no no no no miriam cates LOST! We don't need to hear her on the radio now, you see. Because she didn't get elected! I know it's a reflex, but she's just another citizen with bad fearmongering opinions! This is how democracy works.
People often assume bias is the reason bad guests are booked. But it's usually a mix of 'whose number do we have'/'who picked up'/'who said yes'. Saying yes and being readily available all the time is one of the grim reasons BoJo/Trump got a lot of free air time before taking office
Yeah but there are a trillion academics, charity heads, local journalists etc who would absolutely say yes. Bookers are objectively lazy as shit and cycle through the same six people, always calling the reliable ones first.
Fair enough though I think time pressure also adds to this. If you have an hour to find someone, you gravitate to the people you know are reliable. It's a structural problem but definitely needs fixing!
I mean what are you doing before that hour, is the thing, such that the only person you have to talk to on anything is Anne Widdicombe or Nigel Farage? It's also a problem of people just instinctively not looking outside their narrow social/class circle.
