Following his take on the Sun’s reporting of his own recent walkabout in Southampton, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott takes on Sky News’ broadcast of Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman” comments, labelling them as more evidence of “the dying Murdoch empire (…) doing all it can to influence a British election”:
What Murdoch’s Sky News did today was just as bad as his paper’s phone tapping.
It was a breach of privacy, it was underhand and it was done in the pursuit of ratings and political influence.
(But it should be pointed out that Sky News was the pool broadcaster for the event…)
If this election is still being portrayed as Labour, the Graun, BBC, Indy & Mirror vs. ‘the rest’ by this knee-jerk hypocrite to distract from another own goal that is one thing, but if his mis-information is still being spun as fact in some quarters who should know better that is quite another.
I would love to hear from the shrinking violets who are ‘shocked, I tell you, shocked’ that such a ‘no time for a novice’ donated scoop would not have been played for all it’s worth had it landed in their laps and fit their equally skewed agendas.
Frankly even The Mirror might have been tempted, on the basis of some glimmers of professional pride and a rating opp.
As you add, it was a pooled mic provided. Not a bugging. Such was the rush to bail from another poor encounter all who can and will be blamed who go into meltdown around the inspirational boss they have forgot to deal with it.
This ‘fact’ seems to have been dropped by some, where convenient.
Much as many covered Mr Cameron’s wheelchair-stepping (I am MORTIFIED by that poor choice of words) with a ‘Dad’, but struggled to include the content and context in full, or only in a buried para, if at all.
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