Press Gaz­ette picks up on the media side of Tony Blair’s former comms chief, Alastair Camp­bell’s diar­ies. One of the more inter­est­ing rev­el­a­tions con­cerns the impact of Rupert Mur­doch on his edit­ors.

July 1995 [Meet­ing Rupert Mur­doch and address­ing News Corp edit­ors in Sydney]

“I got a fas­cin­at­ing glimpse of the way edit­ors work around him [Rupert Mur­doch]. I said to Mur­doch that it was an import­ant speech, that TB [Tony Blair] had put more of him­self into it than any speech out­side party con­fer­ence and I reckoned it would go big …

A couple of minutes later, RM spoke across a few people to Stu­art Hig­gins [Sun editor] and later to Peter Stothard [Times editor], and said it was a big speech TB was deliv­er­ing tomor­row. Of course, because of the time dif­fer­ence they would be get­ting it out of Lon­don and put­ting it straight into the paper.

Both edit­ors dis­ap­peared for a couple of minutes and told me proudly they had ordered Lon­don to give it a good show … I was pleased, but the truth was they had been spun by their boss who had been spun by me.”

So what did the Times report?

Well, was the diary claim just Campbell’s hubris? Here’s how they covered the speech:

‘Rad­ical’ Blair lays claim to the Thatcher inher­it­ance, The Times, July 17, 1995, Monday, Home news, 534 words By Nich­olas Wood, Chief Polit­ical Correspondent

Is Labour the true heir to Thatcher?, The Times, July 17, 1995, Monday, Fea­tures, 2050 words, Tony Blair

You don’t have to get orders, or give them…