[Kojak]

Interesting article, Brekkie. I hadn't seen this. I don't know whether 'shutdown' sounds any less severe than 'lockdown' personally, but that's really not the point of the article.


I'm afraid I'm simply not knowledgeable enough in the field to know whether this is common practice politically or not. Would, for example, in the days of Thatcher, someone from Downing Street routinely call around the news outlets to try to influence what the BBC / ITN / newspapers etc cover in this way? In Blair's day? In Cameron's? Is it seen as a run of the mill part of politics/journalism? Or is the suggestion that this interference was a completely newfound thing at the outset/during the pandemic?

In any case, to me - admittedly as a complete layman - it should be entirely up to each individual broadcaster/publication which stories they publish and what (if any) angle they come from and they should be able to simply say 'no' if any such unwelcome coercion on which stories to push and which stories to dampen comes in from any outside agencies. (I accept I'm probably seeing things far too simplistically so I'm genuinely interested in the responses from those who have more experience.)

Political communication staff have always applied pressure on media on choice of language.

This went into overdrive with the 97 Blair government,  Alistair Campbell and team were notorious.

Most of the 'exclusives' you see in newspapers are setup by offering one story in return for not going on another

You'd be surprised how much lobbying on even story selection, wording,  choice of contributions ans pictures goes on. You'd be even more surprised to learn how much is agreed before appearing.

It's an all party and governments thing,  disingenuous to paint it as a Tory thing

Peter Sissons recounted a particularly egregious (IMO) example of this in his memoirs. The day of the OJ Simpson verdict was also the day Tony Blair made his keynote address at the Labour conference. Alastair Campbell phoned round the news organisations asking them to 'not lose sight ... of the importance to the country of Mr Blair's speech' - in other words, lead your bulletins with it, or else! ITN studiously ignored him... but the Beeb didn't. Blair's speech led the Six. (Though the Nine, which Peter presented that night, did lead with OJ.)