Fink thinks…
…that the Evening Standard’s campaign against Ken was, “an impressive, and memorable, achievement.” Excuse me while I snigger.
Some may regard their campaign as irresponsible. I don’t see it that way.
First, the campaign was based on good news journalism. The stories about Lee Jasper which did most to undermine the Mayor were true and important. The Standard did what a good newspaper does - it spoke truth to power.
Really? How odd. I was under the impression that much of the Standard’s campaign was based in semi-libellous slurs and misrepresentation. Take this glaring example from the 16th of April:
Suicide bomb backer runs Ken’s campaign
This was, of course, journalistic filth of a kind only the Mail group could come up with. Closer inspection of the matter (and, indeed, their article) would reveal that the “suicide bomb backer” did not run Ken’s campaign. He ran a group called Muslims4Ken which supported Livingstone. It had no official sanction from Ken, and it certainly didn’t run his campaign.
And yet, that’s the clear implication of the Standard headline. Which, scrawled across every bill-board in London, vast numbers of voters saw - far more than the relatively small number of ES readers who actually saw the details of the article. They did not, “speak truth to power” but hurl excreta at unguarded, passing eyes.
I’ll concede that much of Gilligan’s early investigative journalism revealed important details of the Mayor’s office. But this developed, both in his and the paper’s writings, to a concerted campaign against Livingstone fed by a simple desire to see him gone, at any cost. Perverse, I’d say, given that they came to the conclusion they preferred his manifesto…
Good news journalism, right?
To be fair, Finkelstein’s second point is entirely reasonable. Wadley’s decision to turn the ES into an attack rag for Boris was brave, and did shore it up against competition from the freesheets. I’d question whether they drove the anti-Ken waves as much as they claim, or simply predicted and fuelled them, and whether the paper would ever have taken any other line. But it’s boosted their sales, for sure…
Surely freesheet?
The Daily Mail Group owns the London Lite, after all. And how it shows…