Rebuttal is futile, but sometimes it is necessary, and at least you can help people update their lists of people to ignore. Here’s Zoe Williams wilfully misleading the readers. From two completely different sources – Ted Reilly, a road safety campaigner, and Alice Bell, a lecturer in science and society and part-time Sack Boris campaigner…
Read More All mayors are not the same. All columnists, however…Fedorcio out they cry! See also this New Yorker piece on Viktor Bout. On April 26, 2005, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in the Treasury Department, unveiled sanctions aimed at Bout, thirty companies associated with him, and Chichakli. That morning, F.B.I. agents went to Chichakli’s home, in Texas, to search his office. They…
Read More out!Well, speak of the devil. Peter Foster makes his appearance in the Murdoch scandal and fingers the Sun directly. He said he then received an email from a Dublin-based private investigator calling himself ”Autarch”, who told Mr Foster he tapped into his mother’s phone in December 2002. That month, The Sun published the ”Foster tapes”,…
Read More the missing link between slimming tea and tactical electronic warfareI don’t think Jonathan Freedland will be wanting this piece of his in the Bedside Guardian book-of-the-year. In terms of basic journalistic standards, it may be the worst article to appear in the paper in the last 12 months. Look at this: His autobiography is similarly unrepentant and notable for its repeated interest in Jews,…
Read More Hack.I thought it might be interesting to establish some timeline information about News International e-mail disclosures and deletions, in the light of this piece in the Torygraph. As we know, the Telegraph is now opposed to the Osborne/Gove Murdoch group in the Tories, so it has no reason to carry water for Murdoch. 31st September…
Read More Morgan Day blogging II: work in progressYou might not want to credit it, but exposing the Daily Hell‘s output to the Web is pretty useful. Horsegate hunting herogram for you. Elsewhere, and more importantly, Steve Hilton’s ousting is explained – Mr Google Pants was apparently intriguing to get control of the No.10 Policy Unit, a horrible thought and one which was…
Read More from hellSuzanne Moore decides the House of Lords is great. I think this graf. is missing something: What sounds like a broken alarm clock goes off to call a vote. They all creep out of their warrens and file in, and I manage to find Baroness Shirley Williams. “This place swallows legislation like other people swallow…
Read More Quality controlBack in the summer, as the News International scandal (well, beyond the scandal of its very existence) cranked up, we had a look at how the government buys newspaper display advertising and made an effort to reach out and touch the people in charge of it. I see no reason not to go round the…
Read More contacting the Government’s media-buying functionWhile we’re back on the Murdoch trail, readers have probably seen this story, in which the police have taken steps to keep Rebekah Brooks’ personal assistant from fleeing the country. And of course this bit: Ms Carter was also a beauty editor for The Sun and is a partner in a cosmetics business with former…
Read More Not particularly hidden persuadersTom Watson runs for the gap, specifically yet another ugly little employment law story at the Sun. Readers will know that they’re like that among themselves and there’s something of a press tradition of not mentioning the names. On this occasion it’s Our Boys Go In Editor “Tom” “Newton” “Dunn” vs. their Whitehall editor Clodagh…
Read More A slight return to 2004. Wasn’t that fun.