On the other hand . . .

I've just been watching an edition of 'Sputnik' - the chat show on RT hosted by George Galloway. One of the guests was former Labour Party press officer John Booth, who spoke eloquently about the creation of 'NuLabour' and the current state of politics, not least the Tories' use of the antisemitism row to deflect public attention from their own, appalling record, and not least their own despicable racism. I can't say I was ever a fan of Galloway, but to paraphrase a famous advertising slogan, he does what it says on the tin. Many people may object to what Galloway says, but when it comes to Ofcom launching an investigation into RT's impartiality, I think there's a whiff of double standards in the air. Is Ofcom asking the BBC to explain why it accepted at face value May's claim that it was Labour's deicision to destroy the Windrush landing cards? How is it that Ofcom's investigation into RT was only announced (three days ago) after so many Tories attacked RT? Does Ofcom believe that a chatshow hosted by Galloway is any less 'biased' than one hosted by Andrew Neil? Sometimes of course we don't see the bias in the stuff that we're familiar with.The threat hanging over RT's broadcast license has implications for our right to pick and choose what we want to hear, as well as what can be said. Who in their right minds would argue that we should only pay heed to government press releases? But the government (of whatever stripe) would be overjoyed if we did.