Labour spinners for a start. Damian McBride and Derek Draper were certainly foolish to even consider their plan for a blog to spread smears about Tories (Sunday Times et al) but completely mad to discuss the plot in emails. It does not take much brain to understand that emails are just about the worst medium [...]
Peter Preston points out that while Sir Menzies Campbell (66), departed from the Lib Dem leadership because he would be too old to fight an election at 68, media people go on.
In his Observer column today he says Michael Grade (64) is bringing back Trevor McDonald (68) to present News at Ten. It might, Preston [...]
Mostly stories write themselves but sometimes there is a real choice between two different angles. The question then for the reporter and editor is whether to run with the pack or do something different.
The tale of David Cameron and Ali Miraj, the man who had hoped to be a Tory PM provides a [...]
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 [...]
Tony Blair’s speech a week ago in which he attacked the "feral" media fills much of the media pages today with Peter Wilby commenting in the Guardian, and Steven Glover in the Independent.
Wilby says the political pack are a bunch of "pussycats" while Glover sees journalists as "lapdogs".
A more [...]
One of the MPs who voted on Friday to exempt parliament from the Freedom of Information Act bought a quad bike on his expenses, the People reports today. David Maclean spent £3,000 of taxpayers money saying he needed the bike to get around his constituency on the Scottish borders. Hiding their expenses from the press [...]
A D-notice, the UK’s way of censoring military information, is being considered as a way of allowing Prince Harry to be deployed to a war zone in secret, according to the Observer today.
General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the army, has blamed media coverage for the decision not to send the third in [...]
Ninety six of the the 646 members of the House of Commons voted today to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act. They won with 25 voting against the back bench Freedom of Information (amendment) Bill.
David Winnick, the Labour member for Walsall North, described the Bill as a "squalid" measure. That word [...]
As MPs again discuss exempting themselves from the Freedom of Information Act today, Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, has once more been defending government plans for further restrictions.
It looked as if this plan to impose new limits on the number of requests that could be made and the cost of answering might have been kicked [...]
It comes as something of a shock when an international organisation issues a statement on freedom, if you read it and realise that what it says is applicable to your own country.
But that is how a World Press Freedom Day letter from Timothy Balding, chief executive of the World Association of Newspapers, reads. Balding who [...]
