Peter Burden » Dominic Mohan

WHY ARE THE SCREWS BIGGING UP BROWN?

Peter — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:47:53 +0000

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"]

THE SUN GOES WITH THE FLOW

Peter — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:28:40 +0000

You wouldn’t have to be Nostradamus, or even Mystic Meg to predict plausibly that Gordon Brown won’t be running the country next summer, nor Harriet, nor Jacqui, nor Milli, nor any other pretenders. The Murdochs have been reading the polls too, and they don’t think Labour will win the election. Nor do they like to back losers, so they’ve grandly told the world today, through the editorially independent Bore-away SUN that they think Gordon and Labour are a pair of busted flushes.

Having, with customary irritating hubris, taken responsibility for getting New Labour elected in ’97, the Shag-Rag makes no apologies for having persuaded their readers to vote for a party who they now claim has done bugger all - listing their failures in a garbled, Sun-style, bullet-pointed rant, put out by its new young editor and World Big-Brother expert, Dominic Mohan.

To this was added specific support for David Cameron – not very surprising, given that young Dave’s head spinner (still disgracefully and dangerously in place at Central Office) is Andy Coulson, notorious purveyor of non-truth and serious amnesiac, who was a Screws editor as well as confidant and assistant to the Testarossa, Rebekah (Wade) Brooks, CEO of Murdoch’s British papers.

Even if the ‘readers’ of the daily ShagRag could be bothered to read its puerile piffling editorials, they’re not going to be swayed by anything it has to say. That’s not why they buy the Sun. And Young David should stop letting Andy persuade him otherwise. It’s like trying to bribe the voters with a pair of Page 3 tits, and it demeans a grown-up political party. And PS, Dave…… keeping Andy on the team may just make Rupert feel he’s lot more important than he is.

Sun's new man loses his Big Brother

Peter — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:15:13 +0000

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?

OUT OF WHOSE ARSE WILL THE SUN SHINE NEXT?

Peter — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:17:38 +0000

Hackwatchers are busy guessing whose bum will replace Rebekah (Wade) Brooks’ in the editor’s chair at Britain’s leading daily Shag-Rag, the Sun when she slithers a few feet further up the greasy pole that is News International.

Most think deputy Dominic Mohan, but the Murdochs (Rumplechops and Young James) haven’t said. An announcement is due next month when the Testarossa goes upstairs, and there is speculation that Mohan will soon be asked to join his (elder) boss in Miami, to paddle on Palm Beach and be told the great news (as Piers Morgan has said he was).

Luckily for Mohan – former editor of the paper’s pathetic Bizarre showbiz page – journalistic quality matters very little at the Sun these days, as long as you have a hot line to the inmates of the Big Brother house, which seems so far to have provided Mohan’s journalistic vertex, and a lot of inaccurate and trivial twaddle for which anyone with even a small brain wouldn’t give a poodle’s pillock.

He’s hot favourite according to Paddy Power, who offer him at odds on 4/11.

Fifth in the betting, below Victoria Newton (Head of Features), Chris Pharo (Head of News) and Richard Wallace (Editor of the Daily Mirror), is my favourite, ex-Screws editor, Andy Coulson. After his laughably unconvincing display of innocence in front of the Culture Media Sport select committee last month, in the wake of further revelations about the Screws’ phone-hacking, it’s unlikely that even the loyal David Cameron will feel it necessary to retain his services. Now that he’s been seen by millions on TV, dissembling so vigorously and obviously, his credibility is surely too tainted for a serious contender for government to keep him on.

So, Andy will need a job; Rupert likes him – he took the rap by resigning for something about which he says he knew nothing (bit odd?) – and, as his performance in front of the committee showed, he’s quick on his feet and Teflon coated (so far). And he’s always got on well with the Titian Tigress, who would become his immediate boss.

Coy about Coulson

Peter — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:15:03 +0000

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.

Smart’s predecessor (as deputy editor) Victoria Newton, became Head of Features, and former Bizarre editor, Piers Morgan went on to edit the News of the World and the Daily Mirror.

Dominic Mohan, another Bizarre ex-editor, is now deputy editor of the Sun and the most likely candidate to succeed Rebekah Wade when she lifts her shapely bottom from the editor’s chair for the last time.

Since he more than touched on the subject, I wonder why Brook didn’t mention that one of the most prominent alumni of the Sun’s Bizarre column is David Cameron’s media man and head doorkeeper, Andy Coulson, the man who, as editor of the News of the World, saw two of his journalists go to jail for illegally pursuing Royals, while claiming he’d no idea what they’d been up to (oh yeah?).

What’s going on at the Guardian? Why are they coy about reminding readers of his provenance? Perhaps they’re just being nice to Andy to keep a foot in the door at Conservative Central Office, and get plenty of access to the doings of Cameron’s Cuddly Party. At least they won’t have to keep up the pretence for long. Cameron can’t take Coulson to Downing Street with him.