Thread by @NickCohen4

In response to the attacks on broadcasters on my timeline, I should say that it is their editors who are at fault. They are the ones who are refusing to insist on basic journalistic standards. Downing Street will just blacklist an individual journalist who speaks out. 1/

I said yesterday two things need to be done
1. The prime minister's official spokesperson (James Slack) should be named when he gives press briefings. It is ridiculously elitist that insiders know he is while outsiders do not.
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/10/meet-d…

As should Seumas Milne, James Schneider and other opposition spokesmen and women.
2. Once they have agreed to do that editors at Sky News, the BBC, ITN and the serious press should agree that taxpayer-funded spin doctors who lie should be called out by name.

In other words, a deliberate untruth told off the record or on background or unattributably goes on the record with attribution the moment journalists find out they have been lied to. Nothing would clean up Westminster faster than this simple deterrent

As would deliberate breaches of the Special Advisers Code of Conduct, which specifically prohibits taxpayer funded officials from engaging in party political propaganda gov.uk/government/pub…

I doubt anything will happen. The Independent and Guardian tried to reform the system in the late 1980s but the broadcasters and rest of the press stuck with the status quo.

But I give editors fair warning. Every time you turn on the radio or open a paper, a political correspondent is saying "oh no one trusts politicians." If they can on being the willing enablers of Johnson's propagandists, no one will trust them either.

"carry" not "can" apologies