Sunday, February 04, 2007

Guido Fawkes: Reads The News of the World



Guido and Iain are only too pleased to be taken in by a Murdoch story in NOTW which quotes a CPS source - presumably a porter or cloakroom attendant or someone Guido or CCHQ made up - with all sorts of wild revelations and predictions about how the investigation is going and where it is heading.

Quite the opposite to what police sources were telling BBC Newsnight's Martha Kearney and others on Thursday. What do you reckon? News of the Screws? Or BBC TV? Who to believe?

"FA" Faria Alam is also successfully stitched up. But the saddest story of the day is of former Labour MP Fiona Jones who has died of hard drinking. This was triggered by both a degenerate drinking culture at the Palace of Westminister and by the campaign to oust her based on allegations of over-spending in her election campaign. Of which Fiona was quickly cleared on appeal.

On a day when Iain Dale is inaccurately calling sensible expenses capping rules for the between elections period "Gerrymandering" LoL would hope that more well-founded allegations of over-spending are acted upon, without the same tragic results.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris - I really think you're wrong on this one. The NOTW may not be to our taste. But they simply wouldn't have run that story if it didn't have legs. I speak as an NUJ member.Lawyers would have fine-toothcombed it and, after the Royal tapping fiasco, I would be astonished if their sources weren't kosher. It's also in the Scotsman and Sunday Times.
More telling, though, is the ICM poll figure. Today, it seems the only Blairites prepared to stand up for Tone are Tessa Jowell, Patricia Hewitt and Ann Clwyd. With firneds like that...... And where the hell is Gordon brown?????I hope sensible Mps like Tony Lloyd will be canvassing the PLP and planning their next move. This just can't go on. Whenever he goes, it's going to be bad, So why doesn't he just do the decent thing and go now "in the interests of the Party" or some such spin. Whatever happens, it will be tears and limos out of Downing Street soon.

dizzy said...

The NOTW story is also in the Sunday Times without the tabloid hyperbole. I think you're the one being taken in by you're own inherent prejudices towards particular media sources.

dizzy said...

oh yes, and change the link to me please. My site is "Dizzy Thinks", I am not Dylan Mills.

Chris Paul said...

Sorry Dizzy: will change the link. It's been like that since I first added it.

Susan: It is fair to say that we have some Murdoch papers spieling a story which may or may not be based on well informed sources. There is none of the usual aggrandisement of sources. They are not "well-placed", "close to the action", or even "insiders".

For every one of them there are other "police sources", trusted by Martha Kearney et al who say that the police case is very thin indeed and that despite pressure to do so from Yates, the SNP and Tory blog-stars they are going to be reluctant.

Apart from the reliability and veracity of the competing sources there is the dreaded spectre of news management which is now practised by all sorts of organisations and individuals.

I agree with you that Blair should go. I have thought that for quite some considerable time. But if he had gone already it might be Brown or McDonnell or AN Other copping this lot and that wouldn't necessarily have been a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Agreed. Apparently Brown had lunch with Murdoch last week (according to GF).Read into that what you will.
btw McDonnell's line on this is, interestingly, not knee-jerk at all and very fair-minded to Blair.I bet the media were well annoyed he didn't rant and rave.see John4Leader website.