Leveson Is Served (29)

THE OWN GOALS CONTINUE

After yesterday’s collective brainstorm at the Daily Mail – which I covered HERE – one might have thought that the rest of the attack hackery of the Fourth Estate might stop and think before joining in what was so obviously a counterproductive hatchet job on what Leveson has not yet recommended. But that thought would have been misplaced, so devoid of rationality is the press at present.

Because they’re all at it today, blindly churning over the Dacre outpouring of bile in an effort to get as much dirt as possible to stick. Even the sometimes aloof Maily Telegraph has come down from its lofty perch and is getting down and dirty with the tabloids, although not with the total lack of subtlety of the Murdoch Sun, which has to no surprise at all copied the Mail in going after David Bell.

The headline is a classic: “The leftie plotters with one Common Purpose ... to gag the press”, which is followed by “Jimmy Savile scandal opens up a can of worms for Leveson”, which is purest invention. Common Purpose is a “shadowy left-wing lobby group” and is asserted to be “secretive”. And the Media Standards Trust (MST) is “a campaign group desperate to muzzle Britain’s free press”.

It gets worse: the Sun then uses an “MST therefore Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) therefore Newsnight therefore JIMMY SAVILE!” frightener, with a photo of David Bell underneath. So Bell is connected to Savile, readers! And DAC Sue Akers must be somehow connected because she was appointed by someone who went on a Common Purpose course! Conspiracy!!

At least we now know that Rupe has ordered his troops to pitch in with Dacre and the rest in kicking anyone remotely connected with Leveson, as has the management at the Telegraph, which has followed the Mail in accusing Common Purpose of breaking the Data Protection Act (DPA). The Tel’s Sunday edition, remember, had David Kelly’s phone logs the same day he died. Obtained illegally.

And the Tel also sniffily says that “critics” refers to Common Purpose as the “modern version of the freemason’s handshake” and “the Left’s version of the old boys’ network”. So who are these “critics”? Sadly, there is just one, an employment law advisor who met a Common Purpose group in 1998. And the Telegraph cribbed the comments from the Mail’s story published yesterday.

All of which merely shows the desperation of the Fourth Estate. They want resignations and to have organisations closed down for the Newsnight debacle, but there were no resignations or closures when the Mail hatcheted the Taylor sisters, obsessively pursued Colin Stagg, or the rest. They might as well shout “we’re so batshit out of control, we can’t be trusted”. Because that’s what folks are hearing.