TMCnet News
Media: Media Monkey's Diary(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ?Following Rupert Murdoch's back door visits to see David Cameron at Downing Street, full disclosure has become the order of the day when it comes to meetings between top politicians and media types. So who should Labour leader Ed Miliband be spotted lunching with last Monday? None other than Daily Mail editor and Associated Newspapers editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre. We trust they both used the front door. ?Who should be the 101st person in our MediaGuardian 100, we asked, after the publication of our annual media power survey last week. The poll was won by Michael Acton Smith, creator of children's social networking phenomenon Moshi Monsters and chief executive of its parent company, Mind Candy, with 89.1% of the vote. Entirely unrelated, of course, was the call to arms on the Moshi Monsters website telling visitors: "Mr Moshi . . . needs your help!" "I have no doubt he would have won anyway," says a Mind Candy spokeswoman. Consider it monstered. ?David Cameron's aide Ed Llewellyn, who advised former top copper John Yates not to raise phone-hacking with the PM when he visited No 10 last year, has been asked to take charge of a Downing Street leak inquiry. The Daily Telegraph managed to get hold of an embarrassing letter sent by health secretary Andrew Lansley to Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, last week, publishing it on page 1, and the paper's political editor Andrew Porter followed that scoop by revealing the amount the government will ask public sector workers to pay into their pensions three days later. Alexander was apoplectic, according to our Lib Dem mole, and now Llewellyn has been drafted in to plug the leak. It must be a novel experience for the Torygraph to be the subject of a leak inquiry rather than conducting one itself. ?With a staff of nearly 23,000, the BBC is no stranger to the odd marketing mailout. But none quite so odd as that sent to BBC Radio 4 Extra from a telecoms company offering to make your mobile phone hack-proof. A useful service no doubt, but possibly not one being sought by the people to whom it was addressed, including Kenneth Williams, Bob Monkhouse, Linda Smith and Clement Freud. And no, Nortelco, we're not sure Richard Murdoch [sic] is interested either. ?The path towards digital radio switchover is a problematic one. It will happen; the only question is whether it will be in our lifetime. William Rogers, chief executive of local radio group UKRD, is among digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio's more voluble critics, but excelled himself with his broadside at government policy last week after the latest digital radio update from Ofcom. "This report really shows with great clarity that the emperor is wearing n o clothes and it's time that Jeremy Hunt, metaphorically, took a really close look at himself in the mirror rather than parading around naked and assuming everyone thinks he's looking great," suggested Rogers. "He isn't." ?Party conference time this autumn will be a male-orientated affair - with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg off to ITN as business editor and Channel 4's Cathy Newman becoming a presenter, the line-up will look like this: for the BBC, Nick Robinson, James Landale and Norman Smith; Tom Bradby on ITV news; Gary Gibbon and Michael Crick on C4 News; Andy Bell on Channel 5; and Adam Boulton on Sky News. Which puts some pressure on Newsnight to pick a female replacement for Crick. (c) 2011 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |