Media

Soon after I joined the Sun as managing editor (among other things, I used to review novels for The Spectator), I read an interview with Keir Starmer, the outgoing head of the Crown Prosecution Service. What an unhealthy thing it would be, he said, if journalists had to consult with lawyers every time they pursued a story or asked a question. He was right — yet this is precisely what it is now like for most people in the business of trying to break stories in Britain. More journalists are on trial or facing prosecution here than in many banana republics around the world — as my newspaper knows to

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_15082013.m4a” title=”Andrew Haldenby and Sean Worth join Sebastian Payne to discuss NHS reforms.”] Listen [/audioplayer] GPs enjoy the salary of bankers, regularly pulling in £100,000 for a five-day week, with no on-call or weekend duties and a lovely taxpayer-funded holiday every year. I know this because it says so in the papers, so it must be true. Stories of GP largesse are far from accurate, and bear testament only to the media’s desire for sensationalism. GPs are the true medical heroes of the NHS, the soldiers in the trenches, too loyal to the metaphorical army to revolt, protest or express opinions, lest such opinions serve as an indirect abrogation

Over the past year or so, a determined and fanatical Islamist has been waging a deadly and bloody war against the western world. This enemy is capable of moving unnoticed across continents and inflicting savage violence in each of them; inspires young Muslim men to become suicide bombers and die in their thousands. The enemy is particularly horrifying for being a traitor, born in Britain and a woman to boot. The ‘White Widow’, remember her? Samantha Lewthwaite from Aylesbury, usually described by our tabloid press as one of the most evil and powerful women alive. But is she really evil? Is she really even much of a threat? My contention

Her Majesty’s Loyal Press Corps are on the verge of revolt. Minutes of a recent meeting of the Press Gallery Committee – seen by The Spectator – show that a Republican motion to ditch the Loyal Toast (in which Westminster hacks and assembled guests, from the PM down, raise a glass to the British sovereign) is being considered. Minutes from the July meeting of the Committee state: (ii) Loyal Toast: the committee considered the proposal to discontinue the loyal toast at Press Gallery lunches which had been deferred from a previous meeting. After discussion it was agreed that the chairman should take soundings amongst colleagues and report back to the

As Mr S predicted yesterday, the row between Times colleagues Matthew Parris and Tim Montgomerie has simmered on. And turning up the temperature in the Times’ Red Box email this morning, Parris seemed to be getting rather catty: ‘I was pleased to be singled out by my friend and colleague, Tim Montgomerie, in yesterday’s throwaway “I’m looking at you, Matthew Parris”. In the course of these remarks, Tim also wrote this: “Political leadership … becomes impossible if a leader is not willing to give large majorities of his or her party’s natural supporters what they want. From a less well-intentioned speaker than Tim I would regard that as a disgraceful

Poor Julian Assange. Call me a contrarian but I’m genuinely starting to feel sorry for the guy. He’s just made such a mess of his life, hasn’t he? And with such promise. Only a few short years ago he was the world’s most prominent anti-everything activist, with hair like an indie guitarist, feted and worshipped wherever you might find hot Scandinavian revolutionaries, smug old men who work for ‘theguardian’ and Jemima Khan. Now he’s a hermit with hair like Noel Edmonds who lives in a cupboard. It’s a hell of a fall. Most crushingly, he’s become a figure of fun. Perhaps you noticed him holding a press conference last week,

What is it with the Daily Mirror and its spectacular ability to cock up its front page? We all remember the circumstances that led to Piers Morgan’s (first) spectacular fall. And the current editor is not having such a good run of things either. First there was the splash about British children living below the poverty line, but the photo used to illustrate the piece was taken in America in 2009. And today the paper has an incredible global scoop: Monday’s Mirror front page exclusive: Ebola terror as Sierra Leone passenger dies at Gatwick http://t.co/YijDuBzYtX pic.twitter.com/5eS9SHyV2i — Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) August 3, 2014   Fortunately, it’s set to remain an exclusive because

The mystery is over. A man named Jonathan Burrows has been exposed as the Stonegate fare-dodger. Our own Charles Moore must share a train with this enterprising man. Back in April, Charles reported what the local gossips were saying: ‘Much speculation where we live about the identity of the Stonegate fare-dodger, one stop up our railway line. He recently paid £43,000 to Southeastern, the franchise holder, to escape criminal charges after five years of constant cheating on his daily commute to London. Obviously no suspicion falls on such fine local citizens as my fellow former editor of this paper, Dominic Lawson, who uses the station, or the great writer Adam

Last year, Rod Liddle waded into the Mary Beard ‘misogyny’ row. You may recall that Beard appeared on Question Time, and then complained about the ‘misogynistic’ abuse she received on Twitter when people disagreed with her. ‘The misogyny here is truly gob-smacking,’ whined Prof Beard. The abuse would be ‘quite enough to put many women off appearing in public’. Nonsense, said Rod. ‘It is nothing to do with misogyny – it is just what people reach for when they, perhaps temporarily, hate someone’. Beard had, Rod said, managed to make ‘what can be politely described as an utter fool of herself’. Rod detailed the insults she suffered in consequence: some

If I were choosing a third parent for a baby, you know, I’d be inclined to choose one of the Williams sisters — the top-notch tennis players. If you want to create a baby with really classy metabolism — and metabolic function is just what the third parent provides — you may as well make it good. But what you can’t do, in creating a baby that’s able to process energy efficiently, is pretend that this is anything other than genetic modification. Yet the Department of Health, in effectively approving the three parent baby technique (actually, it’s always going to be two mothers plus one father), has redefined its categories in