Media

Released in the last hour or so: Dear All, When I wrote to you last week updating you on a number of business issues I did not anticipate having to do so again so soon. However, I wanted to address the company as a matter of urgency in light of the new claims against the News of the World. We were all appalled and shocked when we heard about these allegations yesterday. I have to tell you that I am sickened that these events are alleged to have happened. Not just because I was editor of the News of the World at the time, but if the accusations are true,

Even by the standards of what has been a particularly shameful episode in British media history, the latest phone-hacking revelations are disgraceful stuff. According to the Guardian, private investigators hired by the News of the World targeted the phones of the then-missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family, in 2002, to listen into their voicemails. And, worse, the paper is said to have deleted voicemails from Milly Dowler’s phone to make room for more — an act which it thought to have given the police, and her parents, hope that she was still alive. There is much more detail here, including news that the Dowlers are now pursuing a damages

A change from the usual for this week’s excavation into The Spectator archives — which is to say, we won’t be digging out an article from the magazine’s 183-year back-catalogue for CoffeeHousers’ delectation. Instead, the images above, and a quick, little story. Given how nostalgic some people have recently been for the General Strike of 1926, my thinking was to present The Spectator’s coverage from the time. (It is critical of both government and unions, as it happens). But it was the appearance of the issue dated 8th May 1926 that caught my eye, rather than its content. Its pages are thicker and rougher than the typical Spectators of that

There are, as the old adage goes, “lies, damned lies and statistics”. I’m beginning to think the same about polls. Take the polls that Britons are not as keen on overseas aid as the Prime Minister. Some of the headlines attached to them are prone to exaggeration. For example, on the back of the poll, the Mail claimed that “one in four people say they will no longer give money to charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children.” People may say that but they don’t seem to mean it. For it turns out that the British public has actually increased its giving to Save the Children by nearly 10 per

I was on the panel of Any Questions last night in Saltaire, the most beautiful town I’ve seen outside of the Highlands. Jonathan Dimbleby always warms everyone up with a test question, which lets the panelists make their mistakes early. The first question was this: the town of Saltaire was founded by a philanthropist, Sir Titus Salt. What can be done to make today’s rich pay their fair share? Lucky for me that it was not recorded, because I went on for ages. Sir Titus was living in an era before the welfare state, where welfare was provided voluntarily, by people in the community. Had he been alive today, the

David Cameron is not a details man. He has always been more comfortable with the grand sweep than the nitty-gritty of policy. Ed Miliband, by contrast, is a natural-born policy wonk who is never more confident than when discussing detail.   Miliband is trying to turn this to his advantage at PMQs and, for the second week in a row, succeeded in catching Cameron out on the details of government policy in an emotive area. Last week it was benefits for cancer sufferers, this week it was the retention of DNA from those arrested for, but not charged with, rape.    The Prime Minister is a good enough performer at

As I argued this morning, the Rowan Williams furore will be sustained if the government over-reacts. So far, so softly from Downing Street: ministers and prominent MPs have been across the airwaves this morning and no one has taken the so-called nuclear option. As you can see below, the responses have been mild. Paul Goodman observes that this is because the PM ‘doesn’t get too worked up’ about this sort of media conflagration. Here’s a brief selection of what Cameron’s lieutenants have said to counter Dr. Williams’ incandescence: Matthew Hancock: “It’s just slightly odd that he’s made these arguments which, in some cases, are simply incorrect, when it comes to

Today’s papers are full of comment on the brilliant Panorama exposé of care home abuse. But none have mentioned what jumped out at me: the parallels between this and the Stanford Prison Experiment. The way that the tattooed Wayne treated his mentally ill patients is sickening — but, to me, this is not just a story about human evil. It’s a story about how institutionalisation brings out the evil in people, and that this evil is far closer to the surface than we like to admit. Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford, randomly divided 25 volunteers to play the roles of prisoners and guards in a poorly-regulated, mock prison.