'Come on!' BBC Breakfast's Rachel Burden hits back at 'free speech' criticism

express.co.uk:

BBC Breakfast’s Rachel Burden has addressed claims that BBC Radio 5 Live’s lawyers were “cracking down on free speech.” It happened this morning as Labour MP Chris Bryant took to Twitter to hit out at the broadcaster for cancelling his interview.According to the MP, lawyers at the broadcaster “couldn’t vet” what he was going to say ahead of the interview.He tweeted: “Interesting @bbc5live just cancelled an interview with me at 7.30 because their lawyers couldn’t vet what I was going to say beforehand.“I guess some oligarchs’ lawyers are cracking down on free speech.“Sad that broadcasters are playing their game.”BBC Radio 5 Live promptly replied to the tweet, explaining that it was “standard procedure” to conduct a briefing with guests before going live.The official account wrote: “It is standard procedure to ask a guest for a briefing before an interview.“We had not been able to arrange this and so had not been able to check any legal considerations.“We'd love to have you on another time.”Rachel backed up her employer in view of her 89,000 followers as she quote-retweeted the response.She penned: “We talk to all our guests before we put them on the radio.“We tried to organise a briefing chat but didn’t hear back.“Hopefully @RhonddaBryant will accept our invitation - meantime we’ll keep bringing you stories of extraordinary human bravery and resilience from #Ukraine.”Rachel’s post sparked backlash among other Twitter users, with some taking similar stances to Chris Bryant’s.Mr_keyboard said: “Come on Rachel, the BBC is better than this.“This just looks like shabby treatment of a sitting MP and chair of the commons finance committee.”Charliewhelan added: “Sorry Rachel but that’s a very limp excuse.“He is an MP for goodness.