Wordblog

Today is one of those days when there is was so much interesting media stuff in the news section of the Observer that I barely got to the media section. Andrew Rawnsley in his political column makes a telling comment about Gordon Brown’s new ministry. He will "raise Parliament in order to put the media down," Rawnsley writes.

The argument is that increasing the role of the cabinet, Whitehall and parliament is far from a dilution of the prime ministers’s power — it is a strengthening of his power.

Rawnsley writes:

Tony Blair began his premiership thinking he could rule by spinning the media. He ended his time at Number 10 raging against the ‘feral beast’. A Prime Minister with a solid majority has much more command over and authority in Parliament than he has in the arena of the cacophonous, cynical, oppositional media.

Two pages earlier, Cristina Odone looks at Sarah Macaulay, the PR wife of Brown, who "has opted to be reserved and dignified, to steer clear of the media". It is, Odone writes, a "calculated contrast to Cherie Blair".

And opposite the Odone comment is a full-page story on Mika Brzezinski shredding her script in anger at being ordered to lead an MSNBC bulletin with another Paris Hilton story.

This transatlantic revolt against spin and trivia chimes well with the stories about the Browns. Could it really be that we are at a moment of change which will force the media to to pay more attention to ideas than to  spin, wives and girlfriends: an end to the tail WAGging the dog.