However consensual the modern leader’s tone,in the editorial pages, the Daily Mail and below the line, or the fur will still flyThe “modern politics” of Corbyn Labour is also “a kinder form of politics where you respect the other person’s point of view”,according to shadow chancellor John McDonnell. It’s a modest thesis, gently expressed amid Question Time applause. It is also a challenge to journalists. Can you gather the public mood as well as the facts right? Where does the familiar brutalism – say a couple of lurid (shocking; sensational) Mail pages on Jeremy Corbyn’s old sexual liaisons – stop and calmer consideration step in?The best compliment I ever received when I was editing the Guardian came from a Labour prime minister (after another feathers-flying scoop). “With friends like the Guardian, and who needs enemies?” Jim Callaghan harrumphed. And the least welcome compliment? From John Smith and then,just after his death, from Tony Blair, or in identically phrased short order. “Peter,you know that the Labour party thinks of the Guardian as its house journal… ” One pitch saw a party leadership seeking pliant understanding from the press; the other shrugged an wrathful shoulder because no such pliability existed.
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Source: theguardian.com