Wordblog

Journalism in a changing world

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Iain Dale offers a guide to political blogging

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Sep 18th, 2006

Iain Dale has produced an excellent guide to political blogging in the UK which can be downloaded as a PDF from his blog (thanks to Martin Stabe for pointing this out). It is a must have for every reporter covering national, regional and local politics.
Stabe also felt I suggested in my post a couple of [...]



Left behind in the blogosphere

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Sep 16th, 2006

The liberal left has been left behind in the blogosphere in the UK as it has been in America. Signs of a change are now appearing in the US where political blogging first established itself.
Ed Pilkington from New York reports in today’s Guardian that the left is building a power base in the blogosphere. He [...]



Journalism under pressure

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Aug 19th, 2006

In an article about the freelance photographer who was sacked by Reuters, Los Angeles Time columnist Tim Rutten wrote this a week ago:
Moreover, the obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press means there’s an eager market for pictures of dead Lebanese babies.
It’s worth noting in this context that there is no [...]



Lieberman was ‘leader of the Democrat’s Blairite tendency’

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Aug 13th, 2006

Joe Lieberman, who was shockingly defeated in the Connecticut Democratice senate primary, had become what might be called leader of “the Blairite tendency in the Democratic party,” according to Godfrey Hodgson, the distinguished British journalist who is now an associate fellow at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute.
In a post on journalist Bob Jones’s new Typingbytouch [...]



Next PM should ’stand up to Murdoch’

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jul 31st, 2006

The Sun is less powerful than politicians believe, Stephen Glover argues in his On the Press column in The Independent today. This follows Tony Blair’s latest pilgrimage to talk to senior Murdoch executives at their conference in California.
With Murdoch being coy over whether he will support Labour’s heir Gordon Brown or the Tory new man [...]



Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes is…

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jul 13th, 2006

Quite a lot of people googling for more about the blogger who is said to have set the news agenda on the Prescott story have arrived at Wordblog. The best I can do is give a link to Sourcewatch.



Hidden gold is in old Freedom of Information disclosures

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jul 7th, 2006

There has been some puzzlement about how the BBC obtained important official documents for its item on John Prescott, Philip Anschutz and casinos on Newsnight programme on Wednesday. Freedom of Information Act enquiries take time and this material seemed to have been found too quickly. The answer was not a leak but first rate research [...]



FoI ruling on Blair’s coyness about meetings with Murdoch

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jul 5th, 2006

While the numbers of stories about deputy prime minister John Prescott’s meetings with billionaire Philip Anschutz, who has taken the Dome off the British Governments hands, has escalated over the past 24 hours, there are glimmers of a more significant story about Government contact with American billionaires.
The information commissioner has ordered the Cabinet Office to [...]



US media navel-gazing after Swift revelations

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jul 2nd, 2006

The American Press is going in for a bout of navel-gazing after the New York Times revealed that the Government was monitoring world-wide financial transactions. Ten days ago below the headline “Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror” the story started:
Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 [...]



Murdoch starts play to influence next UK PM

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jun 29th, 2006

Rupert Murdoch is hinting that he might support the Tory, David Cameron, in the next election, according to the Guardian. That raises what seems like the eternal question of British politics — is it the Sun (with a little help from the Times to add gravitas) wot wins elections or is Murdoch simply good at [...]