Partisan and ‘creepy’ interviews are threat to democracy, Nick Robinson says

Robinson, who presents Radio 4’s Today show, said the UK ‘could easily go down the route of the US in which people are shoved into partisan silos’. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Fawning and partisan podcasts that give politicians hours of unchallenged airtime pose a danger to democracy, Nick Robinson has said, as he warned that Britain must guard against going down the same polarised route as US media.

The BBC presenter said a “nostalgia brigade” pining after confrontational television interviews, in which Brian Walden grilled Margaret Thatcher and Jeremy Paxman took on Michael Howard, had lost sight of the real danger in how politicians now used the media. He pointed to partisan or obsequious media platforms that risked damaging “a shared space for a national debate”.