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This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 6:04 am and is filed under Old Media, Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch, Teh Interwebs, The Political Weblog Movement. From the outset, I would like to make clear that I have both a legitimate personal and public interest argument for outing the author of the Twitter account @TabloidTroll (aka ‘tabloidman’) in that the account has been used (a) to libel me, and (b) to engage in abusive and circumstantial ad hominem attacks on a series of witnesses/contributors to the Leveson Inquiry, including Richard Peppiatt, Tom Watson, Hugh Grant, and those attached to the Guardian, the Media Standards Trust, and the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign. The author of the @TabloidTroll account portrays himself as an ‘industry mole’ ... Continue reading →

Neither the CIA nor the Pentagon disputed the authenticity of the documents. A spokesman for the National Security Council said the White House would have no comment on the documents beyond those issued last August by presidential press secretary Jay Carney, who said the White House had not given the filmmakers classified information. The CIA and Pentagon said there was nothing unusual about their dealings with the filmmakers. "The CIA has been open about our engagement with writers, documentary filmmakers, movie and TV producers, and others in the entertainment industry," said Jennifer Youngblood, an agency spokesman. She added: "Our goal is an accurate portrayal of the men and women of the CIA, their vital mission and the commitment to public service that defines them. The ... Continue reading →

Given her understanding of science recently extended to blaming an earthquake that killed 80,000 people on "karma", it is perhaps unsurprising that Sharon Stone should have a shaky understanding of modern medicine. Even so, bizarre news that Stone once suggested curing her eight-year-old son's smelly feet by having Botox injections administered is fuelling widespread concern about personal judgement of the veteran actress, and the wellbeing of her collection of adopted children. In an extraordinary custody ruling published yesterday by the Superior Court of San Francisco, Stone, 50, is portrayed as an alternately neglectful and neurotic mother who "overreacts to many medical issues" and is unsuitable to be a full-time parent to her eldest son, Roan. The damning 27-page document, which has been devoured by the ... Continue reading →

Caught out: Kicking up a sand storm (Picture: YouTube/ TheMctano) The bungling reporter has become a national laughing stock in Romania after convincing an assistant to stand just outside the camera shot and kick sand towards his direction.He was caught out however when a cheeky, or shockingly bad, cameraman let those watching at home in on the secret.The reporter, from the Realitatea news channel, was attempting to recreate the earlier stormy conditions for his live weather report from the country's Black Sea coast.Before being found out, the presenter had told viewers: 'The wind blows with incredible power, there are moments when it is impossible to stand up here.'The wind blows the sand at over 60km per hour. It blew away the beach umbrellas and the ... Continue reading →

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Theirs was the human story behind the “restructuring” that makes Bain’s takeovers so lucrative. At the campaign stop, the workers handed out leaflets depicting Romney as the “Grim Reaper” of jobs and as “Gordon Gekko”. In a ropey economy where job security topped the list of election issues, Romney’s background at Bain cost him dear. The elected office he had prized for so long slipped away.This isn’t a scene from the campaign trail today, by the way. It is a scene from Massachusetts, 1994, when the man from Bain went from running neck-and-neck in the fight for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to losing against the Liberal Lion by almost 20 percentage points, after the Ampad workers showed up.It could be a scene that is repeated ... Continue reading →

Manal al-Sharif was arrested for her pains and spent nine days in jail on suspicion of a crime called "incitement to public disorder". She emerged, almost a year ago, to worldwide fame: an eight-minute film of her protest drive, shot on a friend's smartphone, spread across YouTube, in various iterations, at a rate of a million hits per day.Since then, Ms Sharif has used her notoriety as the "Saudi Girl Driving" to pursue radical change. She has led mass "protest drives", filed lawsuits against her nation's chauvinistic traffic laws, and recently started a feminist pressure group, My Right to Dignity, which aims to undermine the conservative excesses of an Islamic state which treats women as second-class citizens.Her struggle hasn't all been plain sailing, though. For ... Continue reading →