When it suits us

I've just posted a new piece for Index on Censorship, pointing out that the government has a double standard when it comes to the disclosure of confidential information, to the point where it will censor a document that it has already published.

Same old story

The death of Ian Tomlinson following an assault by police is leading a lot of papers. The Guardian has made the running on this and on Comment is Free, Duncan Campbell has the best analysis. He points to early and so far unsubstantiated police claims that protesters threw bottles at police medics trying to help Tomlinson:

Some of the miles and miles of footage that was shot has now been given to the Guardian and shared across the internet. It shows Tomlinson, who was not a demonstrator but one of the many people unable to leave the melee, being thrown to the ground a few moments before he died of a heart attack. Far from the police coming under attack, at this stage Tomlinson is only cared for by a demonstrator. Do the police have their own film of what happened?

What is also striking is that, so soon after the inquest into the death of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, assumptions about a suspicious death should be so swiftly made and the official version accepted so unquestioningly. One of the Met's major problems in the wake of de Menezes was the feeling that misinformation about the circumstances of his death was allowed to linger too long in the public domain.

Of course, the police are under pressure to come up with instant information for the ever-increasing media outlets. A man has died. How? Why? Who was he? It is hardly suprising that the police's best take on the incident – that they were the subject of attack by demonstrators as they tried to save a man's life – is the one that gets passed out and then gets prime position in the coverage. But when did it become clear to the police, from their own intelligence and video footage, what had actually happened to Tomlinson?

Don't mention the genocide

A good, brief piece from Robert Tait in the Guardian about how Barack Obama managed not to mention the Armenian genocide on his trip to Turkey.

Jade the saint

Michael Parkinson has committed something like heresy by suggesting that Jade was no saint but "ignorant and puerile". According to the Mail:

His words are bound to come under fire from Goody’s legions of fans, who dubbed her the 'Essex princess'.

Max Clifford, Goody’s publicist, said he was 'surprised and disappointed' by Sir Michael’s comments.

'What Michael forgets to mention is that Jade already has saved, and will save in the future, countless lives of young women through her public battle with cervical cancer,' he said.

Saved lives already? Blimey!

Wouldn't he

I've come across an interesting piece from Andrew Billen in Saturday's Times about In the Loop. It starts off pretty well.

How Peter Capaldi hopes that the adverts for his new film, In the Loop, will bear this quote: “A disappointment', Alastair Campbell.” It is, after all, there to be ripped, only slightly out of context, from Campbell's recent critique in another newspaper of the film adaptation of the scabrous BBC Westminster satire, The Thick of It. Since its infamous spin-doctor, Malcolm Tucker, as portrayed by Capaldi, is universally recognised as a reincarnation of Tony Blair's press chief at his bullying, foul-tongued, paranoid worst, Campbell's criticism shoots well up and off the “He Would Say That, Wouldn't He?” scale.

But Billen then goes on to say:

Not that Campbell was offended by the film. He was bored. He felt that the cartoon-like portrayal of new Labour did not stretch to a film...

Which bit of “He Would Say That, Wouldn't He? didn't you get?

How crooked is Barclays?

The Guardian reports that

A Barclays bank executive claims to have been made redundant after raising issues relating to one of the bank's tax avoidance schemes.

But Barclays pulls the old "no evidence" stunt, claiming that ""no evidence has been found" to back the claims. As if they had a really good look.

Seven out of ten

As a lover of (intentionally) fake news, I had a go at the Guardian's spot the April Fools news quiz. I got seven out of ten right, and a suggestion that I might be about to try my own hoax...