Tony Gallagher - This Is Your Arse

Sometimes the sheer wilful dishonesty and refusal to face reality that is exhibited by the right-leaning part of the Fourth Estate  is so brazen, and so obvious, that calling them out is not enough. It is necessary, on occasion, to hand the deployers of the greatest brass neck their arses on a plate. The latest such exponent of victimhood has been new Sun editor Tony Gallagher, who has been quoted at length in Press Gazette.

Tony Gallagher - not objecting to the Leveson Inquiry at the time

Taking out his onion at the recent Exaro Debate, he told “Things like the Bribery Act have made things much, much harder for journalists … I wonder now, I fear the answer would be a negative, that the Telegraph might not buy the disk of MPs’ expenses six years on, because the terms of the Bribery Act would expose you to that, which as I understand it has no exclusion for journalists”. HE DOESN’T KNOW.

There was more: “when the Royal Charter [on press regulation] came before the House of Commons a couple of years ago all bar a tiny handful of MPs voted in favour … and I’m absolutely certain that large numbers of those MPs were motivated by pure hatred of the media because of what it had done to them over the business of MPs’ expenses”. HE STILL DOESN’T KNOW. But he is certain that the rotten MPs done it.

Then he takes the biscuit in no style at all: “the relationship between the police and media has almost completely collapsed … I think you talk to any reporter, local or national, now and it’s almost impossible to have any kind of a dialogue with police officers that helps both your reporter and helps the news organisation”. WHAT’S THE NAME OF THAT PAPER YOU EDIT? The Sun. The one that shopped its sources to the Police.

Why should the cops trust a paper that might grass on them, get them a criminal record and lose them their careers? But Tone is ready with his “look over there” card: “the police’s refusal to reveal information, couched usually in Leveson terms, is one of the scandals of the age”. LEVESON HAS NO FORCE IN LAW. This is just a lame excuse, intended to blame the Inquiry for the shortcomings of your own industry.

It gets worse: “Freedom of Information is under assault as never before. It’s been a fantastic tool for rooting out corruption and exposing the excesses of central and local government”. And it’s been over-used and abused by fishing expeditions from the likes of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance, whose shoddily researched rubbish all the papers you worked for recently - the Telegraph, Mail and Sun - slavishly reproduce as fact.

Moreover, the Royal Charter that MPs voted for because of that “pure hatred” would not stop the press talking to the Police, would have no restraint on what was published, would not stop them paying money for stories, and would have nothing to do with FoI. All it would do is to make press self-regulation properly independent - of politicians, proprietors - and editors like Tony Gallagher. Stop playing the victim Tone, and get real.

Meanwhile, here’s your arse on a plate. You’re welcome.