Robin Brown

Peter Mandelson says he regrets saying that the Labour party was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’.

From The Grauniad:

Lord Mandelson has admitted he is no longer “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes”, given rising inequality and stagnating middle-class incomes brought about by the damaging downsides of globalisation.

Almost a decade and a half after making the remarks, which were seen as characterising the Labour government’s embrace of free markets and the City, Mandelson said he was “much more concerned” about inequality than when he made first made his comments to a US industrialist in California in 1998.

This isn’t, in itself, especially interesting beyond one of New Labour’s key architects admitting he got something wrong, which is fairly rare.

What’s interesting to me is that I interviewed Mandelson in 1998 and quizzed him about the wisdom of those remarks while representing Hartlepool – a depressed post-industrial north-east town with high unemployment and low ‘filthy rich’ rates – as MP (the full story is here).

Unsurprisingly he bridled at the question – and then denied flat out that he’d said it. I knew that he’d almost certainly said it, so I asked for a clarification. “You’ve never said that?”.

“No. Next question.”

These were the days before the internet was much use as a research tool, so I’d trawled newspapers archives and stacks of various political mags to find some interesting questions to ask Mandelson – I’d seen the quote referred to a few times but couldn’t trace where it had first been used or who had first reported it, despite talking to a reporter who’d written it (he’s copied it form another report), so it remained – like the mushy pea story – something that was probably true but plausibly deniable.

Mandelson remains the single most unpleasant interviewee – and one of the more unpleasant people – I’ve ever met and he appeared to take great delight in trying to rough up and obstruct a student reporter simply because they’d nailed him with one of his own dim-witted remarks.

So I take some small measure of satisfaction, the best part of 15 years later, to call Peter – now Lord – Mandelson, in this one regard, a liar (I still have the tapes).

That politicans tell lies and, let’s be honest, wholly inconsequential ones at that, is not headline news either. But on behalf of my 19-year-old self I’d just like to call Peter out on that lie – and for being a total dick.

I’ve watched the hackgate/NewsCorp/Leveson circus with a fascinated mixture of horror, revulsion and amusement. It’s been something of a car crash spectacle, only onlookers didn’t hack the phones belonging to the relatives of those expiring in the inferno, stick a camera into the faces of dying people or hound the relatives of the dead afterwards.

Seeing the likes of Brooks and the Murdochs get some measure of comeuppance has been vaguely satisfying, but I don’t think a lot will change. One lot of dodgy newsroom execs will get the boot; another load, steeped in the dubious cultures of modern national newsrooms, will take their place.

The new I'm A Celebrity cast lines up at the Leveson Inquiry

What may happen is that the ridiculous Press Complaints Commission might finally shuffle off to a Soho restaurant for good, in that it should be clear to even the most swivel-eyed hack that it’s permanently fucked; rather like a semi-senile octogenarian constantly befuddled by what his avaricious minions are up to behind his back.

The revelations over what families such as the Dowlers and McCanns were put through should cause everyone who calls himself a journalist to cringe with the awfulness of it all. The press has been out of control for much of the last decade; each jaw-dropping anecdote about hacking, blagging or other criminal behaviour another black mark against an industry capable of so much good.

Yesterday at the Leveson inquiry absolutely blew that away though, with the testimony of Paul McMullan, a man who has only existed previously in cartoonish representations of the most archetypally amoral journalist going. McMullan virtually admitted, without shame, that he had broken the law in many and varied ways more times than he could remember – and went on to explain that absolutely anything that sold newspapers was justified.

I’d suggest that the combination of massive, extra-legal power, backed up by lorry-loads of available cash – essentially the tools of tabloid journalists over the last ten years – coupled with the belief that virtually any behaviour, and any story, is justifiable is a pretty worrying proposition.

McMullan didn’t seem to think so. “Privacy is for paedos,” he averred, tucking his press card into a hatband, scowling at a Muslim and knocking one out to a page three picture of Lucy Pinder’s tits. `

“Circulation defines what is the public interest,” he continued, lighting up a fag, breaking wind and slurping on a pint of warm beer. “I don’t see it’s the job of anyone else to force the public to read this or that.”

The public interest. Have three words ever been so misused to justify such scandalous behaviour? To a new generation of hacks and hackettes, this new definition of “the public interest” happens to dovetail with “what newspapers want to publish”. Jon Venables’ new identity; Kate McCann’s private diaries; Charlotte Church’s tits – public interest.

These things cannot possibly be in any recognised definition of “the public interest”; the only “interest” involved here is self-interest. Over the last 40 years journalists have started to fantasise a bizarre superhero role for themselves, where they bring down druglords, bent politicans and have become crusaders for free speech and the Great British Public.

In some ways they have – and the right of the press to muddy what constitutes legal and illegal conduct in the pursuit of uncovering corruption, mass illegality and behaviour inimical to civil society has been, unofficially, enshrined.

McMullan just about stopped short of admitting to – but happily defended – a wide spectrum of illegal activities, such cultivating contacts with police, being involved in high-speed car chases, entering private buildings under false pretences, theft, telephone hacking and using private detectives to ‘blag’ information.

Many of these activities fall into a kind of grey area in the PCC’s codes of practice – and statutory law. The Guardian only managed to bring down Jonathan Aitken – one of the greatest instance of investigative journalism in our country’s history – by faking a letter from the House of Commons. Illegal? Unethical? Perhaps – but there’s a peculiar ‘ends justify the means’ aspect to journalism in this country.

In some instances they do. Most of the great political scoops of the tabloid era will have been broken with some assistance from legally dubious methods. If that work exposes corruption, illegality or double standards of those in public life then I can see a justification.

But somehow “the public interest” has been extended to actors, sportspeople, musicians, reality TV people – even the families of those in the public eye; basically anyone famous enough to arguably be of interest to people who buy newspapers. Tabloids tell us they’re the guardians of truth and honesty and give us tawdry sex-and-drugs splashes concerning people like Joe Calzaghe and Kate Middleton’s uncle; the very reason the News of the World was frequently referred to as the News of the Screws.

McMullan’s only apparent regret was that he once discovered Denholm Elliot’s daughter – homeless, drug-addicted and working as a prostitute – took her to his flat, reeled of some grimy topless photos of her and splashed her sad wreck of a life all over the weekend papers. A couple of years later she killed herself.

Some journos and editors cannot tell the difference any more between who’s a legitimate target and who isn’t. And their behaviour risks legislation, in response, that will make it harder for journalists to legitimately investigate legitimate targets.

In taking advantage of the grey areas of what’s excusable as part of political and economic journalism – by exporting those cloak-and-dagger methods to tittle-tattle – they’ve probably made it easier for governments to muzzle the kind of journalists who exposed Jonathan Aitken, Robert Maxwell, Jeffrey Archer, Conrad Black and expenses-fiddling politicians.

That they can’t see it themselves, apart from a few notable exceptions, is worrying. They genuinely believe they have the right to do what they want in the pursuit of a story. That extends to deleting messages on Milly Dowler’s phone, causing her family to believe she was still alive when she was dead; and printing Kate McCann’s grief-filled private diaries, before going on to suggest the McCanns had sold their daughter for cash without a shred of evidence.

The hacking and the dubious provenance of the diaries – almost certainly both illegal – sold papers, runs the McMullan defence, therefore they were fair game. His testimony, while amusing, should do little to convince the general population that tabloid hacks aren’t the absolute scum of the Earth.

How did any of it support his view that the PCC does a good job, the press should remain free and that journos are sympathetic characters who are working in the “the public interest”? Not one jot; in fact his testimony was so batshit that there was apparently some discussion that it should be ignored completely.

Justice Leveson, currently overseeing what amounts to the most fascinating chat show ever broadcast, says that a free press represents “an essential check on all aspects of public life”. Certainly it does, but it’s become clear from the parade of celebs, tits, paedos, grief-mongering, jingoism and shrill hyperbole in many of the tabloids that it’s simply not doing that any more.

Nick Davies – whose horribly depressing book Flat Earth News is a must for any journos and has been circulated among every journo, by every journo, I know – says that it’s “incredibly difficult” to know where the public interest lies. That difficulty has become a cloak to protect dodgy journalists and covers a multitude of sins.

“[A]ny failure within the media affects all of us,” says Leveson. “At the heart of this inquiry, therefore, may be one simple question — who guards the guardians?”

That should send shock waves rippling through the media – and particularly the PCC. But they only have themselves to blame. For too long the cowboy journalists have bent rules designed to help the press expose wrongdoing in order to shaft anyone who enters into the same definition of “public interest” to which Paul McMullan subcribes.

“A balance must be struck between the freedom of the press and the rights of individuals to be treated fairly,” said Leveson. That the balance is hopelessly skewed is fairly clear from the first few days of the inquiry; that Leveson will feel compelled to act, given some of his statements thus far, seems equally clear.

How has this been allowed to happen? Because successive governments enter a Faustian pact with media moguls and their lackeys such as Murdoch, Brooks, Lord Rothermere, the Barclay Brothers, Paul Dacre and Richard Desmond – bestowing favours and turning blind eyes to the worst excesses.

The end result is a situation where the Prime Minister is best chums with two people described at the Leveson inquiry as “the scum of journalism”, complicit in a system that has the power to bring down politicians – or destroy any public figure – almost at a whim.

I wonder if Leveson has changed his mobile passcode.

Just a quickie, to promote a site I find amusing – and to flag up something even more amusing resulting from it.

The News Grind is a satire site that I contribute the occasional bit of writing to if something catches my imagination.

Today the news that Kay Burley was descending on Newcastle to broadcast her appalling live reports from the vicinity of a freshly-dead corpse spoke to me, so I dashed something off in my lunch hour, emailed it to the ed and thought nothing more of it

Until a text arrived, telling me it had been picked up as a serious news report by AOL News on something called the Surge Desk, with a header pretty similar to the one I wrote.

AOL News bases a report on a spoof story on The News Grind

Fairly astonishing, in that mine is not an especially subtle satire at the best of times. But it would never occur to me that the header ‘Nation ‘can’t wait’ for Moat shoot-out’ might be taken for real.

Or that the suggestion that schools and businesses were closing so Brits could enjoy the rolling news coverage and resulting bloodbath together as a family could possibly be true.

Here’s how AOL saw it:

Forget the World Cup action between Uruguay and the Netherlands — people all across the United Kingdom are tuning their tellies to the news today in hopes of catching a glimpse of what promises to be a far bloodier confrontation between a fugitive and the officers he has promised to kill.

As officers and dogs move in, citizens from around the isle are anticipating a swift and gruesome conclusion to the national drama. Some are even clamoring for it, calling it the best live entertainment they’ve seen in some time.

News Grind paints a vivid picture of the mood:

“I can scarcely wait for the climax,” confirmed Elsie White, 77, as she raced back to her house after picking up some toffees and copies of today’s paper from a local newsagent featuring the blood-soaked face of a police officer allegedly shot by Moat.

“We haven’t had a live event like this to enjoy for quite some time and there’s only old ‘Doctors’ episodes on at this time of day.”

Families have been collecting children from schools and nurseries throughout the day so they could watch together, as expectations reached fever pitch that a violent firearms confrontation was imminent.

Over 800 schools have closed across the country as a result.

Even if that story didn’t ring any alarm bells, what about related news such as ‘Trainee builders must have PhD in Postmodernism’; ‘Heart attack ‘link’ with sheer unadulterated terror’ and ‘“Look at me, I’m a fat bastard,” says proud local man’?

A mistake anyone could have made? Perhaps, in these days of rolling news and slapping on content and the rush to be first with a report – the news grind, if you will.

But even that old chestnut about Americans and irony doesn’t wash – the US is the home of The Onion, the finest satire site in the world, after all.

Maybe it’s just a sign that, in these information-saturated days, even the news is beyond satire?

EDIT: This literally never worked on any of my blogs. Neat idea, poor execution.

The Guardian has launched a new WordPress plugin that allows self-hosted bloggers to reprint content from newspaper’s website.

The Guardian News Feed plugin is surely designed to act as a direct counterpoint to talk of paywalls and charging for newspaper content and is an extension of the Grauniad’s Open Platform system, which allows people who sign up to access the paper’s massive databanks and develops apps based on it via an API.

There are over 1m articles available published as far back as 1999 available through the plugin, which theoretically looks quite simple, and users can do pretty much anything they want with the articles, so long as they leave the actual content and code alone.

This is pretty much an ultimate expression of the idea of content as online currency – exchanging content, apps or services for traffic, leads and revenue.

In this case, the Guardian content is exchanged for increased traffic, backlinks, harvested data and ad revenues, leading to more exposure, brand equity, SEO juice and cash.

A screenshot of the Guardian News Feed plugin back-end

It’s hard to see a downside for The Guardian. By signing up and republishing articles from the site I had to enter more data about myself and every Guardian article reprinted on my blog gets more backlinks, domain authority and ad clicks for the paper’s website.

Depending on what they do with anchor text and ads, they can probably pull off targeted SEO campaigns and ad campaigns too. Now multiply that by potentially hundreds of thousands of blogs around the world.

In return I get a nifty new toy to play with, potentially higher traffic and – arguably – a little more authority. If I’m clever and use the articles well I could even get a boost in search engines and ad revenues too, if I displayed ads on my blogs.

The exchange is complete, both parties have something of value. It sounds like a win-win situation, and it’s a great way to further leverage the latent value in the Guardian’s article bank, by doing virtually nothing on an ongoing basis.

Already some on Twitter have started to voice their scorn about the plugin. And, really, what we have here is a very clever form of inbound marketing, using the Grauniad’s massive and powerful archive of content – it’s simply leveraging that content to make money in the same way that Murdoch is trying to leverage The Times’ content via a paywall.

Whereas The Times uses content for more explicit transaction – using content as a currency to generate cash directly, the Guardian’s more elegant approach delivers all sorts of other benefits, besides revenues – brand equity, SEO authority, increased engagement – albeit somewhat nebulous and of indeterminate cash value.

But it’s a smart bit of PR too – while everyone was talking about News International’s attempts to place more value on its content by charging for access, The Guardian is throwing its content out to whomever wants to use it; it can be sold as a direct, and opposite, move to that of Murdoch.

Finally, I’d hoped to include an article using the news feed below, but I can’t get it to work – probably something to do with my host I suspect. Which just goes to show that even the simplest, most elegant, ideas can be undermined by a lack of technical nous or user error.

• Go here for instructions and more deetails

I speak not of Gordon Brown’s parting shot in the 2010 election – his pledge to resign to facilitate a deal between the Liberal Democrats and Labour – but of the extraordinary reaction by the Tory press to the news today.

If Brown thought he had endured the worst the assembled frothing, tweeded, spluttering, luv-a-duck rent-a-mob of assembled gobshites and nutcases had to throw at him, he was wrong.

Throughout the last couple of weeks, and through various twists and turns, one thing has become clear. The assembled weight of the media has been thrown well and truly behind Cameron and the Tories to almost unimaginable proportions.

The Tory press today suggested that no less than a coup was being perpetrated right under the noses of British subjects, and appears to be calling for its own in return.

What else to make of the claims that Brown is perpetuating a ‘sordid’ coup; or that Clegg has behaved ‘treacherously’?

Yesterday, says the Mail, was a ‘squalid day for democracy’. Inside, Richard Littlejohn railed against ‘nothing less than an attempted coup’, a ‘cynical putsch’ and a ‘naked power grab’.

He went on to state that Brown might as well have ‘ordered the tanks to roll down Whitehall and train their guns on the meeting of the Parliamentary Conservative Party’.

If he pulls off a Lib-Lab coalition, ‘democracy as we have known it in Britain will be shattered – possibly beyond repair’.

Astonishingly, Littlejohn even dares to have a pop at the ‘desperate Labour propaganda sheets’, while taking a pot-shot at the ‘the State broadcaster, the BBC’ for broadcasting lies about the Conservative party, the true hallmark of all swivel-eyed columnists.

To my mind, all of this goes well beyond anything the Tory press has managed before. The sheer brass neck, the hypocrisy, and the deliberate ignorance of parliamentary process. The right-wing press seems to have lost its grasp of the facts at hand.

The electoral system that they all back has produced a hung parliament, the mess that is responsible for all this back-room chicanery, but they want to keep it. (Note to Kay Burley: People did not ‘vote for a hung parliament’).

Brown, constitutionally, has the first right to try and form government, but allowed Clegg and Cameron to have the first shot at it, despite the resulting power vacuum.

The Conservative Party did not win the election. Combined, the Labour-Lib Dem share of the vote dwarfs the Tory share of the vote. Combined, Lib-Lab seats would eclipse Tory seats.

British politics in the 20th century is littered with unelected Prime Ministers, mostly Tory, as would be the case under a new Labour leader in a progressive coalition.

This is how hung parliaments work, this is how our electoral system works, this is how the constitution works. This is how politics works.

I’m personally dubious that a Lib-Lab coalition is the right result to come out of this election, but I’m not clear on what is the right result. No-one, to my mind, has a mandate. There is no victor.

But a Lib-Lab coalition would be perfectly constitutional and perfectly reasonable. It would be no more of a coup than a minority Tory government or a Lib-Con coalition, which is to say that it would be none at all.

The irony is, in complaining about Brown’s final act constituting nothing more than a ‘coup’- with all the talk about ‘treachery’ and ‘sordid’ politicking – the right-wing press appears to be calling for nothing less itself.

In a more fractious political, social or economic landscape, the language and tone deployed by tabloid editors and columnists across London screaming for Brown’s head could be explosive – and horribly irresponsible.

As it is, despite all the promises that the markets would not tolerate a hung parliament and that people would be burned to death on the streets, subsequently proved to be baseless, the press just looks like a spoiled child denied its way.

Brown may be affording himself a smile.

Seriously, what is it with Sky at the moment? While the press has, on the whole, thrown a bit of a wobbler because it didn’t get its own way over Cameron during this election, the broadcast media – Sky specifically – has suffered something akin to a nervous breakdown.

I think this is a crisis of confidence and direction on the Beeb, ITN and Sky, as they increasingly search for lines that are engaging to viewers yet don’t break any rules over impartiality.

As I’ve outlined before, I don’t believe the media really has an idea of how to do political reporting anymore, unless it can find hooks that it believes it needs to maintain the interest of the idiot population.

As has been evident throughout, the UK’s population has been far from passive – or idiotic – in the election; with Twitter protests, protests against the media and protests against Sky specifically, following Kay Burley’s bizarre outburst against David Babbs for daring to engage in his democratic right to protest.

For my money, Burley is simply an idiot who has no place anywhere near political reporting, and I don’t have much time for Adam Boulton either.

However, Boulton does have the right pedigree and seems to be generally respected as a political correspondent – until today.

Boulton absolutely lost it in an interview with Alastair Campbell today, who gently teased Boulton in the way that only he and Peter Mandelson truly can, over Boulton being secretly angry that Cameron may find his anointed path to Number 10 blocked by a brilliant bit of political chicanery by Gordon Brown.

Campbell is voicing what has been whispered less and stated openly more and more during the election campaign – that Sky’s coverage has been less than impartial.

Perhaps that’s what touched a nerve with Boulton, though I personally have found Nick Robinson’s punditry more and more intriguing during the election. Campbell was again present in a live round table – with David Steel, Huw Edwards and Andrew Adonis – responding to the news of Brown’s resignation hit the airwaves today and, again, seemed to fluster Robinson.

So, what is it? The media suddenly angry that their previously-unchallenged position as interlocutors is threatened by social media and pressure groups? Or the cracks showing in the political dead bat of political correspondents as the situation becomes more volatile? Or is it evidence that some in the broadcast media, Sky specifically, are testing the waters of the UK’s objectivity rules, perhaps in preparation for a more Fox News-like controversial stance on politics?

I’m not sure. I do sense that Sky may attempt a more entertainment-news approach in the future that may test the barriers of what Ofcom deems acceptable. And I do sense that a few correspondents, Boulton most obviously, have found it hard to disguise their true feelings.

But I suspect it’s more a case of political correspondents finding it tough to keep up with the twists and turns of a genuinely incredible campaign, and trying to keep pace with social media, in tandem with the demands of 24-hour rolling news.

So, Sky cracks first. And maybe there’s not a grand conspiracy to get Cameron into Number 10, maybe it’s just a case of folding under the pressure. Boulon certainly seems to be feeling it at the moment

Apart from the shrieking Burley. I think, more prosaically, she’s a fool.

NB. Seems Boulton nearly lost it again with Ben Bradshaw

EDITED TO ADD:

Journalism.co.uk has a good account of Campbell’s run-in with Boulton, which makes the Sky correspondent’s behaviour seem even more bizarre. This bit is particularly good:

ADAM BOULTON:
Why hasn’t he had a Cabinet meeting before making this offer?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:
He is about to have a Cabinet meeting now.
ADAM BOULTON:
Yes, but now he has made the offer, what can the Cabinet do, why haven’t you had a meeting with the parliamentary Labour party like the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have had?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:
He’s having one tomorrow, he’s having one tomorrow.
JEREMY THOMPSON:
Gentlemen, gentlemen.
ADAM BOULTON:
In other words it’s you, totally unelected have plotted this with …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:
Me?
ADAM BOULTON:
Yes. You are happiest speaking about him …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:
That’s because the Ministers are going to a Cabinet meeting …
ADAM BOULTON:
He has got a parliamentary party, you’re the one that cooked it up, you’re the one that’s cooked it up with Peter Mandelson.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:
Oh my God, unbelievable. Adam, calm down.
JEREMY THOMPSON:
Gentlemen, gentlemen, let this debate carry on later. Let’s just remind you that Gordon Brown said a few minutes ago…
ADAM BOULTON:
I actually care about this country.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:
You think I don’t care about it, you think I don’t care about it.
ADAM BOULTON:
I don’t think the evidence is there.

Campbell’s predictably amusing response, later posted on his blog:

Adam gets very touchy at any suggestion that he is anything other than an independent, hugely respected, totally impartial and very important journalist whose personal views never see the light of day, and who works for an organisation that is a superior form of public service than anything the BBC can deliver.

As if there were ever any doubt. Today’s front pages from the right-wing newspapers manage to stretch credulity, taste, truth and decency.

It’s in every newspaper editor’s best interests to pick a winning candidate, to maintain the assumption that newspapers are important in deciding the outcome of elections. The option is to buck against that trend to my going off-kilter, like the Guardian this time around, or dig in with sheer bloody-mindedness, like the Daily Mirror.

As expected, there’s the usual roll call of shame from the right-wing tabloids – ranging from the sheer brass neck and wrong-headedness of the Sun’s Obama rip of Cameron to the implication on the front of the Daily Mail that not voting for David Cameron will mean people being burned to death on the streets of the UK.

The Sun’s is by far the most noteworthy, because whoever greenlit that one – presumably bizarre/Bizarre man Dominic Mohan, currently, baffling the editor – has got it so wrong it beggars belief.

Why? Because very few Sun readers will get the reference. Because even the staunchest Tory will not believe the an ideology-free zone like Cameron will really bring anything new to the table. Because the whole thing is an insult to politics, to design, to typography, to paper. It’s truly abysmal.

I expected a typical Sun piece of crap, like Brown’s face in a haggis and GORDON CLOWN wirtten across the top. The sort of childish rubbish we’re apparently all expected to think is hilarious. But the Sun wrongfooted me, by being even worse.

The Mail’s is more insidious, and says much more about the paper’s relationship with its readership. There’s a clear insinuation that unless Cameron gets a strong enough mandate and starts cutting the deficit we’ll all be going to Hell in a handbasket, which uses a picture of someone actually on fire to try and frighten people into following its line. Which pretty much sums up the Mail.

The Express is more prosaic, ramming its message into the sheep-like minds of its readers. Vote Cameron, Brown a disaster, hung parliament a disaster. It’s only a surprise there’s no mention of cancer or Diana in there somewhere. It can barely be thought of as a newspaper any more.

The Telegraph dutifully falls into line with the Tory ‘hope over fear’ nonsense.

The Times is, on the face of it, restrained. There’s even quite a good cartoon, and the whole thing smacks of gravitas. But we all know that the editorial line of the Times is fatally compromised.

The truth is, they’re all compromised. By the lines forced on them by proprietors, by the need to pander to readerships, by the need to achieve a pay-off on back-room deals with media moguls.

This election has been the worst I can remember as far as the right-wing press goes, through their naked partisanship and by neglecting their greater roles as educators and informers.

Things have come to such a head that popular protests against the press were held a week ago. Laura Oliver, on Journalism.co.uk argues that new media may need to fill the objective void left by a partisan media.

The Guardian and Indie have chosen a meek ‘need for PR’ line, which will probably serve well to split the vote. Only the Mirror has come out with any fire in its belly, with a picture of Cameron in his Bullingdon attire.

I think it’s a powerful front page, and there will be some interesting discussions as to where the rights to that image may lie in the future – public domain, public interest? – but it’s still the old tribal drum-beat.

I suppose that an editorial line borne of ideology isn’t really as offensive as one for naked commercial gain, but looking at the selection of paper this morning I just felt depressed.

Depressed that it’s come to this; depressed for the parlous state of journalism in the UK; depressed at the hate and fear-mongering.

The 2010 general election: A willfully stupid, mendacious and depressing election.

There’s been something awful about this election, beyond the stuff that’s usually awful about elections.

Alongside how utterly hopeless the media at large have been in actually reporting the issues – as opposed to some things David Cameron has said, some suits Nick Clegg has worn and some mistakes Gordon Brown has made – there’s been the most naked display of vested interests for nearly 20 years.

The likes of The Mail and The Express adopt frothingly bigoted political lines because it’s what helps them sell papers, and it reflects the unpleasant ideologies of their respective owners.

The Torygraph backs the Conservatives because it’s read mainly by retired Brigadiers who remember the Boer War. The Star… well, who gives a flying one what the Star thinks eh?

As for The Sun and The Times, well, they back whoever proprietor Rupert Murdoch tells them to back, based on various deals with whichever party he reckons will win the election and deliver the goods.

This time around it’s barely even a secret that Murdoch, or rather his son James, wants to open a new front against the BBC, and has promised David Cameron his backing in exchange for crippling the Beeb.

The Sun always makes a big deal of wanting to look like its support is the deciding factor in an election campaign, but in reality Murdoch backs whoever he calculates is most likely to win.

In years gone by, back to 1997 and throughout the 80s, this was fairly easy to predict. The only recent blip was 1992, where the Sun pulled out all of the stops to virtually suggest that Neil Kinnock was insane.

‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It,’ gloated the Scum, so we know who to thanks for the following five years of the dross from John Major’s crumbling government.

’92 is an election regularly debated by students of psephology – a smart word for voting behaviour – because all the polls suggested that Labour would win. Could it have been the rabidly hostile Tory press than won it for Major? Tough to say, but I’ve never been in doubt as to the potential power of the media in politics.

One need only look at the last 18 months of absolute slating Gordon Brown – like Major, a decent man – has endured from the Sun, Mail and Telegraph; the results of which are that most people in the country now despise him without actually knowing why.

Anyway, 2010 should provide another clue as to the power of the media in elections because, having backed Cameron, the Murdoch press now faces the possibility of their man not actually winning. What will that do for the Sun’s habit of picking a winner? Or Murdoch’s latest ambitions?

The palpable desperation emanating from the front pages of the Sun recently has been almost pitiful, culminating in today’s risible front cover where Simon F’in Cowell appears to give his support to Cameron.

Delve inside the paper (if you can bear to) and you’ll find article after article telling us how much Sun readers love Cameron, and how a hung parliament will mean that Britain will fall into a volcano. Except, that’s not what Sun readers voting in polls on the online version have been saying.

Malcolm Coles has shown as much with some number-crunching on Sun polls, which show that its readers believe that Clegg won the third debate; Sun readers aren’t fussed about a hung parliament; and that a poll apparently showing Mums to be swinging behind Cameron shows nothing of the sort.

The Sun has gone into Cameron overdrive, barely stopping short of suggesting that WebCameron’s cock is bigger than Brown’s and Clegg’s put together, and offering a kind of non-stop tabloid blowjob to the Photoshopped Tory leader.

The rise of Clegg has also sent shivers down the spine at News International, so a full-scale assault was subsequently launched on the Lib Dems.

Unlike the US, where Fox News is basically a propaganda arm for the lunatic US right wing, the UK broadcast media is bound by strict rules of impartiality. Bad news for Murdoch Junior, who wants to extend Sky into a kind of Death Star of the media.

But this election campaign has brought the first whispers that Sky’s news coverage has not appeared to be quite as straight down the line as it should. And David Cameron has appeared to suggest that broadcasting regulations may need an overhaul. What can it all mean?

People have told me that Murdoch Senior is actually fairly left-of-centre, as far as his personal politics are concerned. What’s more he’s fairly friendly with Brown, and hit it off big style with Tony.

But Murdoch doesn’t let politics get in the way of business, and having been persuaded by son James to back Cameron, has had to throw the combined News International weight behind Cameron and the Tories.

What will happen? For the first time since 1992 I have no idea, as far as the election goes. As for the press, it’s been fascinating to see the Sun frantically attempting to shore up its man, knowing that its reputation is at stake. Indeed, the FT suggests that the Sun’s backing for Cameron has had the opposite effect.

A defeat for Cameron may mean that the rise of multimedia and the web has neutered the power of the papers in this regard, and with it the power of print media barons.

A win could open up a new front in partisan media, via Sky News and the humbling of the BBC, because Murdoch’s help won’t come without strings. Then, maybe, it won’t be the Sun wot wins it in the future, but the Sky.

I’ve watched all of the coverage in this general election through my fingers, as the whole thing is beyond cringe-worthy.

I mean this in several ways: David Cameron’s smug face; the media annihilation of Brown; the ghastly media commentators; the desperation of the Murdoch press in making sure their man gets in; and the self-congratulatory tone of the whole thing when the media thinks it’s done something clever like catching Brown out in an off-guarded moment today where he referred to a woman as ‘bigoted’.

It’s changed the whole tone and focus of the election into even more of a menagerie than it has been previously, with the pantomime of the TV debates and the absurd merry-go-round of opinion polls and predictions and tiresome echo chamber chatter that generates heat and no light whatsoever.

In an election campaign where there’s a crippling deficit caused by a near-depression hanging over the whole business, the dominating impressions will all be Brown’s gaffe, Clegg’s ascension and celebrity endorsements.

Today has been taken up with a million tedious Twitter updates tagged with #bigotgate; multi-spectral analysis of the audio clip from Brown’s car; political correspondents’ boring takes; shit advice from PRs and crisis management wonks trying desperately to sound like they have something important to say; and pompous, nay patronising, pieces on the great unwashed of the North.

The truth is, what Gillian Duffy had to say about immigrants was ill-informed and could be judged as bigoted. Another truth is, Brown made an off-the-cuff remark in the privacy of his car. Who’d've thunk? Politicians, like real people, say one thing in public and another in private.

A silly thing to say then, but one which will be a defining moment of the election campaign – if we believe what the media are telling us. This is not news; it’s what the TV, papers and websites are telling us is news. I expect we’ll hear all sort of things about how this was the moment the election exploded into life now, but that’s really total bollocks.

It’s the moment the story of election has exploded into life, because the three main political parties have been playing a relatively straight bat and talking about boring things like National Insurance. The media has had little to get its teeth into, and the Murdoch media has been ignoring the Lib Dems completely.

A hung parliament has been a hard sell from the point of view of a news editor, a political correspondent or a pundit. But it doesn’t really get any better than Brown attacking an old woman, with a side serving of immigration angst.

What opinion polls should be asking people in the UK at the moment is not ‘who will you vote for?’ or ‘Will Gordon Brown be the death of us all?’ or ‘Do you like Nick Clegg’s wife?’ – it should be ‘Have you really got the first fucking idea about politics?’

Because from where I’m standing this is the stupidest election I can remember. And when you look at the blank faces; the mumbling about immigration or the need for ‘change’; the despicable ‘Broken Britain’ refrain; or the witless scorn of poor, hapless Gordon Brown for his awkwardness and gaffes, don’t blame the people. Don’t even blame the politicians. Blame the media.

We’ll always have Murdoch and his papers that swing behind whoever has thrown the old tyrant a juicier bone; we’ll always have vested interests and ideologues and iconoclasts urging us to swing one way or the other.

The real culprit is the media as a whole, an entity that has lost sight of any idea of how to report politics without some kind of populist framing device; how to inform and educate without trying to entertain; how to report politics, fundamentally.

Watching this campaign has been like watching some sort of Chris Morris work of art. 15 years after The Day Today we finally have rolling news telling us absolutely fuck all, the silly graphics and the news networks setting their own empty agendas.

It’s politics repackaged as a ghastly reality TV show, never mind for the MTV generation, this is for the BBC3 and E4 and Sky One generation. It’s the election where the news just gave up and went to watch Glee, safe in the knowledge that people aren’t really that interested in deficits anyway.

Bill Clinton had a popular slogan in the 1992 Presidential election, designed to keep the issues forefront in the minds of voters; “Its the economy, stupid!”

2010? It’s the stupid, stupid.

After the rollercoaster thrill ride of three men disagreeing with each other and an off-camera man occasionally shouting, I’ve compiled this exhaustive list of newspaper and website coverage taking place both during the debate and over the next 24 hours.

• Debate clearly won by Gordon Brown, David Cameron or Nick Clegg

• Tiresome analysis of clothes worn by three candidates

• Article on Richard Nixon / JFK Presidential debate

• Infographic making inexplicable use of shapes in three primary colours

• Daily Mail picture of Gordon Brown looking sweaty

• Analysis of various ‘blunders’ by three party leaders

• Composite images of three leaders with mouths open

• Tiresome ‘Have Your Say’ section with numbingly tedious and/or ill-informed user-generated content

• Hopelessly unfunny sketch by Simon Hoggart/Rod Liddle/Amanda Platell

• Shit Sun mock-up of Gordon Brown looking like Compo from Last of the Summer Wine

• Dull profile of Alistair Stewart

• Live blog from short-straw reporter in pub in Hartlepool

• Millions of links to Twitter feeds churning out pointless quotes

• C4 blog by Jon Snow’s tie on what Brown, Cameron and Clegg were drinking backstage

• Swing-o-meter-style mock-up based on how many times each man says ‘change’.

• Live panel quizzed throughout debate consisting of white-van driving racist, muesli-eating hippie and boring middle-aged woman

• Plaintive whinge from Alex Salmond, live from reactor building in Dounreay

Now with added Clegg!

It’s a week later, and I deliberately spent the night cycling, editing photos and watching cricket. Anything really to avoid the dreaded leader’s debate and the ensuing media volcanic ash torrent of drivel. If you did too, here’s what you missed.

• Lots of articles and reports about end of two-party hegemony

• Right-wing press fall in line to paint Clegg as nutter/shirker/gay/gyppo/foreigner-loving liberal who is, quite possibly, a maniac

• Some of the broadcast media inexplicably start reporting rumours they’ve heard about Nick Clegg from hostile briefings

• Someone from Keane backs Nick Clegg

• Lib Dem supporters wonder how much further ahead they’d be with Charles Kennedy

• DPS Observer interview with Vince Cable called ‘The man who would be King’, trailed with front page lead headlined ‘Cable to bring City to heel’

• Marina Hyde writes shit sketch about how she fancies Vince Cable. Called The Cable Guy.

• Sue Malone writes poisonous article about Miriam González Durántez’s wardrobe

• Scratchy radio interview with Paddy Ashdown, saying how great Clegg is, and what a bastard Tony Blair is

• The Sun mocks up a shit photo of Nick Clegg heading down a hill in a tin bath.