Chris Mason took over the powerful role of BBC’s new Political Editor replacing Laura Kuenssberg, who stepped down from her post this week. But little Mason realise that he would face intense scrutiny within hours of stepping into Kuenssberg’s shoes.
What opened the floodgate criticism was a tweet from a user, who wrote, “One of the members of the House of Lords is being interviewed by the police over allegations concerning a multi-billion Pound PPE contract and nothing is mentioned on the @BBCNews. What gives, @ChrisMasonBBC?”
The tweet by user Len P went viral, clocking more than 7,000 likes and close to 3,000 retweets. As expected, the social media post in question evoked plenty of reactions.
One user wrote, “He won’t report it. He’s to busy staring at his Laura Kuenssberg poster.(sic).” Another commented, “Seen literally hundreds of these tweets now sent by licence payers asking this question with no response? Care to reply to the LICENCE PAYERS @ChrisMasonBBC.”
Another user wrote, “@ChrisMasonBBC already seems hellbent in following exactly in @LauraKoonsberg’s footsteps.”
The member of the House of Lords in question is Baroness Harding of Winscombe, who was the head of famous Test and Trace during the pandemic.
According to a damning report by British MPs, Harding had wasted a whopping £37 billion of taxpayers’ money on the Test and Trace scheme, which also became a failure. The scheme had miserably failed to break chains of Covid transmission, stopped the government from announcing lockdowns or enable people to return to a more normal way of life.
The money spent on Test and Trace was equal to nearly a 5th of the NHS England budget earmarked for 2020/21.
Laura had often faced the audience’s ire for her alleged biases in favour of the Tory Party. Her departure gave hopes to her detractors that her successor would be someone, who they would find acceptable. But, it seems even Chris Mason will have an uphill task in convincing his detractors about his credentials as an objective reporter.
