Stephen Glover

In the media age, life is a soap opera. For a time we are obsessed with a particular storyline. Then it is resolved, we move on to the next story, new characters are introduced, and the old characters on whose every word we once hung are phased out and forgotten. Two months ago the country

Piers Morgan, the editor of the Daily Mirror, is an opponent of the coming war against Iraq. Fair enough. Many of us are unhappy about it. But he has taken his opposition to extreme and, I would say, imprudent lengths. To use a military analogy, he has fired off his biggest nuclear missiles without first

A couple of weeks ago I promised that this column would keep a watchful eye on Rebekah Wade, the new editor of the Sun. As is so often the case, the first piece of evidence is right before our eyes, in the pages of Who’s Who. But before we get on to that, let me

A very high-minded European recently complained to me about British newspapers. Why are they all so awful, he asked? Even the so-called serious ones look like comics, with their pictures of footballers and half-naked actresses on the masthead. As for the tabloids, he went on, their venom, iconoclasm and sheer beastliness, not to mention their

The appointment of Rebekah Wade as the editor of the Sun has given rise to much baseless speculation. It has been suggested that she may swing the paper behind the euro. We are told she may ditch Page Three girls, to whom she is said to have a feminist aversion. She is, says my esteemed

Anyone who has ever had breakfast, lunch, dinner or any other meeting with Gordon Brown will know that he gives very little away. Some ministers are known for their bluntness and occasional indiscretions; others may sometimes drink a glass or two more wine than they should, and say things they should perhaps not have. The

One of Richard Desmond’s heroes is Rupert Murdoch, who was profiled in glowing terms in the most recent Sunday Express. The proprietor of the Express group regards the Australian-born adventurer as an outsider like himself. In fact, Desmond is far more of an outsider than Murdoch. His fortune is based on his pornographic magazines and

There is one person in the world whom I would love to meet. Or maybe two. I am thinking of the propagandist who writes the monthly front-page ‘brief’ in the Times extolling the paper’s circulation performance. His (or her?) counterpart on the Daily Telegraph would be interesting, too, though this person has fallen rather silent

The Burrell affair illustrates how much the press has changed over the past 20 or 30 years, and how powerful it has become. Not very long ago the majority of newspapers would have given the Queen the benefit of the doubt in such a matter. As it was, only the Daily Telegraph jumped unhesitatingly to

My colleague Stuart Reid has been urging me to write about the Times for weeks. ‘There’s a buzz on the streets,’ he says. ‘Oh, yeah?’ ‘Yes, people are saying that the Times is improving under its new editor.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yes, that is the word. The Times is getting better. Not much, but a little. It’s

Is the Daily Mirror for sale? It is, according to a well-placed City source. He says it is being offered around to ‘the buy-out boys’. My instinct is that he is right, and that Trinity Mirror wants to offload its troubled national daily, as well as its other national titles. Until 1999 Trinity Mirror was

Prince Charles’s leaked letter to Tony Blair has not done him any good. The Mail on Sunday, whose first edition broke the story on Sunday, seemed to think that the letter did him great credit. One can certainly see what he was getting at. But to compare farmers with gays or immigrant communities, and to

Newspapers, as we know, love truth. They castigate evasive politicians and track down dodgy businessmen. They deliver ringing lectures in their editorial columns when ministers do not come clean. And yet this love of truth has one blind spot. When newspapers – and I would say in particular broadsheet newspapers – come to present their

The very name of Soham induces a strange mixture of disgust, boredom and pity. I return to it with reluctance. But we have to consider the conduct of the media, and in particular the criticisms made about the press by the Cambridgeshire coroner, David Morris, and by the Cambridgeshire police. I’m certainly not going to

In April the Daily Mirror relaunched itself as a more serious newspaper. Its editor, Piers Morgan, got rid of its red masthead. He hired supposedly upmarket writers such as John Pilger and Christopher Hitchens, and resurrected the famous Cassandra column. Mr Morgan invoked the name of Hugh Cudlipp, who edited the Daily Mirror in the