News mafia - is the country run by former journalists?
Four of the five Labour leadership contenders used to be journalists:
Ed Balls (Financial Times)
Ed Miliband (TV researcher with Brook Lapping)
Andy Burnham (reporter with local paper in Middleton, Lancs)
Diane Abbott (producer with LWT)
I see that Boris Johnson has a piece in this week's Spectator saying the country is now run by journalists.
I've not had a chance to read his article, but he has a point.
Apart from Johnson himself, we also have George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson, Shaun Woodward and Ben Bradshaw, while Gordon Brown was also a TV reporter.
David Cameron was never a journalist but once worked in PR for Carlton Television.
There must be many others too.
Mind you, it's not entirely new - Winston Churchill, Michael Foot, Edward Heath and Tony Benn were all journalists in their early years.
I'm Michael Crick, and I'm Newsnight's political editor. My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know. My job is to find that out. Follow me on
Comment number 1.
At 9th Jun 2010, barriesingleton wrote:AND A LOT MORE ARE LAW-MINDED
It is all about control Michael. I once (slightly unkindly) coined the term: 'THE INTERFERING PROFESSIONS'. They draw people who want to INTERFERE with other peoples lives (all too often, because they can't handle their own).
The most obsessed, claw their needy way to the top. Just look at them
Oh - it's all going awfully well.
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Comment number 2.
At 9th Jun 2010, DebtJuggler wrote:...and how many are engineers?...i.e. the only ones that have a [bleep] clue what they're doing and who have experience of doing a real job, instead of shuffling bits of paper around.
In the toilets of the library of my old university (Russel Group if your wandering), I can remember some wag had etched onto the toilet roll dispenser "PPE DEGREES....PLEASE TAKE TWO!"
I've read somewhere that China's run by engineers. Which is the most successful economy in the world at the moment?
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Comment number 3.
At 9th Jun 2010, grumpyoldman58 wrote:Didn't ed Vaizey work for the Gourdian?
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Comment number 4.
At 9th Jun 2010, jauntycyclist wrote:how easy it is to to from the world of facts to the world of spin and bias?
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Comment number 5.
At 9th Jun 2010, stevie wrote:how many of the candidates in the Labour leadership contest have what you could call 'real' jobs? Thye leave school usually private then off to University, then a job within government as an intern or whatever usually for little or no money but they usually have 'money' within the family so they are groomed for a number of years, get to know the place, don't upset anyone important and be a 'one of us' type of person, then your day will arrive. The one important factor is to at the very outset leave your conscience at the door, obey the whips even if it needs sleepless nights for a long time and do not ever look in the mirror...then as Ed, David etc can well document...you might just make it...
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Comment number 6.
At 10th Jun 2010, JunkkMale wrote:'1. At 3:58pm on 09 Jun 2010, barriesingleton wrote:
I once (slightly unkindly) coined the term: 'THE INTERFERING PROFESSIONS'.
And a good one it is, too. Especially as I see the headline question posed, with little irony it seems, on the pages of the 91Èȱ¬, where tribal mafia opinion seems now to have almost totally suborned fact, and 'journalism' is almost exclusively commentary at the expense of objective reporting.
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