• WHEN last week I saw ex-MP and former Islington councillor James Purnell speaking in dulcet tones on behalf of his new employer, Lord Hall, the BBC’s Director General, about the corporation’s huge gender pay gap, I was flabbergasted at his gall.

The publication of the top 100 salaries at the BBC revealed, among others, that John Humphrys gets £600k annually.

He is portrayed as a hard and difficult interviewer. But in my book this is a fraud that perpetrates the myth that the BBC asks, like Paxman was said to do, hard questions.

Humphrys is just keeping up appearances about a subject he and others often know little
if nothing about.

An example: when the London rail workers voted for strike action earlier this year Humphrys, unprompted, asked: “Should rail workers going on strike be illegal and be classified as an essential service like the army and police?” Even the Tory MP he was questioning had not raised this question.

But it was raised again later the same morning, without prompting, by BBC TV presenter Victoria Derbyshire. Hard questioning, hidden by being regularly rude and interrupting people constantly, is in fact trying to set agendas. It is not news reporting or serving us, the licence payer.

What the ‘left’ has never understood on the subject of bias in mainstream media is the staggering, often as high as 90 per cent, ignorance of any given subject that reporters want to – have to – appear authoritative about?

The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970. But still today women only get a maximum of 80 per cent parity.

When I saw Mr Purnell on BBC’s Newsnight last week defending the indefensible and promising change in the future I felt women have no chance if they are hoping he can or will do anything significant.

PATRICK EDLIN
edlinpat@aol.co.uk