Boris’s media critics are missing the real story

The five most frustrating words a journalist can hear are: ‘This is not a story’. Over the years, I have heard that warding charm invoked by press officers governmental and party, private sector and charitable. Every time, it guaranteed I would work doubly hard to ensure the story in question made it into print. Political journalists, in particular, are thrawn by nature and cynical through experience. They begin from the assumption that you did it, everyone around you knows you did it, half of them are doing it too, and if they keep at you long enough you’ll eventually end up reading a prepared statement outside your front door one morning while your wife silently reflects that you can’t even take a brown envelope competently.

So when it’s pointed out to political hacks that none of their reporting on Boris Johnson is cutting through, they hear it as merely a taunting variation on ‘this is not a story’.