The Daily Politics

Please would the Director-General give the key to the crockery cupboard back to Andrew Neill. Poor Andrew looks as if he’s going to burst a blood vessell if he’s not allowed to hand out some Daily Politics mugs very soon.

McCanns and spin

I don’t like posting on the Madeleine McCann issue because: 1) I don’t know what happened; 2) the issue has become about the McCanns not about Madeleine. But a post in prisonlawinsideout pointed at an article in the Guardian that really hits on one point at issue — the McCann’s use of an official spokesman spin-doctor:

The problem with this approach is that the traditional purpose of spin doctors is to convince people that a leader hasn’t quite done what he probably did. The more often the press guy comes to the podium, the closer his boss’s career is to being over.

And they aim to do this by managing the interface with the media: dropping titbits to the friendly; ensuring that interviews are placed for best effect (terms of reference — or even questions — agreed in advance, choosing the placement and the ‘best’ interviewer. etc).

So what we are left with is essentially a performance, designed by someone emotionally-uninvolved, to encourage us to accept an interpretation of events favourable to his clients: and we know that in the world of spin such an interpretation is necessary precisely because it is usually at odds with what other evidence and common sense tells us.

So in these circumstances what are we to make of Susan Healey’s ‘desperate appeal’ in the Daily Express? The heartfelt outpourings of Kate’s Mum, another staged intervention to win sympathy, or some mixture of the two? The problem is that with a spin-doctor in the house, we automatically ask. Whatever, I fail to see what relevance it has to influencing the search for Madeleine, or her body.

O didums

So Ant & Dec are ‘livid’ with Michael Grade for describing their ‘executive producer’ credit as a ‘vanity credit’.

But still they insist that they had no control over the defrauding of their viewers as laid out in the Deloittes report. Dec says: ‘Ant and I are now reassured that strict measures have been put in place to ensure that these kind of incidents can never happen again.’ But isn’t that what executive producers should have done in the first place? Well lads, whichever one of ‘you people’ suggested sticking your head up above that parapet needs shooting; it’s done your brand image no good at all.

And speaking of brand images and shooting, Michael Grade should reconsider his decision about no sackings if he’s serious about preserving ITV’s ‘trusted’ brand image.

Anyway, let’s hope that the SFO has more luck investigating all these phone-in frauds than it did with al-Yamamah — and a bit quicker too.

Arat Dink

In January this year, Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent, was shot dead at the entrance to his newspaper’s offices in Istanbul. He was the editor of a bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, who had been prosecuted for ‘insulting Turkishness’ for referring to the Armenian Holocaust as genocide. As the Turkish reaction to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution demonstrates this is an extremely touchy subject for the Turkish state which is in a state of denial on the matter.

Now the BBC reports that his son, Arat Dink, was today convicted of ‘insulting Turkishness’ along with another journalist, Serkis Seropyan — for reprinting Hrant Dink’s arguments for describing the Ottoman-era killings as genocide.

welcome back Craig

Good to see that Craig Murray is back (with a new address) and unbowed.

If the British government couldn’t silence him, I fail to see why Schillings, acting on behalf of Alisher Usmanov, thought they would be successful.

press freedom: this week

Investigative journalist and fierce critic of Putin, Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in Moscow a year ago today. Eighteen journalists have been killed in Russia since Vladimir Putin became president

In Egypt, more than twenty independent and opposition newspapers have halted publishing for a day to protest against a government crackdown on press freedoms.

In Manila senators attempt to cite a reporter in contempt for refusing to reveal her sources, have a newspaper investigated and amend or repeal the law protecting confidential news sources.

In Nepal, the Communist Party Of Nepal (Maoist) has restricted the publication of Kantipur’s two dailies (Kantipur and the Kathmandu Post). A senior leader of the party, standing outside the main gate of Kantipur publications, vowed to stop both dailies and Kantipur television forever, and threatened the publishers and journalists with bodily harm.

Reporters Without Borders said at least 11 journalists are currently in Burmese jails., including six arrested during the current protests. Japanese reporter Kenji Nagai was shot and killed while covering the rallies in Rangoon.

Reporters Without Borders report 86 journalists and media assistants have been killed so far this year; 135 are imprisoned plus 64 cyber-dissidents.