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 same thing in public. Channel 4 merely warned Snow to watch his step in future — advice he seems not to have heeded
What would Jon Snow have said if he were reporting on a march dominated by black people? Would he have mentioned it? I doubt it. Either it wouldn’t have occurred to him, or he would have refrained from doing so for fear of being accused of racial stereotyping.
Why shouldn’t white Brexiteers be allowed to make their point without racial aspersions being made against them? Despite Snow’s insinuations, they weren’t scary and threatening. But I suspect that their crime, in his eyes, was to emanate from outside the M25, which circles his hallowed metropolis.
Am I being unfair? I don’t think so. Admittedly, I may be more inclined to find fault because he has form. In 2017, it was reported that Snow had chanted ‘f*** the Tories’ at Glastonbury. He said he had no recollection of this, but did not deny it had happened.
The BBC presenter Andrew Marr wrote at the time that he would have been sacked if he had yelled the same thing in public. Channel 4 merely warned Snow to watch his step in future — advice he seems not to have heeded.
What is most objectionable about his sneering and disdainful mischaracterisation of Brexiteers last Friday is that it was divisive at a time when we already have far too many divisions.
The fact is, Leavers are not made up exclusively of the white provincial (and, Jon Snow probably thinks, half-witted) people at whom his comments were seemingly directed.
Hostile
Indeed, research carried out by the polling company Ipsos Mori suggests that almost a third of Britain’s black, Asian and other ethnic communities voted Leave in the 2016 referendum.
Even in Jon Snow’s precious capital city, many more Asians may have backed Leave than is generally supposed. Dr Rakib Ehsan has noted in a paper for the London School of Economics that in Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow (in each of which boroughs the Asian population is above 25 per cent) there was a strong Leave vote.
Are they also to be dismissed in supercilious terms by Jon Snow? I don’t suppose he would dare do that. Much easier to write off those who supported Leave as white bruisers from the sticks.
There is, of course, a long and lamentable record of metropolitan, liberal-minded Remainers referring to Leave voters in a condescending and sometimes hostile way.
A year ago, the Lib Dem leader Vince Cable declared that ‘too many [Leave voters] were driven by nostalgia for a world where passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink’. What evidence does he have for that?
Prejudice
In 2017, the novelist Ian McEwan suggested the deaths of ‘1.5 million oldster’ Brexit voters over the next two years would help swing a second referendum in favour of Britain staying in Europe. With highly questionable accuracy, he added: ‘A gang of angry old men, irritable even in victory, are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth.’
As a writer, McEwan is free to say whatever he wants, however inflammatory. But presenters on Channel 4 (which has the status of a public service broadcaster) are not supposed to abominate Leavers publicly — or, indeed, Tories — as Jon Snow has done.
Leavers come from all classes and backgrounds and from every part of the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason to suppose they are any more or less stupid than Remainers. And, just like Remainers, they hold deeply felt and usually well-considered views.
We rightly blame the Government and the Commons for their failure to find a way out of our national crisis. But what hope is there if broadcasters enjoined to be impartial demonstrate such prejudice?
Watching Jon Snow marvel at the alleged whiteness of Leave marchers, and hearing the contempt he and so many in the metropolitan chattering classes express for millions of their fellow countrymen, it’s hard not to feel gloomy about the future cohesion of our nation.