse squeaks, lion roars back”

Iain Dale says:

15 August 2007 at 8:30 am

And the thing is, she makes my argument for me. Look at the 5 Live section she quotes.
SimonD says:

15 August 2007 at 5:09 pm

Hello to the (truly startling) number of people clicking through from Iain’s site… hope you aren’t too disappointed to see that he quoted the entire post on his own blog.
I hope Iain won’t mind me reproducing the (entire) comment I added to his post:

Hope you didn’t take the mouse/lion thing as an insult Iain… I think it’s to your considerable credit that she has gone to such considerable effort to respond.
I don’t think the Five Live quote necessarily proves any BBC bias; more likely, it’s a programme editor desperate to move the story on a bit. It’s a familiar mantra in any rolling newsroom: ‘what’s the new top line?’

Lion vs mouse? In terms of audience reach, and hence in terms of direct influence, I think it’s a valid turn of phrase to have used. Even with a (very commendable) quarter of a million unique visitors per month.

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