The new editor of the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Newsnight has apologised after his jab at Labour shadow minister Rachel Reeves was accidentally bleated to more than 26,000 followers.
Following her appearance on Newsnight last night, Katz branded Reeves as "boring snoring".
Guido Fawkes was able to screengrab the offending tweet, and Reeves' understandably terse response, before its swift deletion:
There are a number of somewhat disturbing things about this blunder, not least the apparent lack of grasp of Twitter functions. Katz has since used his Twitter account to apologise profusely, and acknowledged that the tweet was supposed to be a direct message:
The 140-character confession wasn't sufficient for Labour, however, who emailed Katz yesterday morning:
"It is vitally important that the Labour Party, our shadow cabinet and Newsnight viewers have confidence in the impartiality and fairness of your programme, and the criteria on which guests and interviews are judged.
"Although a tweet of apology has been made, a full, written public apology should be made by the end of the day."
Katz has since responded with a fuller apology (he also tweeted a link to it).
The firestorm over Katz's gaffe highlights how sensitive political parties are to perceived bias at the BBC, from both the left and right.
Both the BBC's own editorial guidelines and industry regulator OfCom's code insist on impartiality in political coverage. In Labour's view, this extends to editorial staff tweeting in a personal capacity.
But Katz's blunder seems positively polite compared with the no-holds-barred attitude of some of America's news elite. Fox News president Roger Ailes branded Barack Obama "lazy" and Joe Biden "as dumb as an ashtray" in remarks reported in a recent biography.
So whilst his remarks were relatively mild, no doubt Katz will be more careful in future. And at least he acknowledged his mistake on last night's edition...
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