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…