Mandy Rice Davies Applies

[djm4_lj]

"There will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying, as there is coverage of them actually saying it."

Tony Blair, talking disapprovingly about the news.

Obviously, if you're a control-freak like Tony Blair, you would think that's a bad thing. Personally, I want our news media to interpret what our politicians say, rather than just slavishly reporting that they've said it. And many different points of view, and different information sources? Yes please!

In other news:

Paddy Ashdown continues to talk sense on Iraq, and foreign intervention in general.

Bisexual Underground tonight.

Comments

[zotz]

Possibly he means interpretation in a rather more pejorative sense - the sort of comment that's slightly divorced from what it purports to be a comment on. The best recent example I can think of would be all the comments in the press about how Brown was believed to be, or said to be, or thought to be, behind the votes in favour of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, followed a couple of days later by someone actually asking him and him saying that he didn't actually support it.

There's certainly a hell of a lot of that around, and it's frequently unclear whether it's based on anything more than preconception and conjecture.

[djm4]

Possibly. But I don't for one moment believe that's what he's talking about.