Lance Price is better placed than most to write about ‘spin’ in politics, having worked as a BBC political reporter and as Alastair Campbell’s deputy in Downing Street.
Lance Price is better placed than most to write about ‘spin’ in politics, having worked as a BBC political reporter and as Alastair Campbell’s deputy in Downing Street.
In August 1997, Price was on duty for the BBC the weekend that the story of Robin Cook’s affair broke. In Where Power Lies he describes the ‘unusually rich array’ of other stories in the papers to choose from that weekend. A juicy item in the Sunday Times stated that Chris Patten, Governor of Hong Kong, could be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. Price says he telephoned Peter Mandelson, then de facto information minister, who confirmed it ‘off the record’. The BBC duly ran the item.
Within 24 hours the story was exposed as one of a number of bogus news items invented by Mandelson and Campbell to get the Cook story off the headlines.
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