Thursday, July 20, 2017


What a naughty man

They were actually reasonable questions -- but not politely put or well researched

Veteran BBC presenter John Humphrys has been accused of xenophobia and sexism after an interview with British tennis star Johanna Konta.

Listeners to BBC’s Today Programme on Radio 4 were incensed to hear him question Ms Konta’s British citizenship after she made it to the semi-finals of Wimbledon.

The presenter asked: “We talk about you as being British but you were born in Hungary, Australian citizenship, and I seem to remember that the Australian High Commissioner when you won the quarter-final said ‘Great to see an Aussie win’ and we were saying ‘Great to see a Brit win’ – so what are you?”

Ms Konta laughed incredulously before she replied: “I was actually born in Australia to Hungarian parents but I’ve lived here for half my life now almost and I’m a British citizen and I’m incredibly proud to represent Great Britain… I’ve represented Britain in the Olympics so I’m definitely a British athlete.”

Hundreds of people on Twitter sprang to defend the tennis star, who moved to Great Britain in 2005.

SOURCE

He forgot that interviewers can be critical -- but not towards sports stars -- unless the stars are really bad

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems like a reasonable question.

Anonymous said...

If you are going to pretend to be a tennis commentator you could start by learning something about the players you are going to interview perhaps...???
Other than that - no biggie.

Anonymous said...

Whoops - I should have made that:
"if you are going to interview a tennis player for the media, perhaps do the tiniest bit of preparation about who they are and where they come from".