Stephen Glover on why the Murdoch paper's role in the Iraq wqr should be examined

Stephen Glover's media column in the Independent seems to get more and more controversial.

Today he says that any inquiry into the Iraq war should take a look at Rupert Murdoch's role pointing out that whilst much of the press was horrified at last week's announcement

The Times, however, thinks there should not be an inquiry at all. In a first leader last week the paper grumbled that there had already been two of them, and it doubted that a third could tell us anything we don’t already know.

adding that

There are many aspects of this affair that remain unexamined. One of them is the attitude of some newspapers, in particular the Murdoch-owned Times and Sun, in uncritically promoting the Government’s flawed case for war, and defending, or even omitting to report, its mistakes.

Montgomerie under attack for cost cutting

The other day a very senior and successful Fleet Street figure told me that in 15 years there will only be two national newspapers: The Sun and the Daily Mail. All the rest will disappear under a burden of debt, after years of making losses.

writes Stephen Glover in the Indy this morning

He doesn't say who the successful figure was.It wasn't David Montgomerie who called the traditional newspaper model

"bankrupt, unviable, finished.

and who Stephen describes as having

assembled a newspaper empire in the good times which is now disintegrating in the bad. He really only has one weapon, which is cost-cutting, which he applies again and again.

and whom he says lacks vision

The point is that many struggling newspapers employ round after round of salami slicing in which cuts are applied across the board. There is no time, or inclination, to sit down and think: what do our core readers value most of all, and what might they be prepared to do without? Everything is cut evenly, so that the paper ends up as a pale, weaker version of its former sense. There is an alternative – to ring-fence, even to improve, what the paper does best, while conceding that it cannot necessarily do everything.

Stephen Glover ways into the Nick Cohen debate

Writing in his Independent column this morning he suggests that

Nick Cohen should take Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens out for a drink, and apologise for maligning them; that journalists should not sign letters to newspapers which might possibly be construed as an attempt to have another journalist sacked, and that, whether we agree with him or not, we should all defend Mr Cohen's right to continue to have his say.

Glover hates the mass worshipping of the ordinary

It is worth reading Stephen Glover's piece in this morning's Indy as he discusses the blanket Jade Goody coverage over the weekend.

Yes it is a sad story and yes the media have done an about turn on the Big Brother star but Glover whilst recognising the sad personal circumstances make the following observation.

I am happy to accept that she is not a monster, and I even rather admire her expert manipulation, or that of her advisers, of the media. But I hate this mass worship of the ordinary. And it seems to me that intelligent columnists who romanticise her life and invest her death with heroic significance are writing sentimental nonsense. What has already happened is bad enough, but I fear it may be only the beginning, and that it may all end with even the supposedly serious media forcing us to witness her death.

Enough said