It would be hard to have misjudged any reality quite so comprehensively, but this is what one has come to expect from the Left: show it a sham, and it will see a shining example.

With such people, a track record of consistent error never dilutes their conviction of absolute correctness. Lord Longford remained one of these, and his niece Harriet Harman in turn is one of the most prolific broadcasters of political correctness. So it was somehow inevitable that Jon Snow should’ve spent time when young at the feet of the great Hyndley promoter.

Absolute certainty is probably the single biggest enemy of free speech, and despite his protestations of fairness, Snow’s unconscious favouritism and censorship is obvious. Take this example from June 9th, during the last General Election.

On a mainstream TV Channel, Snow chose to interview Martin Smith, the Socialist Workers Party General Secretary. Smith was speaking on behalf of the organisation Unite Against Fascism. Neither of these organisations has ever been other than an occasional, minute blip on the radar of British politics. Of the BNP, he opined as follows:

“The biggest problem for us is giving them the air of legitimacy … we believe there should be no platform for the British National Party. We believe that every political party in this country should have the right to speak, but the BNP are different.”

Now, given that the SWP is a Party openly supporting the violent overthrow of liberal bourgeois democracy – and the core of its Secretary’s argument was a piece of Stalinist illiberalism – you’d have thought such a view was an open-goal for any unbiased interviewer. Snow let it pass as if it might be a piece of patently obvious absolute truth.

In 2006, the anti-Islamist pro-democracy Iranian blogger Azarmehr attended a debate at the Frontline Club on the subject of whither Iran on the national stage. He records the experience as follows:

‘ Jon Snow, the Channel4 News presenter, was supposed to be chairing the meeting only, but he turned out to defend the Islamic Republic with more vigour than anyone else on the panel or in the audience.’

That one might win a special double-header award as the supreme example of zero prescience alongside astonishing anti-libertarianism. But let’s keep going….our hero in The Guardian this year, on the subject of what had been memorable about the General Election:

‘Snow said he believed Brown’s chances of re-election had been hampered by his appearance and disability: “The camera is very, very bad at handling people with one eye — that’s not an unkind thing to say, its an honest thing to say,” he said’.

Right then: so Brown’s eyesight problem – which he first introduced himself during a PPB, and then later denied had any effect on his ability to function – was a prime factor in Labour’s defeat. That’s not an unkind thing to say at all, Jon: it’s bollocks. But as to the damning elitist intolerance shown towards a loyal Labour Party supporter in the full glare of national media, Snow said

‘The Gillian Duffy exchange was also a TV moment’

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It’s laughable, is it not? But Jon Snow seems to lack the ability to laugh about anything. His sense of irony was missing when he told the Evening Standard in 2005 how he was….

‘delighted that [Rowan] Williams has questioned what Snow sees as the media’s “massive unaccountable influence”.’

…..but being a bishop’s son, not his unaccountable influence. Of course not. Five years later, his faith in personal divorce from such iniquity remained undimmed. Controversially, he told The Guardian:

‘ [the idea that] putting ridiculously poor quality snippets online will promote an interest in politics is the way of madness”

So: poor quality snippets (as in overheard fascism via a mic put on Brown’s lapel) don’t count. I know, let’s put hitech, digital, omni-directional microphones everywhere so we can hear everything all the time. Then we can be sure that every Winston Smith’s sex-crime is clearly recorded.

Related piece: Is Channel 4’s Jon a bit of a Snowjob?