A Guardian journalist has said BBC TV presenter Andrew Neil might as well “burn me at the stake” after he called her a “mad cat woman” in a tweet that has caused a sexism row.
Mr Neil, who hosts Politics Live and This Week, mocked fellow political journalist Carole Cadwalladr in a Twitter post earlier this month which she saw as snub to her reporting.
The remark was also seen as “sexist” by other women journalists at the national broadcaster who complained to bosses that Mr Neil had not directly apologised to Ms Cadwalladr.
Right to reply coming
In his series of tweets late one night where he mocked the Guardian journalist, who helped exposed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he also ridiculed satirical BBC 2 news show The Mash Report.
A presenter on the show, which Mr Neil called “left wing propaganda” read out a statement by Ms Cadwalladr after giving her a right to respond to Mr Neil’s comment.
Thank you #MashReport! The same night Andrew Neil tore into me he also tore into the BBC comedy show for its “self adulatory, unchallenged left wing propaganda”. Uh oh. Tonight it responded with deep dive into BBC impartiality & kindly gave me a right-to-reply… pic.twitter.com/fT3ZvT1Jjp
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) November 23, 2018
Comedian Rachel Pariss said: “Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr hasn’t been given a right to reply on the misogyny directed at her by Andrew Neil, so we asked her for a statement.
“She said: ‘Mad cat woman’ is the 21st century version of calling a woman a witch.
‘Thank you Mash Report’
“Next time Andrew Neil seeks to undermine the credibility of my reporting in order to shield his Tory mates who have been caught breaking the law on a truly epic scale, can I suggest he simply cuts to the chase and burns me at the stake.”
Ms Cadwalladr later tweeted: “Thank you #MashReport! The same night Andrew Neil tore into me he also tore into the BBC comedy show for its “self adulatory, unchallenged left wing propaganda”. Uh oh. Tonight it responded with deep dive into BBC impartiality & kindly gave me a right-to-reply…”
BBC stalwart Mr Neil had tweeted his comments about Ms Cadwalladr earlier this month in a series of posts in the early hours of 12 November.
In a reply to one tweet, he said: “Nothing compared with having to deal with mad cat woman from Simpson’s Karol Kodswallop.”
‘Inappropriate’but no apology
The tweet, a thinly veiled reference to the Guardian journalist, likened her to Eleanor Abernathy, a woman known as “Crazy Cat Lady” on the popular US TV show. The character studied at Harvard and Yale, becoming a qualified doctor and lawyer – “because a woman can do anything”.
Mr Neil later deleted the post but failed to apologise directly to Ms Cadwalladr, and merely retweeted a statement from the BBC press office saying the message was “inappropriate”.
It comes after Leave.EU’s founder, Arron Banks, has regularly branded Ms Cadwalladr a “mad cat lady” during her investigation into his Brexit activities and business empire.
His language in reference to the respected reporter was widely criticised as misogynistic.
