Imagining the conversation in the Labour press office

Today's Sun Says leader poses an interesting question, albeit unintentionally.

http://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/581763149151498240/photo/1

Should a politician bother to engage with hostile media outlets?

The Sun is annoyed at Ed Miliband for failing to invite their reporters to Labour's campaign launch yesterday. They say his message is that he doesn't like the Sun or its readers. The first is no doubt true while the second is a bit more mixed given that Sun readers are more split than the paper's editorial line might suggest.

However, it did make me think about the conversation that must've taken place in Labour HQ if this was an active decision:

"Shall we invite The Sun?"

"I assume so..."

(pause)

"Why?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why should we invite the Sun to the campaign launch?"

"What do you mean? We always invite all the papers"

"Yea but why? All that'll happen is they'll slag us off, call Ed weird and say something nasty about how Harriet is dressed."

"Yes but it's so their readers can hear about our policies"

"Have you ever read the Sun? They're not just going to present a list with careful dispassionate analysis they're going to pepper it with dodgy adjectives and say it's bad no matter what we say because they want Cameron to win."

"...and?"

"So why bother inviting them unless it's too much hassle to remove the from the mailing list?"

Obviously I've never worked in a press office. I've worked in close proximity to PR but that has never dealt with actively hostile media outlets (the rule is always "more coverage = good") so I don't know what the professionals think of this but I'm struggling to see this as anything other than the Sun getting its knickers in a twist over a fairly sensible decision by its opponents.

In the past the Sun has been nice about Ed Miliband when he's said things they agree with but this is an election period and message discipline is the order of the day for the partisan press. At the end of the article they say that they backed Labour before when Blair was around but don't like them now and list some of the reasons. I'm all for fair scrutiny and criticism but if you're an openly hostile to a particular party and automatically portray anything they say or do in a negative light then it seems a bit rich to complain when they treat you accordingly.

As I say though, this is a layman's opinion so if there's anyone with a more professional take I'd love to hear it.

House of Cartoons

Like many political geeks I've been watching the new series of Netflix's House of Cards with Kevin Spacey doing his best Caligula impression. We're about four episodes in (so just after he meets Lars Mikkelsen as not-Putin) and there's a mixture of things I like and don't like but nothing too different to previous series.

I've written previously about the first series and how I thought the British one worked better because we have a parliamentary system which is better suited for backroom backstabbing than a presidential system. There was also an element of class conflict with the patrician, grouse shooting Urquhart deposing the more working class, John-Major-like PM.

Anyway, the British House of Cards had a tendency to stay realistic and low-key until the final few episodes when people would get murdered. The way I learned to enjoy the Kevin Spacey series is by realising that it made the jump to high-camp early in season 2. Netflix House of Cards is a political drama that focuses on drama at the expense of politics.


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