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BBC goes along with govt spoiling tactic on disabled people
contribution by Steve Griffiths
Every month the Dept for Work and Pensions put out statistics purporting to show that few benefit claimants are ‘unfit to work’, with a juicy quote from a minister saying how terrible this is.
Today, the timing is immaculate: the BBC give it a higher billing than the report scathing about the Work Capability Assessment.
‘Only 7% of people claiming sickness benefits were unable to do any sort of work’, the BBC claim that ‘new figures have shown’. This is a monthly press release.
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Two very important Coulson and Cameron revelations come out
Today, first an email exchange between John Yates and the PM’s Chief of Staff Ed Llewellyn, which was referred to by John Yates in his Select Committee appearance this afternoon, was released.
Second, and more importantly, it was also admitted by the Conservatives that Neil Wallis was advising David Cameron while he employed Andy Coulson.
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Shouldn’t the police also investigate the Daily Mail over #hackgate?
contribution by Andy May
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is falling apart at the seams, but we are at grave risk of missing the big picture here.
It is excellent news that the illegal activities at the News of the World and subsequent cover-up are finally being properly investigated but it is also abundantly clear they did not happen in isolation. Any journalist who worked in those years will tell you that other powerful press barons were up to their neck in it.
So who are the other culprits when it comes to illegal activity – could the Daily Mail be next?
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Hackgate: don’t bet on this scandal bringing down Cameron
Westland didn’t bring down Thatcher, Major took on the Maastricht Bastards and lived. Not even the combination of illegal war against Iraq, the Kelly suicide and cash for peerages was enough to force Blair to quit. Prime ministers, it seems, invariably ride out a little local difficulty.
I do not see anything in either the extent or the seriousness of Hackgate that leads inexorably to the conclusion that the Coalition is on the point of imminent collapse.
Blog posts and newspaper columns from both the more impressionable variety of younger leftist and diehard Tory rightwingers who never had much time for Cameron anyway should probably be disregarded.
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How should Labour attack Cameron over Coulson hiring?
The odds on Cameron resigning over Hackgate have narrowed.
Frankly, whether or not he does go is unlikely to be very heavily influenced either by Labour or what is reported in the media.
Even so, every little helps, and it’s important for Labour to get its broad narrative right as the revelations continue to spill out.
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The latest right-wing cry: hackgate is a lefty conspiracy!
When ‘Hackgate’ first appeared on the radar just over two years ago, some observers characterised it as a right versus left affair, with more than one pundit declaring that it was those rotten lefties trying to get payback for Damian McBride.
Now that the story has shown itself to be a serious one, one might have hoped that the right versus left angle would have been quietly dropped, if only out of sheer embarrassment at having called it wrong at the start.
But this would be to underestimate those generally right leaning pundits who cannot see events otherwise.
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Poor memory? Blame evolution, not Google
If you mooch around the science sections of popular news websites this weekend then chances are you’ll encounter something called ‘The Google Effect’.
From what I can tell, the BBC’s report started out the headline “Internet is ‘changing our memory’” but have since backed off a little and are now running the story as ‘Internet’s memory effects quantified in computer study’.
The Guardian – with perhaps more than half an eye on climbing Google’s own search rankings with its take on the story – has gone for the headline; ‘Poor memory? Blame Google.
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Phone-hacking: the cancer remains
When someone like Rebekah Brooks, described by the Graun as a “ruthless, charming schmoozer”, the kind of individual who previously considered prime ministers past and present to be friends is only paid tribute to by a couple of Murdochs and err, Giles Coren, you know there’s been a very sudden sea change in attitudes to those at the top of the media pile.
Despite everything, we still don’t really know why Rupert Murdoch was so intent on keeping dear Rebekah at the top of NI. It’s true he feels a special affinity with those who have dragged themselves up from under-privileged backgrounds and share his love of newspapers, qualities which Kelvin MacKenzie and Andy Coulson both had in common with Brooks.
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A boycott of the Sun? Hold your horses everyone
Buoyed by the success of the advertiser boycott, several readers on Libcon and on Twitter keep asking when the boycott of the Sun newspaper or the whole of News International will take place.
Look, I’m not fan of the Sun newspaper by any stretch of the imagination, but this isn’t going to happen any time soon. If we do strike, it would have to be at the right time.
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The fallout from phone-hacking should also tackle media bias
There could have been no more astonishing conclusion than 6 UK political parties coming together unanimously in parliament to oppose the BSKYB bid and call for a full, judge-led enquiry. It was a mannerly affair, a consensual, constructive debate.
Nonetheless, just how far do politicians want this enquiry to go? Just how much power do they want the media to lose and by proxy, how much power are they prepared to see slip away themselves? Are they really ready to give up on the symbiotic relationship that has served them or destroyed them?
Are they really united in their desire to root out corruption and bias wherever it was allowed to multiply? I suggest from the reaction to Gordon Brown’s speech in Parliament yesterday that they are not.
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Rupert Murdoch’s problems in the US have grown exponentially
Yesterday I reported that a US Senator had called for regulators to examine whether News Corporation had broken any laws. And there is chance he could have. Yesterday evening another Senator joined that list.
Now it has gotten much worse. And later today or tomorrow, we launch our own campaign with allies in the US to push for the SEC and the DOJ to look at whether News Corporation has broken any US laws.
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The ‘perfect victim’ theory of rape, and how it’s reported
contribution by Sian Norris
There is a pervasive rape myth that influences a lot of the ways newspapers and mainstream media outlets continue to talk about rape. Feminists call this the myth of the ‘perfect victim’. It is a myth because of course a perfect victim does not exist.
But what this myth does is create a false divide between victims and survivors of rape who the media consider ‘innocent’, and victims and survivors who the media paint as blameworthy, or guilty of ‘causing’ the rape.
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Julian Assange is innocent until proven guilty
contribution by Peter Tatchell
I was outside the High Court in London this morning, ahead of Mr Assange’s extradition appeal hearing. I think it would be most unfair, and not conducive to justice, for Julian Assange to be extradited to Sweden when he has not been charged with any offence.
The sexual assault allegations against Julian Assange deserve to be taken very seriously. But Julian is innocent until proven guilty.
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Is Gordon Brown using his children for exacting revenge?
The simple answer here is no, in response to insinuations being made by some people on the left and the right. Harry Cole writes:
The timing of yesterday’s intervention couldn’t have worked better to keep the story alive here , and across the Atlantic.
And he said the same this morning on BBC 5Live when we clashed briefly. It is rubbish.
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It’s not just the NOTW that needs to be destroyed
Gordon Brown isn’t the most loved Labour leader ever. But he has a bit of an air of authenticity to him: the kind of man who wouldn’t sell his kid’s illness for political advantage, for example.
So whenever the details of his first kid’s death and second kid’s illness [*] appeared in the Sun, it genuinely made me think less of him. After all, it’s a perfect NewLab, Alastair Campbell media strategy to humanise the dude.
But it turns out that Brown never leaked to the Sun at all, and that this – like, apparently, every other story News International has won – was obtained by thievery.
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Is the whole of News International now in trouble?
Gordon Brown is imminently expected to was meant to make a statement in the House of Commons. The Indy says:
Gordon Brown will today break his silence over the phone-hacking scandal by accusing Rupert Murdoch’s News International of illegally accessing his personal details, The Independent has learnt.
The BSkyB bid is now almost certainly dead. The big question is now whether the rest of News International is also about to be engulfed in the flames.
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BSkyB and local programming: should Labour focus on this?
As far as I can see, the current scandals engulfing News Corporation – did they cause unnecessary hurt to individuals and get in the way of a murder enquiry – fade into insignificance against the big question:
Do they use the bullying power of their newspapers to distort democracy in pursuit of their own corporate interests?
A glaring example is the way that Murdoch is allowed to duck a European regulation that would create thousands of jobs and result in a small portion of the tax-free profits that he exports being spent on making TV programmes and films in the UK.
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Ed Miliband: the comeback kid
contribution by Jon Stone
Though not quite a return to the pre-Blair Labour manifesto calling for a breakup of newspaper monopolies, Labour’s vote in parliament to delay any takeover of BSkyB is definitely welcome.
it is not something I could imagine the Labour Party of three years ago doing.
For a political machine that still goes out of its way to shape its policies to appease The Sun, doing something that will undeniably piss off the Great Satan himself is babysteps to a more assertive relationship with the right-wing gutter press.
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Double standards in the phone-hacking scandal
Let us note that the images featured on the front pages of many newspapers last week were those of the most iconic cases of recent years. Sarah Payne, hollyandjessica, Millie Dowler, Madeline McCann: the news-stands appeared to be some macabre Abduction Hall of Fame.
This is actually a dream come true for rivals of News of the World.
It is the invasion of privacy of these families that the rival newspapers are keen to report, because they too know that it is images of these children that sell.
Can citizens replace the need for tighter press regulation?
contribution by Reuben Bard-Rosenberg
It has once again become fashionable to assert that “self-regulation doesn’t work”, and that the Press Complaints Commission ought to be replaced with some kind of statutory check on the media.
Writing for the Guardian, Geoffrey Robertson QC suggests that we follow other nations in having “statutory “press ombudspersons” who adjudicate public complaints, direct retractions and compensation, enforce rights of reply and monitor ethical standards.”
Is this a step backwards?
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You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed.
» How the UK could pay for its demographic “time-bomb”
» Osborne’s time is running out, even amongst friends
» BBC goes along with govt spoiling tactic on disabled people
» The ‘madness’ of terrorism and other offensive terms
» Palestinian children routinely jailed for throwing stones, report finds
» What are people like Melanie Phillips calling for then?
» Anders Breivik wasn’t a “lone wolf”, he was part of a movement
» The famine in Somali is no natural disaster
» Will tomorrow be the day people start to question Osborne’s competence?
» The inequality rarely mentioned in Westminster: Scotland’s land
» How child-beating teachers were STOPPed 25 years ago
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