Saturday, 23 January 2016
Tim Gatt - Cursed By SunNation
In the run-up to the 2015 General Election, there was no more enthusiastic SunNation hack than website man Tim Gatt, who had moved to the Murdoch empire from ITV. As Rupe’s downmarket digital troops threw everything they had at their piss-poor new venture, which meant slagging off anyone who might stand in the way of Young Dave returning to 10 Downing Street, Gatt was in the vanguard.
It was a strange career trajectory: Gatt had spent seven years working his way up the ladder to become a Senior Producer at Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) before moving to ITV, where he spent another two and a half years as a Digital Output Editor. Then, for some reason, he left to take the Murdoch shilling as a website editor - and, it seems, yet another of the political propagandists employed to promote knocking copy.
So it was that Gatt came to announce to the world “Exclusive video: White Van Dan visits Labour MP’s London home to ask for apology for her Tweet”, as the Sun did what it does so well - dupe an ordinary member of the public into doing its dirty work for it. And there was more, with “#SunNation exclusively exposed the man responsible for Ed Miliband's slip off stage” being typical (Mil The Elder and his banana. Ho ho ho).
He whined at the Standard over their reporting of Sun favourite Bozza: “Maybe we should charge you, @standardnews, for not crediting The Sun or #SunNation? (And it was on Weds, not y’day)”. Because the Sun never indulges in that sort of thing, eh? There was also obedient coverage like “Iain Duncan Smith accuses Labour of ‘sneering’ over low-paid jobs, in exclusive chat with @steve_hawkes”.
Yes, the officer class would never be caught sneering at the workers, would they? There was the no-chortle inducing “Create your own #EdStone here: http://kryogenix.org/random/ed/ed.html … Send me and #SunNation your works of art!” and then on election night “So who will be the first Labour politician to blame Russell Brand for their apparent shocking performance? I reckon Mandelson”. Wrong. Totally.
And little good it did him: the great Tim Gatt was soon on his way from the Murdoch empire, ending up at … The Department for Work and Pensions. As a “Digital communications strategist”. The kind of job title that the likes of the Sun love to sneer at, aided and abetted by all those right-wing Astroturf lobby groups like the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance. Oh dear. Never mind.
What possessed Tim Gatt to take the Murdoch moolah? Ending up as yet another Civil Servant was probably not on his personal agenda when he was learning his craft at Sky News, but that, it seems, is the curse of SunNation at work. It was yet another example of how the Murdoch Mafia has the reverse Midas touch when it comes to anything website related - SunNation has gone and the Sun is seeing its traffic fall.
Don’t go near a Murdoch web operation, folks. It’s not good for career enhancement.
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2 comments:
The notion of Gatt ending up as a civil servant is at one level utterly hilarious. I wonder what the poor bastard thinks he sees when he looks in the mirror each morning. If he can bear to look.
But what it also shows is how corrupt is the small world of London neocon media and Whitehall civil service. The employment of such an obvious no-talent Murdoch doggy-spiv in such a position tells you all you need to know about civil service employment policies.
I wouldn't employ the fellow to empty bins, let alone allow him near a function which affects the most vulnerable in our society.
Then again, this is Britain 2016. A country that long ago lost any sense of collective and individual dignity and pride. Perhaps people like Gatt is all we deserve.
Once you get enveloped in the Westminster Bubble Wrap it's hard to escape?
There will be some who will hire you for what you have learned and some who won't - because of what you have learned.
They all dance to the tune the piper plays and when the music stops there's usually a vacant chair.
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