Laura Kuenssberg and Omar Salem

Yesterday Omar Salem, a worried and frustrated father, as well as a Labour activist and former staffer, confronted Boris Johnson whilst he was doing what was effectively a publicity round at Whipps Cross hospital. This all happened on cameras that Boris had said hadn’t been invited (A fact that we know to be incorrect). During the confrontation, Omar professed that his sick infant child had received terrible care at the hands of the NHS and he was obviously, and understandably, quite upset about the whole affair. He took this frustration out on the PM with a rant about the state of the NHS and sentences such as :

“There are not enough doctors, there are not enough nurses. The NHS is being destroyed, and now you come here for a press opportunity”

The full confrontation is shown in the tweeted video from the BBC, below.

Boris stood and listened to the complaints and has since coming out to thank Omar for his insights. How sincere those thanks are is a matter of opinion. One thing that is not in doubt however, is the identity of Omar. The somewhat divisive political commentator, Guido Fawkes, reported the identity of Omar not long after the incident occurred. Omar had even tweeted that he had met Boris and given him a piece of his mind. There was no pretence of hiding, or trying to keep his identity anonymous. Laura Kuenssberg tweeted that she had found out that the chap Boris spoke to was a Labour activist and at the time didn’t know his identity. After that she discovered Omar’s identity and the tweet he had posted and tweeted “This is him here.” with a link to Omar’s tweet.

Following on from this, Omar received abuse in the comment section for the tweet in question about the mini rant he had at Boris.

Laura has been criticised from a number of sources. In the media, on twitter and no doubt outside of those circles as well. The main criticism from what I have seen has been that she should have been more responsible, knowing that she has a large twitter following, many of whom would possibly be hostile to someone who has criticised the new PM.

Whilst I can sympathise with that point of view somewhat, I wholly disagree with it. Laura is a reporter. It is her job to report on worthy news stories. Some of the time, that involves naming people. If that didn’t happen, the story is nowhere near as news worthy. As already stated in this post. Guido Fawkes had already reported on it, and named Omar. It is most likely that is where Laura got her information from. It’s also true that Omar had already tweeted and said that it had been him that had confronted Boris. Why should Laura be singled out among the scores of others that reported the identity of Omar all over twitter yesterday? Well, in my opinion it shouldn’t. Yes, she has a large following, but part of the reason for that is she’s a great reporter who always has her finger on the pulse. She is known for breaking stories early and in this case that is what she was trying to accomplish, and she achieved that.

Omar has since come out and defended Laura, saying that she should be able to do her job “without fear or favour which is a vital part of democracy.” – She continues to receive derision for her remark unfortunately, although it does seem to have dies down some what. I wonder if the tide would have been different, had the perpetrator been a more right leaning activist and the recipient more left wing. There is no doubt in my mind that the backlash would have been aimed more at the person conducting the rant than anyone who had reported on it.

It is a sad state of affairs when a journalist is put down to such a degree for doing her job, and doing it well. Fortunately she has received nothing but support from her BBC employers as shown in the tweet from the BBC News Press Team above. She has also received support from popular figures such as Gary Linekar (somewhat surprisingly in my view, but pleasantly so ).

Let’s all just take a step back and we’ll see that she was simply doing her job. She was not attempting to direct hate towards Omar. He had already been cited as the man in the video multiple times before she tweeted it. Let her get on with doing her job, in the brilliant manner she always does!

On a slightly brighter note, as can be seen in the above tweet however, Boris wasn’t received in a hostile manner by all of the people he met there. Far from it. A cry of “you’re doing a great job, Boris” can be clearly in heard in the video. Of course this sort of reaction will never get as wide spread publicity as a negative reaction. And the tweet from Laura has rocketed up through the news channels at a far greater pace than normal.

Boris has only been in the job for a matter of weeks. I think the subject matter of the rant was a bit over the top considering this. Especially as he has already pledged a number of times to increase NHS spending specifically to reduce waiting times and increase the quality of patient care. Let’s give him a bit of time to implement this before we start castrating him about it!