Posts Tagged ‘andy coulson’

In the wake of Andy Coulson’s resignation, a number of questions immediately come to mind that have been only passingly addressed by the press over the weekend. How to deal with news organisations owned outright by people such as the Barclay Brothers and Rupert Murdoch comes top of the list for me.

We need to remember that dirty tricks have been part of the palette employed to fill in the background to the news in vivid colour for decades. Back in the days of the G.P.O. running the telephone service, every paper had a mole in the office passing on ex-directory numbers.

A clamouring mob of Media commentators have been offering their views on Andy Coulson’s ethics, morals, and values. I say: “Judge not, lest ye be judged!” Read the rest of this entry »

Margaret Thatcher’s great spin man Bernard Ingham knew a thing or two about pragmatism. He kept himself out of the Westland Helicopter Crisis as he knew that even a whiff of his involvement would damage Thatcher. And he was surely very glad of the off the record Downing Street briefings that kept his name out of most of the other stories he promulgated.

How things change. The continued attempts to shake down Andy Coulson, who occupies Ingham’s position for David Cameron, are relentless – and are now getting to seem more than a little supercilious. Coulson is caught in the political version of some over-hyped heavyweight brawl – he is being pummelled on the ropes but his opponent is congenitally unable to administer the knockout blow. Read the rest of this entry »

Accused of not letting slip any details of policies that would be employed should they form the next Government, the Tories came out in surprisingly brave style yesterday, thanks to George Osborne.

He may have the charisma of a financial director of a small engineering firm in Colchester, but Osborne has been the boldest politician on the block this conference season, playing on the Tories’ current popularity to roll out plans for an austere Britain should the Tories come to power.

“After a year in which trust in parliament has been rocked to the foundations, we know that politics must change forever,” he told the Tory faithful. Then, in a definite nod to both the careful PR husbandry of Andy Coulson, the new Cardinal Richelieu of spin, and the needs of the public, he added: ‘We have to be open and transparent with the people we serve.”

It’s a risk, especially for a Tory party riding its first wave of media support in a long time. Not so long ago the Tories would have been very aware of the media looking carefully at the effect on the public of a group of old Etonians asking country to tighten its belt. But with the Sun on their side, this is the first conference that they are feeling confident at – and Osborne has taken a gamble by asking everyone but the poorest Briton to do exactly that to make sure the country gets out of the huge deficit.

Of course, anyone even paying lip-service to transparency in politics at the moment is likely to do well, however unlikely it is that the transparency will last long after power’s been achieved. Osborne, however, knows full well that he is not likely to end up as unpopular as Gordon Brown, whatever happens. We may have seen huge applause for the prime minister and his wife at the Labour conference last week, but a huge percentage of the people clapping, particularly the Balls and Darlings, are likely to have a dagger with Brown’s name on it concealed about their person. They’re all PR savvy enough to not want to be associated with the sinking of Labour and will be working out ways of leaving Gordon holding the baby.

Talking of hidden daggers, I was at the Pride of Britain awards last night and had the pleasure of watching the popular Piers Morgan working the room with ease, wit and a certain amount of grace. He and his partner, Celia Walden, make a very likeable pair – she’s his Michelle Obama.

I fell to wondering what this popularity could mean for his position in the Simon Cowell empire. Piers is getting to be much more popular than he used to be; will Cowell – the alpha male of the X Factory– allow someone on one of his shows to be this genuinely liked?

It’s time to be vigilant – this has all the makings of an epic off-screen soap opera that could run and run. Keep your eyes peeled for the next thrilling installment, coming soon!

As the former editor of the News of the World turned PR man for David Cameron, Andy Coulson’s appearance before the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee the other day was always likely to be difficult – this is a high-pressure enquiry into the phone hacking scandal.

His performance was a masterstroke, however – a blend of careful honesty and equally careful image management. Coulson came across as forthright and honest – and he looked relaxed in a suit that could easily have graced the pages of GQ. Importantly, he did not battle the MPs he was facing but was carefully compliant.

There’s no doubt that he knows not to make himself the story – he kept his personality in the background and presented the facts as he saw them. It was abundantly clear, from this appearance, that he has been a major influence on the Tory front bench and on David Cameron in particular. Watching him conducting himself told us much about how he is working with the Tories.

He was as impressive as Alastair Campbell used to be in the same role for Tony Blair, although he cuts a very different dash from Campbell. Where Campbell was more of a Nobby Stiles, Coulson comes across as something of a Cardinal Richelieu, albeit a Richelieu who is prepared to admit his mistakes, which is more than can be said for some MPs.

But would he rather be the PR man for a likely future Prime Minister or to have remained in the editor’s chair at the News of the World? He fell on his sword for the sake of the Murdoch empire in 2007 after the phone tapping scandal involving rogue agents, having carefully built a career in journalism. I would imagine that there’s still a sense of loss about that lurking in the carefully polished depths.

At a time when Sunday newspapers are under ever greater pressure to land scoops – whatever the method and consequence – I imagine Coulson’s safe with the Tories for now, especially since he handled himself so effectively under pressure in front of the Commons select committee and given that his media management of the Tories has, on the whole, been equally effective. He certainly proved he’s an asset to David Cameron in front of the select committee and despite calls for his resignation, I would suggest that he’s not likely to leave this job at present.

It seems, of late, that sleaze is a gift worth giving and that it’s for life, not just for Christmas or for politicians. The latest example – the News of the World phone tapping scandal – is, in Variety’s slanguage, a “dramedy”. It has the potential for seriously succulent consequences, which might be deeply costly for News International. The potential scale of the scandal is enormous.

Most agents and celebrities will be trying to find out if Nick Davies’ research is robust, wondering if they are one of the thousand celebrities whose phones were hacked. If nothing else, the alleged espionage will result in a welter of wealthier celebrities – all thanks to Davies’s diligence.

These are dark times for executives in the Wapping gulag. The sound of gnawing of fingernails will do nothing to deaden the relentless hum of prurient, smug outrage from the celebrity commentariat. For some battle-scarred PR flaks it will come as no surprise that the tabloids have deployed the dark arts of espionage to root out succulent showbiz sweetmeats.

But, from my standpoint, I am expecting the hacking scandal to empower prominent celebrities to wreak legal havoc in a bout of retrospective revenge. Wasn’t it Edward Gibbon who said: “Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive”? Celebrities will certainly be riffing on the first part of that quote in the coming months – the genie is about to be escape the bottleneck of secrecy and those affected will almost certainly start suing News International.

I guess that the News of the World will struggle to contain the details of the Taylor settlement, the details of which they have, to date, been able to withhold from the public domain. Once out, however, the paper will be forced to pay out and the ensuing costs will cripple the title. I expect a snowstorm of writs and a couple of spectacular court cases – all of which will make the News of the World look very feeble. Many celebrities will want to follow the Taylor example and will be eager and greedy to extract their own a six figure sums – I know that various high profile legal figures have already attempted to discover who the targets were.

It’s a fact that many misguided public figures feel that their treatment by the likes of News Of the World, who leverage mundane and routine facts and turn them into highly pejorative and prejudicial reports, is entirely unjustified. To achieve monetary reparation for what they see as unfair treatment will certainly be a revenge of sorts. And the paper has played into their hands.

But can you image the chaos the likes of Max Mosley, David Beckham, Gordon Ramsey or even Max Clifford, aggrieved and determined to get some reparation, might create if they can prove that the News of the World has gained access to their phone messages? Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but I’m certain it’ll be heating it up in the microwave of public attention soon enough.

The wrath of a celebrity is impossible to underestimate. There is an apocryphal tale about a celebrity crimper, apoplectic that he had been turned over by the News of the World. To ease the pain he created an effigy of Andy Coulson out of a teddy bear, which he threw it into the bathtub, doused it with lighter fluid, and set it on fire in a fit of voodoo celebrity therapy. Now it is possible that he will be calling Messrs Schillings instead to achieve a more satisfactory – and conventional – form of retribution; a financial sting.

The likely consequence of this potentially seismic activity is that the world of celebrity will have the upper hand in tabloid land in the future. Journalistic research will have to rebooted and the honourable profession will need their own PR to rebuild a tarnished reputation. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.