Peston’s client journalism: his fawning tweet about ‘saddened’ Johnson gets short shrift
Johnson and Starmer: political hack Robert Peston managed to get between them during PMQs with an ill-judged remark that has singled him out as a client journalist for the PM.
Sometimes you can tell how a nation feels by the way it reacts to the reporting of the news.
That’s what Robert Peston has been discovering after a particularly ill-advised tweet toadying to Boris Johnson. Here it is:
A saddened @BorisJohnson urges @Keir_Starmer to return to “more of the spirit of togetherness we saw yesterday”. A moment of great pathos #PMQs
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 23, 2020
Johnson wasn’t saddened. He was annoyed that Labour leader Keir Starmer was asking pertinent questions about the failure of the Tory Test and Trace system and was desperate to deflect attention away from that failure.
We all saw it – those of us who were watching Prime Minister’s Questions. And some of us had a few sharp responses:
Saddened? Is this actual journalism? I didn't realise Panto season had started
— 🐦🐦🐦 Chairman Tweeterkins (@IAmMardikins) September 23, 2020
No – it’s client journalism. Peston was working in Johnson’s favour, trying to make the performing monkey PM look better than he is.
https://twitter.com/ClientJournoExp/status/1308731031256813568
It’s a moment’s work that has been particularly damaging for Peston himself:
Pushing for a bloody knighthood? You should be thoroughly embarrassed at that tweet. The balloon should be resigning for being completely out of his depth and for the tens of thousands of families he’s “saddened“ due to his scandalous levels of neglectful incompetence
— Graham Laurie (@grahamlaurie1) September 23, 2020
‘Saddened’????!!
This is the shyster that only a week or 2 ago was referring to the ‘remained lawyer’ and suggesting Starmer was an IRA sympathiser
Jesus Robert, can you not see this is just an act? Why use the word ‘saddened’ when he’s obviously not
— Whatastate #TakeBackBritain #FBPE (@Whatastate2) September 23, 2020
And it hasn’t done Johnson any favours either:
https://twitter.com/SimonBruni/status/1308731870440456193
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A good question might be, who is worse, Peston or Kuennsberg? Is Kuenssberg moving to ITV, because she wants to be closer to her Tory pal?
Who says she’s moving to ITV?
It would seem that the tweets I’d come across were just rumours set-off by one of her recent tweets. She has previously worked for ITV, but way back in 2011.
I had an inkling you were referring to that.
Peston has shown his true colours – he is another mundane fascist who constantly promotes lardy fascist dictator boris’s lies! Peston continues to ignore the fact lardy fascist dictator boris and his fascist cronies instigated state sanctioned mass murder of thousands and thousands elderly women and men in care homes! Where’s Peston’s reporting on this cruel and sadistic fascist tory policy???
Why hasn’t Peston resigned from his fake job as a pretend journalist and joined lardy fascist dictator boris’s cadre as a propaganda pundit?
Kuennsberg and Peston, would make a great Tory propaganda puppet team! I refuse to refer to them in that sentence as ‘journalists’, simply because they’re NOT!