Newsnight has taken a humorous and sarcastic swipe at The Sun over its front page showing BBC workers catching 40 winks at their desks.
Host Emily Maitlis claimed the paper’s exposing of the “scandal” was “just the tip of the iceberg” and staff in the broadcaster’s London HQ are in fact never awake.
She also revealed details of the creative process behind the BBC’s output, saying: “BBC output is quite literally dreamed up by producers in their sleep. Needless to say the Newsnight producers are hard at work conjuring up another fine program which we will bring you tomorrow with Kirsty.
“Goodnight.”
A montage of scandalously-lazy BBC staff then swept the screen.
The Sun drew criticism on Thursday for its front page story entitled ‘here is the snooze’, which was illustrated with a pictures claiming to show BBC News Channel staff sleeping during night shifts at Broadcasting House.
The pictures were taken over a four year period.
It cited a source who claimed: “In a 12-hour shift I would estimate some staff do around an hour of work.” The same unnamed source added: “There are far too many managers so once they have delegated, there’s isn’t anything for them to do – so they go to sleep or watch Netflix.”
Earlier on Thursday the BBC Press Office also lashed out at the paper, backed up by some pretty damning stats.
Even with our eyes closed, it’s good to know the public trusts BBC News more than the Sun. pic.twitter.com/RBogyQSjVa
It’s true @TheSun we do sleep on the job. Our work is a bit taxing at times. @BBCNews doesn’t do lazy journalism. How about you? pic.twitter.com/5VBjL9zlEl — Quentin Sommerville (@sommervilletv) November 16, 2017
This is a piss poor front page. 1. Shame on @TheSun for this splash I’m sure they have journos on nights too 2. It’s knackering so you have a nap, I used my “lunch break” to sleep on nights 3. Another basic attempt to erode trust in the BBC https://t.co/ttLycasccy
November 15, 2017
A sense of how we’ll factchecked this “story” is: 1 BBC News Channel is off air by midnight 2 Its shifts finish then (tho staff known to stay beyond hours-unpaid-to cover breaking news). 3 Overnight newsroom tech staff may remain at desk to rest during an unpaid overnight breaks https://t.co/kPamq5cnFn
November 15, 2017
Nigel Farage, never one to miss a chance to indulge in some BBC-bashing, was apparently outraged by the scoop, tweeting: “What a joke! We’re paying for this!”
Here’s UKIP MEP Roger Helmer being not quite wide awake at work. pic.twitter.com/Vq3bDBHyrz