The BBC has been criticised for staging an anti-lockdown sceptic as the numbers of coronavirus cases and hospital admissions spiral out of control.
Toby Young was invited to appear on Newsnight with Emily Maitlis alongside Politics.co.uk editor Ian Dunt.
It comes just weeks after the outspoken sceptic shared fake photos of hospital beds as ambulances queued outside hospitals amid a surge in admissions.
The falsification of the evidence echoed comments made in the summer when he declared that the “much ballyhooed ‘second spike’ has refused to materialise”, adding that “the virus has all but disappeared” in The Telegraph.
Questioned on the matter by Maitlis he accepted he had “got that wrong”, but added “let’s not forget that was in the summer”.
Ian Dunt also cut a visibly frustrated figure, saying he doesn’t know how he would sleep at night if he published unreliable information in the height of a pandemic.
Responding to questions over whether people should be censored he added:
“The question isn’t should you be able to put out this information, it’s should you write it or publish it in the first place”.
The reaction to Young being given a platform on the BBC has been far from complimentary.
We’ve rounded up the best of it so far below:
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