The Guardian's Double Standard On Bribing Law Enforcement Agents.

As I've already said the Guardian's work in the News of the World scandal has been exemplary and they should be rightly proud of their achievements.

They rightly slam the payments that the NOTW made to police officers in order to facilitie their criminal reporting (did you spot the pun there?).

This isn't the first time they've discussed payments made by News International reporters to law enforcement officials. Yet on a previous occasion the Guardian didn't make a fuss about it and indeed described the eventual prosecution of the leaker as having:

worrying implications for investigative journalism

In fact they quoted the subject's lawyer with seeming approval when he described the prosecution as:

making a mountain out of a molehill by choosing to prosecute a former agent for conduct which is fairly run of the mill." 

What could be the difference between then and now?

In 2002 they were describing an agent of the USA's "Drug Enforcement Agency" who leaked files about the Conservative Party treasurer Michael Ashcroft- that falsely implied that he was involved in drug smuggling and money laundering- to the Times..

So bribing law enforcement agencies is wrong unless the aim is to smear a Tory.

Incidentally the journalist who led the Times smear campaign- and presumably knew about paying a DEA agent- is Tom Baldwin who is currently Ed Miliband's press secretary.

Quote Of The Day

They paywall protected Times has a "Speak your branes" style voxpop on the merits of the spending cuts announced yesterday. One member of the public came out with this gem:

Cuts should not be made at the expense of the public sector.

Great Issues Of Our Time

For the last two days the "most read" story on the Times website has been "Should Carla Bruni have worn a bra?".

I'm undecided.

Nothing To See Now, Move Along.

I am impressed by the heroic efforts of the Times to play down the illegal bugging affair that their stablemate, the News of the World, has been caught up in. Let's see:

• Whereas all the other newspapers as well as the BBC have it as their top story, the Times relegates to the number four domestic story.
• They make no mention of Rupert Murdoch, who appears to have a greater right to anonymity than Nightjack.
• They focus the story on how it effects David Cameron, as his spin doctor is the former NOTW editor, Andy Coulson.
  
• The normal comments facility is disabled, despite working perfectly well on all other stories.
  

Still their coverage is better than the Sun's, who have decided not to cover this celebrity filled political scandal for reasons of space.

Quote Of The Day.

Chris Dillow on the outing of 'Nightjack':

And herein lies a paradox. Night Jack - and the similarly defunct Sierra Charlie - did more to improve the esteem of the police force than every official pronouncement from chief constables and PR spokesman put together. Who ever came away from Night Jack's blog thinking less of the police? Who ever came away from listening to the unlamented Ian Blair thinking more of them?

Unmasking Anonymous Bloggers.

The Times are apparantly planning to unmask the anonymous police blogger 'Nightjack'. They are behaving deplorably. That is all.

Update: If this post about the journalist doing the outing is correct, then you'd have thought that he had more respect for privacy wouldn't you?

General Custer Brings Little Bighorn To An End..

Richard Dawkins expert in biology, really not an expert in anything else, writes in a letter to the Times that:

Ever since Mr Gorbachev brought the Cold War to an end, the deterrence argument for British nuclear weapons has been void.

Well one thing Dawkins is good at is rebranding, losing has become 'bringing to an end'.

Via Comment Central.

Perambulating Penises

Simon Barnes in the Times shares this um insight.

basketball is mostly populated by 7ft black men. The players tend to shave their heads to resemble perambulating penises...