The art of selective outrage

[cromwell]

The Daily Mirror has been hacking phones. Quite a lot of phones, as it turns out. They hacked Paul Gascoigne's phone for ten years!

For years and years, the Mirror flat out denied that they had done any such thing; all their employees had behaved properly, they said.

Now here's a funny thing. When the Murdoch empire owned up to phone hacking - my God, the uproar! The Leveson enquiry, Hugh Grant sponsoring Hacked Off, Ed Miliband meeting with Hacked Off, Tom Watson MP and his moral outrage at the evil Murdoch empire. The result, the highest selling newspaper in the UK, the News of the World, is shut down.

So what have all that lot got to say about the phone hacking done by the Daily Mirror? Precious little. Where is Tom Watson's outrage now? What has Miliband said to condemn the Mirror?

Nothing. Not a word.

Because the Daily Mirror supports the Labour party, and the News of the World supported the Tories.

And no one on TV is pointing any of this out.

I hope Gascoigne takes the Mirror to the cleaners, but there is a bigger issue here, about the political thread that always ran through the Leveson inquiry, and the utter, shameless hypocrisy of people like Tom Watson.

And all this is passing without comment.

[Workingman]

Could another reason be that Trinity Mirror, the controlling group owning the Daily Mirror, also has the Sunday Mirror and People, the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record as well as some 240 regional newspapers none of which would be criticising a sister publication?

That is quite a big blanket to throw over a story, but it does not explain the lack of coverage from the BBC or Sky.

[cromwell]

I'm not saying Leveson was all about politics. There was the genuine grievances of ordinary members of the public like Millie Dowler's parents or the McCanns.
There was also the celebs like Hugh Grant and Max Moseley, out for revenge after being humiliated in the tabloids.

But there were also the Labour politicians who imo were hiding behind people like the Dowlers to get revenge on Murdoch, who had switched the support of his papers from Labour to Tory.

And the latest episode on phone hacking, with the Labour-supporting Mirror's hacking activities being greeted with utter silence by the Labour party and the London liberal elite only strengthens my already low opinion of them.

[Aggers]

The more I read about the wretched politicians in this country,
the more despondent I become - about the future prospects for
this once-great country of ours. I'm so glad I'm not a young man.

[Suff]

More a case of outrage at the NOTW for switching sides and panning them at the election.

It is nothing I do not expect from Labour. Their outrage is totally tied to their own self preservation... I wouldn't trust them with a pushbike in a demolition derby. Although I might just try and sign them up with one.....

My contempt for them knows few bounds. This is just more justification for me. If I ever needed any more.

What is going to happen to them in Scotland in May would have given me great joy at any time other than now. What Wee Eck is going to do with Westminster after May is not going to be nice to watch and I don't honestly believe it is fully deserved.

[Workingman]

Another reason that the Mirror is being given an easy ride is because the Tories have been effectively neutered on the subject of hacking. Should they make much of the Mirror's hacking and Labour's silence about it the ghosts of hacking past in the form of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks and Andy Coulson and their closeness to top Tories will be brought up once more.

It is al a bit of a stitch-up and there is a suspicion that journalists in the whole of Fleet Street used it as a tool of the trade, so it is best for other newspapers to go a bit easy as well; just in case.