Damian McReckless

This story from Steve Richards’ column takes the breath away:

‘On one occasion shortly before a presenter was about to interview a cabinet minister McBride texted him with the message: “Ask him about his drinking problem.” Again even if the attempted assassination of a minister was clever politics – and it was not – for the fingerprints to be all over the source was dangerously inept.’

I’m sure this anecdote will have Coffee Housers screaming, understandably, about collusion between the media and the Brown machine. If the presenter had held the phone up to the camera, McBride would have been finished. But journalists have to protect their sources. If we burned them by revealing what was said off the record then we would find that few people would talk to u,s and what we could tell the public would be severely limited. There is, though, obviously, a point at which journalists are being used to spread smears and shouldn’t go along with it.

Steve goes on to talk about the election campaign consequences of this:

“More important, Brown’s capacity to attack the Conservatives has suddenly narrowed.