Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
Whilst I have some sympathy on a personal level, he was in the very top echelons of a party which, Alastair Campbell admitted on TV news earlier today, had gone to great effort to court News Intl. initially to gain power and later retain it. It's all very well these people (past and present) banging on about how wrong it all is now it's out in the open but they evidently weren't asking too many harsh questions when they believed they were the political beneficiaries of dodgy media and other tactics.
http://iaindale.com/posts/mondeo-man...e-world-reader |
To be fair he wasn't the one in bed with the tabloids. That's not to say he didn't try, he clearly wanted to have them onside, but they never took to him and pretty much from the day he became Prime Minister it's fair to say that News International were gunning for him.
Ironically in hindsight one of their favorite lines of attack was to use 'our boys' otherwise known as the Armed Forces. The worst of these was when the mother of a solider sadly killing in action was sent a personal letter from Brown in which he allegedly (was hard to tell) misspelt the family name, it had other misspellings and was poor written. Instead of pointing out it was a honorable thing to do - Blair never did it - they attacked him over the course of several days over the 'disrespect' he had shown by writing such a letter in poor handwriting. Most other members of the press declined to join in as the handwriting was a result of his eye being damaged, he had to use a big felt pen to see clearly and famously always wrote pretty badly. It was just a mean-sprited thing for The Sun to do and clearly provoked by their desire to get the Conservatives in as soon as possible (just as they did the same to the Tories to promote Labour previously). I say it's ironic because after the last week I don't think The Sun or anyone at News International is in a position in invoke the Armed Forces in a campaign or to lecture on their treatment. If the hacking of the family members on those soliders that died is proved to be true.
But yes, Labour are as bad as the Tories. Only the Liberal Democrats have a consistant record on opposing Murdoch.