Not Emily, Not Cathy
Newsnight's Emily Maitlis has emailed back to say that she hasn't dined Chez Cameron and she isn't the source of the Nancy Cameron story. Guido now paging Daisy McAndrew, Kirsty Wark, Martha Kearney....
Just Guido being helpful. Wouldn't want you guys to get it wrong. Again...Newsnight just doesn't do business reporting very well. Guido suspects this is because they are neither interested in, or sympathetic to business. They would much rather review some new feminist state-subsidised play than the FTSE 100's profitability. The saga of the BBC's flagship current affairs programme being repeatedly unable even to report the market closing price correctly has been pointed out by Guido before. Peter Barron told us after the last multi-day FTSE fiasco "I despair! We are having a complete revision of the way we collect and check the markets information."
On Valentines Day Newsnight reported (above) another bad day in the markets, off 80 points or nearly one and half percent down. Time for a stiff whiskey nightcap before examining your stock portfolio in the morning?Guido will be contributing to the Newsnight discussion tonight on the demise of Peter Hain. Guido doesn't normally do television, but this is a special occasion...
All reporting on the same thing, all giving the same (incorrect) analysis. Actually to be fair, David Grossman for Newsnight was different, telling us how he'd accidentally put diesel in the car and even filming his own cameraman and producer. At any minute he seemed to be on the verge of saying "Hello mum, I'm in America, on the telly!"
Does the duplication of efforts produce anything of value? Well it gives us clear evidence that the BBC has no budgetary discipline, massive over-staffing and a lot of West Wing fans in News & Current Affairs. 
Last week Andrew Marr had a go at Sky News for being less accurate than BBC News and Current Affairs. So two days of misreporting from Newsnight gives us a good laugh."...the FTSE 100 share index closed up, sadly we can't show the exact figures, um, holiday season as you know in the US, so the Dow Jones remains unchanged. Against the Euro, the currencies here, the pound up, against the dollar the pound was down. You'll just have to take my word for it. We'll get you some figures by Monday."The market was actually open and up 181 points closing at 12,981 (according to Sky News). So did they actually check the market was trading? Doh! Can they get it right tonight or will it be three days in a row?
When Chris Huhne launched his Lib Dem leadership bid, our cameraman took the trouble to count the number of BBC people present.
There were TWELVE of them. Sky and ITN had three each.
Everyone seems to think Dave did well on Newsnight last night, in the sense that he was calm and didn't get rattled. However, Michael Crick is in all honesty no Paxman, the four presenters combined are actually easier to face than Newsnight's Grande Dame.
In what frankly, even by political anorak standards, is a boring campaign so far, tonight offers the prospect of some interest as they go face-to-face tonight on Newsnight.
Dear Guido,
I am writing to you to check your availability the weekend of August 24-26th.
It would be fantastic if you might be available at some point that weekend (most likely the Sunday) to take part in this year's MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival. We were hoping you will be free in principle for a high-profile session we intend to put on titled "The Power of Gossip." This session which will involve panellists including the author of the websites/mailouts "holymoly" and Adam Bullmore of October Films - will entail discussing the power of blogs and the internet and will question whether TV will ever be able to produce gossip as successfully.
It would not be a problem to arrange your participation behind a screen of sorts if you wish to protect your identity.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
With best wishes
Lucy
Lucy Crystal | Interview Producer | BBC Newsnight
Looks like they really are having difficulty getting anyone on Newsnight these days...
Well the live interview was definitely a mistake and against my better judgement, as was the in-the-shadows idea of the Newsnight editor, but nice to have Sir Michael White go to full-frontal-abuse.Interviewing Prezza for the Guardian on the 10.05 out of King's Cross yesterday I was startled, not for the first time, by his resillient energy. It was his 68th birthday, which makes him eight years older than me and a good deal more energetic. Why hasn't he got any white hair, I found myself wondering? What's his secret? Pauline's cooking? Grecian 2000? Tracey? Croquet? A zeal for the public good?Incidentally - want to clarify something immediately re Nick Robinson - that last line about Nick being the source, did not mean he was the source for the original much contested Guido "email" second system story. Nick has never been a source. We had a discussion re the Ruth Turner document after doing his interview. That was what the reference was to, pretty sure that came over all wrong, and genuinely apologise for any embarrassment caused to Nick. Good night.
Guido occasionally gets calls from producers asking him to go on TV and turns them down. Newsnight have tried a few times without success. But they finally made Guido an offer he couldn't refuse, his own production team, a free hand with the script and five minutes of prime time to do whatever he wanted. So despite never wanting to get his face on TV, Guido decided to take on our political broadcasters; Nick Robinson, Adam Boulton and Paxman. Crick's old job is up for grabs after all...
Tonight he is taking a look at Ronnie Cohen's generosity. Crick is brilliant isn't he, where does he get his story ideas?There was consternation in many places over last week's reporting by the BBC of Ruth Turner's arrest. Many thought that Newsnight in particular messed up the priorities with a Michael Crick story on a Tory using the word "cripple" in an email as the lead item. Guido agreed and on Saturday emailed Newsnight's editor Peter Barron:Peter,The reply came back this morning:Could you give me an on the record quote concerning the relative priority given to these stories on Friday.
The lead story focused on an embarrassing email sent between two non-entity local Tory councillors. In other news, after nine minutes on this story, the next story was that PM's aide was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice in the loans for lordships investigation. This story was given three minutes.
Why were the stories prioritised in that order?
Do you think the un-pc email story was more important?
Guido,On Newsnight we don't necessarily stick to linear running orders which reflect the relative significance of stories in the same way that news bulletins tend to. The loans for peerages story was of course more significant, but there were other factors at play. We had committed Michael Crick to following David Cameron's efforts to relaunch his campaign in the North. While covering that he came across the "cripple" email story, which was an exclusive and highly pertinent to the Conservatives' attempts to portray themselves as a compassionate party of government. It followed and mirrored the biggest controversy and talking point of the week which concerned the use of un-PC language in Big Brother. The loans story had been reported in some detail on the 10 O'clock News and on Newsnight we considered that our version could not be substantially different given the information we had at that point. We therefore decided to lead off on our own original story and to run the loans story prominently in second place. You could actually argue that in terms of global significance it was our third story - about China and star wars - which was the most important of the three.
