BBC News
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2020–2025
16:07 · 14M views · May 10, 2019
A BBC Politics Live interview in which Andrew Neil presses conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on his past statements and an incident involving Corey Lewandowski and a reporter. It is a tense, widely shared exchange.
Mentioned as an example of Shapiro struggling under tough questioning, and sometimes in critical political comments.
3 comments from Hacker News
If you want a striking example of this, look at the interview Ben Shapiro gave to the BBC a few years back. Whatever you think of Shapiro, he has a masterful understanding of how American media works (I believe his Daily Wire is among the top shared sites on Facebook for instance), but he is clearly off-balance in a British interview. The interviewer repeatedly asks questions and doesn't allow Shapiro to dodge them which eventually results in Shapiro becoming too agitated to finish. It was really illuminating on a few levels. this video
Modern political commentators and influencers are strategic about who they will engage with and how they engage. You can see this with Ben Shapiro when he walked out of an interview with conservative BBC host, Andrew Neil. Shapiro was unprepared for a real challenge and his go-to of speaking fast, gish galloping, and calling out the “radical left views” of his opponent didn’t work because the host was a conservative. this video If you want a someone who would be an effective counter, look to Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo.
The argument that the media is left leaning seems to be based largely on the notion of "if you don't agree with everything I say and ask difficult questions you must have a left bias". Have a look at this Shapiro interview this video . For some context Andrew Neil the journalist being accused by Shapiro of a left wing bias, is an ultra conservative. Anyone with some knowledge of the UK media would fall over laughing hearing this accusation.