 Throughout this pandemic, Britain's political editors haven't showered themselves in glory, whether that's Laura Kuhnsberg blaming the public for Tory failures or Beth Rigg be lavishing praise on Boris Johnson for following the science, a reluctance to learn the basics of epidemiology has left many correspondents little more than stenographers for those in power. However, one of their number did discover their critical capacities this weekend. You'll find out in a moment who it is. First, we start our journey with this photo. So this was put out by Downing Street of Johnson receiving a call from President Joe Biden. So you can see he's got his thumbs up. He's very happy because apparently he was the first European leader to get that call. Obviously, this government doesn't believe in playing hard to get. This is not like, oh, Joe, you've you've called me so nice to speak to you. I was a bit busy, but whatever this is saying, oh, my God, Joe, you've called us. Oh, I was so happy. The special relationship still exists. Anyway, the focus of this section is not going to be the relationship between Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, because this image was tweeted out, was tweeted by an account called Mike Gove, too, with the following text, laying cable, the excretion of lengths, lying cable. When the phone cord in the mirror is from a different picture after your 100 thousand pound taxpayer funded photographer has finished photoshopping your spontaneous chat with Joe Biden. Now, as you can see from that image, this tweet is implying that the angle of the phone cord in the reflection doesn't match up with the one that Johnson is holding. And this is now the basis of a conspiracy theory that this was a photoshopped picture. So the Downing Street sort of mopped this up. And because the mirror doesn't match the reality in front of it, something's gone horribly wrong here. Now, most people reading this would think that's obviously a joke, providing you understand how it works. When you put a camera close to a mirror, it depends what angle you're pointing at as as to where it looks like anything is in the mirror. But if you weren't certain, if you thought that was a convincing story, perhaps you might have taken a look at the account who posted it. So as I've said, the Twitter handle is Mike Gove 12. And the display name is Michael Govan ready. The bio says, I'm not Michael Gove or Mark Francois. And the bio link to goes goes to what is clearly a comedy video about the conservatives. It's obviously a parody or a comedy account. And you'd think that anyone with basic social media literacy would be able to recognize this. Indeed, it's precisely the kind of media literacy you'd expect from Britain's leading journalists. In fact, you'd expect it from an entry level journalist to work out that that was a parody account. However, one of Britain's two most senior journalists was taken in by the Wheeze. Here is Robert Peston weighing in. He tweeted, this is flipping weird. The phone cable should be visible in the mirror descending from Boris Johnson's watch in this official Downing Street picture. It's not what is going on. This is this is the political editor of ITV. I said the second most important political journalist in the country. Three minutes later, Peston did have a little moment of doubt or maybe the angle of the mirror just means it looks as though the cable is going straight down when in life it's at an angle. I am just trying to work out if that's physically as in physics possible. What did you make of this? You had it right, which is that this displays a sick lack of internet literacy on the part of one of the most well paid and prominent journalists in the country. And he's not alone in that. I remember a little while ago on election cast. Was it Laura Koonsburg and Chris Mason and some of the other lot got together to discuss shitposting and they were so pleased with themselves for having discovered the term shitposting. You could just tell it was written all over their faces. They're like, oh, it's kind of a naughty word. And they defined it incorrectly. And I put out a tweet about it saying why it was incorrect. They got me on the next show to talk about why it was incorrect. And then they also then put up someone from BBC who said, actually, you're both right and said that the wrong one was also correct. Which to me was really weird. I was like, why it's their definition of shitposting is just wrong. But it is a real lack of instinctive comfort and competence when it comes to reading the sort of layers of irony and joke and parody, which permeate social media. Another example of this is Rory Stewart, who got drawn into the Trevor bastard extended universe. This is a real Twitter deep cut, by the way, a fictional football team called Stratum Rovers. Rory Stewart was first responding sincerely, then clocks that he was part of a gag and then tried to make himself in on the gag and it didn't it didn't quite work. But you do have a kind of generational issue here. What I don't understand is why if you were Robert Pesson, even if you thought that this was a particularly legitimate halal account, why you wouldn't just think maybe that's a bit of a weird angle or maybe it doesn't even matter that much. And I think what that indicates is something deeper than just the basic lack of sort of core competencies when it comes to using social media. What it indicates is what they think their job is. It's not to hold the government to account on the big picture stuff because when it comes to matters of life and death, well, they must all be trying their best. What they want to be involved with is sort of gossip, a very minor petty scandal, which can kind of nod at their own insider status as part of, you know, the hallowed few allowed in or around the halls of power. And so I think that that's why Pesson was drawn to this in the first place to tweet about. It's exactly that kind of low stakes, high drama, you know, petty nonsense that lobby journalists love to talk about. They don't like talking about the important stuff. You might be watching this thinking, you know, look, Robert Pesson is the political editor at ITV, but he's also just an ordinary guy with a Twitter account. Maybe, you know, this is very separate from his job. When he's doing his job, he's asking important political questions. And when he's on Twitter, you know, he's just shitposting in the morning, like maybe we all do on a Sunday morning, maybe he was hung over. The next street, though, shows how relevant his job as a political editor here was. And just for the avoidance of doubt, Downing Street tells me they would never doctor or photoshop a picture. And as I assumed, it is the angle that makes it look strange. But it is certainly strange. No, it's not strange. It's the most annoying thing on the planet. But he called Downing Street. Can you can you imagine being that close to Downing Street? It's sort of like you get to call them up just to say that picture looks a bit weird. Is that is that angle on that phone line? Correct. Is that really Boris Johnson? That's the game. That's the game. You are granted access in return for a certain amount of obsequiousness. And it's not something which is an explicit contract. It's not something which, you know, Pestin or Kuhnsberg or anybody else is told, which is you will have a career where you get the scoops. You have access to everyone you want to talk about as long as you're not that critical. It is a sort of drip, drip, drip throughout the course of their careers. You have the right mates, the right networks, the right contacts, as long as you're never that much of a threat to the status quo. And that's why, you know, Jeremy Corbyn had some very competent press officers, but they still never had that same level of full on integration with the, you know, sort of Westminster, you know, media, political, industrial complex as the Conservative Party clearly do, because it's much deeper than that and much more entrenched than all that.