Quote of the day
“There are two kinds of poisoners: famous ones and successful ones. By definition, a poisoner is useless once everyone knows he is a poisoner. The same is true of spin doctors. The first commandment in the book of spinmeisters ought to be: thou shalt not become the story.”
- Andrew Rawnsley, talking about Andy Coulson in today’s Guardian (full article HERE)
Witanagemot Blogs
Interesting how they do get caught out.
Not really. Bearing in mind the truth of the quoted maxim, if you want to take out a spindoctor/media operation, make sure that you can make them the story.
Coulson isn’t alone. The News of the Screws wasn’t even the biggest user of phone-hacks. The Daily Mail was. The Screws came above the Observer. Just.
But Coulson has been made the story and will have to go. Not right away, of course, as that would just encourage Labour to go after more, or to prosecute him or persue him in some other classically vindictive way.
Campbell was the story from day one. Didn’t stop him being effective for several years.
The problem we have here is that this is a classic takedown attempt by the Labour party and their friends in the meeja. If Coulson goes (when he has resigned in the past over the same issue) then there is simply no natural justice left.
Painful though it might be, I think the RIGHT (as opposed to the politically expedient) thing today is for Cameron to stand up for Coulson.