About

Boris Johnson's This Morning Selfie refers to a selfie of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson with This Morning hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. The selfie, and a picture of the selfie being taken, were mocked by internet users for the way it appeared to demonstrate how the show had shown a lack of journalistic integrity. The image was also used in numerous photo edits.

Origin

On December 5th, 2019, Boris Johnson appeared on the British morning television program This Morning.^[1] After his appearance, he asked for a selfie with presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby (shown below, left). The image of the selfie being taken aired during the broadcast (shown below, right).

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Of note, Johnson has not had an interview with the BBC's Andrew Neil, a notoriously tough interview that other British party leaders have had.^[2] That fact and the selfie led to criticism of Johnson for appearing to avoid serious questions in favor of flattering journalistic coverage and Morning Show for giving it to him. Twitter^[4] user @AyoCaesar tweeted, "This, apparently, is what rigorous scrutiny from the British media looks like," gaining over 4,000 retweets and 19,000 likes (shown below, left). User^[5] @JimMFelton wrote, "we're about to elect a PM who'll only accept the "please take a selfie with me Mr Prime Minister" scrutiny of the presenters of Dancing on Ice" (shown below, right).

Others posted photo edits of the image, superimposing the trio ahead of backgrounds underscoring various social issues in Britain. Examples include tweets by @christhebarker^[6] (shown below, left) and @pylonfan^[7] (shown below, right).

Others noted that the selfie was taken on a Huawei phone just a day after Johnson had suggested banning the Chinese company in England.^[3] Also, host Phillip Schofield responded to the backlash by saying he would have taken a selfie with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had he asked for one.^[2]

Various Examples

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External References