Don’t Menshn The Vice-President

After (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch’s column for the Sunday Sun was cancelled recently, she claimed that she had been “promoted at work”. What work was this? To many, all she did was to spend endless hours obsessing on Twitter - most recently with her aggressive defence of Tim Hunt - and occasionally publishing over-long self-justifying blog posts. What “work” could she be involved in?

(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

Well, today Laurence Durnan at Political Scrapbook has revealed what Ms Mensch claims to be her new role - except that she is the only one doing the claiming. Her LinkedIn page tells that she is now “Vice President, Creative and Strategy, News Corporation”. She claims to have been doing “Creative and Strategy” work there for well over a year and a half. But, as Laurence found, News Corp appeared not to know who she was.

Here's the claim ...

Ms Mensch could not be contacted via the News Corp switchboard. She did not have a PA or any other assistant - an unusual situation for a “Vice President”. And now a Zelo Street regular has brought yet more intriguing news about this so-called appointment. One might expect a “Vice President” to be a director level appointment. So a search of News Corp’s list of directors was undertaken, to check that Ms Mensch was present.

... and here's what News Corp say

Sadly, she was not. A “Vice President” who is not a director of the company? Someone who has been in post for over a year and a half, yet they have no phone contact details or assistant listed? Do the wheels grind so slowly at the Murdoch empire that it takes more than a year and a half to get a phone put in, and a PA appointed? What kind of thrusting, dynamic organisation is this? And it gets yet curiouser.

My source has searched the News Corp website for any mention of Louise Mensch. And the result? You can see for yourself: there is the screen grab. A search was made for the name “Louise Mensch”, but search results came there none. “Sorry, no results. Try your search again”. As far as News Corp’s list of directors, its website, and its switchboard are all concerned, Ms Mensch has nothing to do with the company.

Vice President appointments are usually the subject of press releases, such as “News Corporation … announced the appointment of Michael Florin as Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations for the new News Corporation” and “News Corporation …  announced the appointment of Antoinette Cook Bush as Executive Vice President and Global Head of Government Affairs for the new News Corporation”, both in 2013.

That sounds plausible ... 

But Ms Mensch claimed she had secured her “promotion” this year - and the only press release this year is definitely not about her. A search on “Creative and Strategy” yields no information about her. Louise Mensch has spent more than a little time denouncing Connie St Louis over allegations that the latter had somehow enhanced her CV: perhaps Ms Mensch could explain why News Corp does not know of the latest addition to hers.

After all, she wouldn’t be lying - that’s something others do, isn’t it, Louise?