Roger Alton - the Indy here he comes

The appointment of the filthy-mouthed baldy, Roger Alton, to the editorship of the Independent makes perfect sense given his successful record at the Observer - he got the circulation up by turning the paper into a war-mongering, Blair/Campbell-felching, lifestyle package with the weekly pensées of Jasper Gerard (now the Telegraph's restaurant critic) comprising the premium editorial content. Astonishingly, virtually everyone I know adores Alton so plainly I'm in the minority here. In this spirit then I offer Alton free advice:

- Leave the Telegraph's restaurant critic well alone: he's doing a fine job writing about Lesbian Bisque

- Re-introduce proper front pages as opposed to the one-theme, notice-me antics of Simon Kelner

- Re-design the entire paper pronto: it's current layouts have all the allure and angularity of patio door grilles

- Put pics of pussy cats everywhere - our mioawy friends are everywhere in TV adland

- Make book ed Boyd Tonkin (aka Dank) review a Katie Price novel

- Keep John Walsh - he has a big family and other intimates to support

- Er, stop screaming fuck you cunt, you motherfucker asshole, etc

The Screws makes up another story

The News of the World said the Maccas had agreed on a £65m settlement. Made up. For more about fake news in the world of dead trees media get a copy of Flat Earth News.

Kamal Ahmed and Flat Earth News

The Indy runs an extract from Nick Davies' excellent Flat Earth News - after reports suggested it wouldn't. Most exemplary. As interesting is the interview with the former political editor of The Observer Kamal Ahmed, preceding the extract. He addresses Davies' allegation that Alastair Campbell gave him sight of the dodgy dossier on a flight to Washington. Ahmed says: "I did go forward and have a discussion with Alastair, and Alastair showed me the front cover of something ... He said to me, 'We're thinking of putting this out'. And I said to him: 'I haven't seen it so I don't know what it is.' That was it. It was less than thirty seconds."

Well, who knows? But Ahmed's version doesn't quite add up. Why would Campbell point to a document and say it was being put out without first saying what it was? Wouldn't the normal response of a journalist be to ask: "But what is it?" Was Ahmed not curious to know why he had been invited to sit with Campbell and the Prime Minister and have his attention drawn to a mysterious document? Why did Campbell invite him up front in the first place?

He further claims he was no closer to Campbell than any other political editor. Is this true when Ahmed admits in the interview telling Campbell whether a particular story would make the splash in the Observer or not?

A more forensic approach to Ahmed might have done him more favours - after all, he may very well be innocent of the charge that he, the former editor Roger Alton and the Observer were a Blair/Campbell lapdog so far as the Iraq War was concerned.

On another level, and as an outsider to this matter, I am struck by the laddism that seems to characterise the Campbell-Ahmed-Alton axis, one forged in a love of footie and cunt and them 'n' us politics. Don't some people ever grow out of the playground mentality? Fucking cock-cunters.

Flat Earth News, The Observer and Kamal Ahmed

The latest Private Eye runs extracts from Nick Davies’ book Flat Earth News which is thought to have precipitated the resignations of the appalling Observer editor Roger Alton and his sidekick news editor Kamal Ahmed (see previous stories here).

The book lays bare the corrupt or dodgy practices of modern journalism and in particular reveals Alton’s Observer to have been severely compromised by Ahmed’s intimate relationship with New Labour. As for Alton, I must examine his horoscope for an astro-view of how he got to be appointed to the top job in the first place. Nothing rational can account for it.

Back in October it was claimed that Davies’ book accused Ahmed of helping to sex-up the dodgy dossier that enticed the UK into the Iraq War. Davies denied making any such allegation. An anonymous Arcati contributor wrote at the time: “Forget the sexing up chatter – that'll be more a question of Kamal inflating his own importance. But Davies is missing the larger point: The Observer, for several years, barely qualified as an independent voice, so slavishly did it follow whatever Blair/Campbell dictated.

“This was the truly sad thing for an otherwise v. good newspaper. The slavishness to the Campbell/Blair line was often embarrassing. Forget Ahmed. He's just an arse, who was doing Campbell’s bidding.

“The most depressing thing, ultimately, is that as Observer editor Alton often thought it more important to keep the government happy than to offer a proud, independent voice.”

Flat Earth News focuses, among other things, on the dodgy dossier episode. Back in January 2003 a group of political hacks flew to Washington with Blair. At some point during the flight, Alastair Campbell invited Ahmed to join him and the PM. Ahmed later revealed that he’d been shown a document on Iraqi weaponry – what came to be known as the dodgy dossier. Ahmed told colleagues he had been asked his opinion of the report – even though the Foreign Secretary had yet to be consulted. When later the dossier was revealed to be a load of lying rubbish, Ahmed denied giving Campbell any advice and refused a request by the Observer’s news desk to write about the encounter on the plane.

So, Davies may indeed not be accusing Ahmed of helping to sex-up the dossier, but his disgraceful sucking up to Blair and Campbell will have emboldened them to push ahead with their claims against Iraq.

For more extracted delights on our press, get Private Eye (No 1202), or order the book, Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media by Nick Davies, click here.

The man who extracted Flat Earth News for the Eye, click here

Jasper Gerard booted out of The Observer

I hope it wasn't anything I said.

Guardian's Jesus satire moment

My thanks to the Guardian which yesterday had a splendid giveaway: a sheet of Christmas wrapping paper printed with Jesus Christ's name all over it. An atheist newspaper, Jesus Christ, the excesses of festive consumerism and Linda Grant in G2 wondering where she can find a nice leather jacket that doesn't make her look like mutton dressed as lamb. Post-modernist satire - ie larky Yuletide moralising just to be clever - doesn't get much better.

Catherine Bennett joins Observer

Excellent news - the new Observer editor John Mulholland has hired Catherine Bennett from the Guardian - as first reported on Arcati the other day. This is a good omen for a paper that has been compromised too long. Bennett is brilliantly civilised. Mulholland knows who I want removed.

Catherine Bennett to leave the Guardian ...

... and take up residence at the Observer? If true I shall put the paper on order again. I love Bennett, she's my favourite sourpuss.

Observer and Guardian disagree on homeophobia

In the Guardian, novelist Jeanette Winterson soberly tackles the tricky subject of homeophobia – the fear and loathing of homeopathy, that is. She relates how while staying at a remote cottage in Cornwall she ran a temperature of 102, had spots on her throat, was delirious. And she had a book to finish. Her “desperate” publisher suggested she call the homeopath Hilary Fairclough who sent round a remedy called Lachesis, made from snake venom. “Four hours later I had no symptoms whatsoever.” (I believe this piece first appeared in The Times in 2004). She finishes: “We should be careful of dismissing the testimony of millions who say the remedies have worked for them.”

For once I have no firm view to offer – by temperament I am too impatient for results. And homeopathy, by my understanding, works slowly and subtly, if at all (Winterson’s rapid symptomatic relief surprises me). Zap me with the chemicals and I’m all yours (reluctantly). But it intrigues me that the piece has been resurrected in the Guardian when its sister paper the Observer only very recently ran a Nick Cohen homeophobic piece in which Hilary Fairclough got a kicking over claims that homeopathy can help in the treatment of Aids. “Of all the pseudo-sciences on offer, homeopathy is the most obviously spurious,” Cohen asserted, in the way Christopher Hitchens promises his flock that there is no god.

I see no reason why The Guardian and The Observer should not run contrary pieces – it’s very fair-minded of them – if a little redolent of their opposing stances on Iraq. Being all things - if done intelligently - is a very attractive commercial proposition.