And another war begins
Don Van Natta J is, according to Wikipedia, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the New York Times. He spent a month in London hustling for dope about Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor turned Cameron spin doctor, as the Gray Lady tries to dredge up new stories about phone hacking under his editorship .
The word is the NYT might be publishing an article on the Screws in the next few days (presumably after fact checking it to death), although those who have waited for the article to appear have been waiting for a while yet. (However, I learn that talk that it could come this weekend is almost certainly premature).
Unfortunately who knows if this much hyped piece will contain anything new on this controversial subject, if indeed it does appear at all. But that hasn’t stopped hopeful tongues, mainly on the Labour side, wagging. There are certainly red MPs hoping for something exciting, ready to make all sorts of complaints, but then they would wouldn’t they. Coulson’s a Tory after all.
It all comes at an interesting time, when News Corp’s Wall Street Journal has been winding up the NYT and particular its controlling shareholder Arthur Sulzberger. Part of a portrait picture of him was used by the Journal back in March to illustrate a feature on the ‘girly men’ that women these days supposedly prefer. But this is the New York Times, a serious newspaper, and clearly none of that will be relevant.
Anyway, if Van Natta has dug something up, then from what I gather, News Corp in London don’t know anything about it. Usually at some point you have to ring up the targets of your investigation and “put it to them”. Of course you do that late in the day, but, frankly, it is about time they got on with it. The suspense is killing us.
What we all want to know is has the New York Times got a story or not?
