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Paper Monitor

12:56 UK time, Thursday, 9 July 2009

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Not so long ago, HM Press was very exercised about how practices well-known among a small group of people were, with the searching light of scrutiny, suddenly seen to be unacceptable in the public eye.

Back then - last month, actually - it was MPs' expenses. Today it's a bit more uneasy: the subject at the forefront of the nation's mind is (apart from the Ashes) reporters hacking celebrities' phones, and specifically claims that it was more widespread than has been acknowledged.

Uncomfortable territory for journalists to acknowledge some of the tricksy tactics of the business. Thankfully for personal comfort, Paper Monitor can now declare having had no personal experience of these (though that might be one one reason why one spends one's time reading newspapers rather than writing them).

The Guardian with an in depth report (and that it's not only Murdoch papers which stand accused of questionable practices - they include the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and, shock, the Observer).

So how do the others do? No mention in the Mirror, the Sun, or the Daily Telegraph. The Mail has a single column on that all-important page 21. The Daily Express gives , as does the Times which and his spin-doctor rather than the questions about what actually happened.

Well the next few days will be interesting to see what kind of scrutiny HMP will give itself.

The eye was naturally drawn to a Quentin Letts special in the Mail which tries to pit two residents of this parish against each other - Nick Robinson v Robert Peston. - Paper Monitor thought it slightly less than convincing to be honest - but was intrigued by the highlighting of their relative weaknesses: for Robinson it's his eyesight, for Peston it's that he "doesn't like alcohol much". Gentlemen, with vices like that, a weary nation will salute you.

PS. Paper Monitor's enjoyment of reading the Daily Telegraph has been quite spoiled since articles in Private Eye and the paper was making up names of its writers. One Press Gazette correspondent alleges that in times gone by the name Dan Harbles was used to cover cycling, since it was an anagram of handlebars. Now Paper Monitor can't read the paper without trying to look for imagined anagrams of its key writers.

Thus, anagrams of Boris Johnson, Simon Heffer, Benedict Brogan, Bryony Gordon or other Telegraph familiars welcome via the Comments field.

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