Mail Attacks BBC For Times Story

It takes some brass neck to blame the stories run by one media organisation on another for no other reason than to demonise one of them, but that comes naturally to the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hackery at the Daily Mail, who have taken an article which originated in the Murdoch Times in its Monday edition … and then kicked the hated BBC for it instead! How did they manage that?

Why the f*** shouldn't I give the BBC a kicking for something the Times runs, c***?!? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay

As Zelo Street regulars will recall, a leaked Cabinet Office Brexit memo was published by the Times, and this blog linked to the Guardian’s take. The story told that the Government had “no single plan and Whitehall is struggling to cope [and] found that departments are working on more than 500 projects related to leaving the EU and may need to hire an extra 30,000 civil servants to deal with the additional burden of work”.

The story was also picked up by the BBC: the Mail, in other circumstances, would have been hot on the Corporation’s case had it been alone in ignoring it. And another media outlet running the story was … the Daily Mail! This was first done via reproducing a PA wire on Monday, and Mail Online then ran a piece yesterday telling readers that the Government had “disowned” the memo and blamed it on consultants Deloitte.

Basically, the whole range of media organisations ran the story in one form or another. But you would have been hard put to know that from a thundering Daily Mail Comment - the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue - today. Under the headline “When will Remainers stop talking us down?” readers are told “Take yesterday, when the BBC seized gleefully on a ‘leaked memo’, reportedly prepared for the Cabinet Office”.

There was more. The Beeb stood accused of “presenting it as a severe embarrassment to the Government and making it the lead item on news bulletins … Then there were the Remainers’ early-morning warnings - again, broadcast with relish by the BBC - that new figures would show a worrying rise in inflation, because of the pound’s devaluation after the referendum … If only they had waited a couple of hours, they would have seen the inflation rate fell last month”. They weren’t talking about last month, were they?

And on it moaned: “It was the same story with the BBC’s lavish coverage of a limited survey of executives, suggesting Brexit has led businesses to abandon investment worth £65billion. Disturbing, if true. But better-grounded surveys say investment is holding up strongly”. Citation of a “better-grounded survey”? No? Thought not.

This is complete crap, mere bluster. When did the Beeb ever “seize gleefully” on anything? When has it “broadcast with relish”? When did a survey receive “lavish coverage”? Paul Dacre should have retired when he passed 65. Any of his readers able to remember back 24 hours will know that the Times broke the story, and that while the Government has denied the memo’s official status, it hasn’t taken issue with the content.

The Mail is talking its mardy strop against the BBC to preposterous lengths. Kicking a news broadcaster for broadcasting news is where Dacre finally loses the plot.