News Group, under the harum-scarum management of Rebekah ‘Testarossa’ Brooks is engaged once again in one of its double-bluff ball-tampering scams.
On the one hand, the Sun, (under the startlingly insignificant Dominic Mohan) and through the brokerage of disgraced ex-Screws editor, Andy Coulson, declared itself strongly in the Cameron camp a few months ago, while its raggedy Sunday sister, the Screws, runs a warm profile on beleaguered PM Brown the ‘The Frown’.
          The cuddly, almost flattering piece in the Screws is written by David Wooding, described puzzlingly as their ‘Head of Politics’, although he nearly always writes for the Sun, (while the Screws’ ‘Political Editor’ is Fraser Nelson, hard right editor of the Spectator). The badly edited piece, which appears to underline Mr Brown’s qualities of determination and resolution, could broadly be construed as pro-Brown – certainly not anti-Brown, in the normal raucous, yah-boo style of the Murdoch Red-Tops.
          No great stretch of cynical appraisal might lead the more sophisticated readers (rare among those of the Screws, so that’s OK) to the conclusion that the paper is gently bigging up Mr Brown because they want him to stay, because, as everyone except, apparently, Mr Brown seems to know, Labour’s chances of being re-elected would be several percentage points higher with Dave Milliband in the Captain’s Chair. And News International have an arrangement with the Conservatives to support them – in return for who knows what.
          Besides, George Osborne’s old chum, Andy Coulson, spinner-in-chief at Central Office, is no stranger to spin by double-bluff. Look what he did, as editor of the Screws back in 2005, for Osborne’s own unattractive, squeaky clean image, when he ran a story which showed that the young man with the air of a sinless choirboy was friends with a ‘hooker’ and a ‘drug addict’. [See my blog “Andy & Ozzy"]

Popularity: 3% [?]

 There is a depressing inevitability about the appointment of another former showbiz hack to the editor’s chair of a paper that possesses what Stephen Brook in the Guardian describes as “the ability to shape the nation’s views on everything from the X-factor to next year’s general election”.

          While a lot of people, including me, don’t recognise that degree of influence in  the Murdochs’ biggest selling Shag Rag (ol’ Rumplechops is a whizz at divining the zeitgeist rather than driving the mood) there is still a distressingly large proportion of the British public who derive at least some of their views from what they read in this opprobrious arse-wiper, and we should be concerned that the Sun is now going to be edited  by a truly light-weight gossip-monger and ex-editor of its tacky little Bizarre page, Dominic Mohan, whose only clear talents lie in brown-nosing those minor celebrities who will have their photograph taken with him and a comprehensive knowledge of Big Brother ‘contestants’. One of his biggest challenges will be in replacing the several million words written about this dreary programme that currently appear each year in the paper, now that Channel 4 have taken the laudable (if pragmatic)  decision to ditch it.

And, by the way, where will Andy Coulson go now, when Cameron dumps him?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Stephen Brook reports in MediaGuardian today that the Sun’s American editor, Emily Smith is coming back to London, and her replacement will be based in Los Angeles (where the celeb gossip is) rather than the East Coast (where the real news is).

Brook points out that Smith, and her successor, Peter Samson have both worked on the Sun’s Bizarre column, the principle gossip page in a paper that is owned by a man who mainlines on gossip. He reminds us that Bizarre is regarded as a stepping stone to higher places and has spawned a lot of hacks who have gone on to greater things.

Popularity: 1% [?]