A comment left on Facebook has placed a BBC journalist at the heart of a political row.
Danny Carpenter, who has reported for BBC Look North for many years, has hit the national headlines this week after a post on the social media channel came to light.
Attributed to Mr Carpenter, it was posted in response to something written by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.
The political blogger Guido Fawkes took a screenshot of the comment:
Hear hear! Now let’s see the Labour Party grow some proper balls and unite in the lobbies to vote out every cynical, vicious, racist and xenophobic piece of legislation these new Nazis propose and let’s start by demanding a commons debate on Brexit and voting out this utterly undemocratic and non-legally binding referendum result which was achieved by a combination of dishonest fearmongering and lies about the economy
It hasn’t been confirmed that these words were written by Mr Carpenter, a respected video journalist who has worked for the Beeb for around 20 years. But Tory Selby and Ainsty MP Nigel Adams has made an official complaint to the broadcaster.
He told The Sun: “I was gobsmacked to read the BBC journalist comments.
“Neutrality is so important but when you read such anti-Tory rhetoric from a well-known local reporter, it does nothing to heal the preconceptions about BBC bias that many in politics have.”
Well-known face
The BBC responded with this statement:
We have spoken to the member of staff and we are continuing to investigate.
York-based Mr Carpenter is a well-known and popular face in the city, having reported on news stories as varied as the Claudia Lawrence murder investigation and attempts to clean up the mess left by geese in Rowntree Park.
He has covered many wildlife stories around Yorkshire too.
Since 2011 Mr Carpenter tweeted as @eyeofyork, his bio stating “BBC reporter/vj yorkshire look north all views expressed purely my quirky own”. But that Twitter feed has since been deleted.