A Fit Of Morality

It seems the top brass at the Evening Boris - sorry, that just slipped out - is ready to go through the most elaborate contortions to disguise personal attacks on Livingstone as moral rectitude. Its leader on Friday is a joy.

"The revelation that Ken Livingstone has three children from previous relationships might well come as a surprise to Londoners. This newspaper has known about Mr Livingstone's previous family for some time - but chose not to publish details of a private matter. Whether he was wise to conceal these details from the public for so long is another matter."

So it's virtuous of the Standard not to have published the information but not virtuous of Livingstone to have preferred it not to be published? Yes, that makes perfect sense...

"The Mayor has now given information on this because it was likely to be published by journalists. He has, in the past, dismissed rumours surrounding a love-child as a 'malicious libel' - he should have come clean then and set the record straight."

Interesting choice of words: "...rumours surrounding a love child" are claimed to have been dismissed as "a 'malicious libel.'" Perhaps I'm being picky or ought to do more research, but dismissing a "rumour surrounding a love child" need not be quite the same thing as denying that a "love child" - such a prim, old-fashioned little phrase - exists. And a rumour "surrounding" one might well be a "malicious libel". Anyway...

"Of course, Mr Livingstone is correct that his private life is his own business. But politicians are public figures. Voters are entitled to know basic facts about the life of a candidate for high office, including the number of children they have."

I see. So Livingstone's private life is his own business and isn't his own business at the same time, or it is his own business except for the bits the Evening Standard decides everyone ought to know. Also, voters are "entitled" to know how many children a candidate for high office has but not entitled to be informed of this by a newspaper that has that information because it has chosen "not to publish details of a private matter." It follows from this that had Ken Livingstone asked the Evening Standard to publish information about the number of children he has, the paper would not have done so because it doesn't do that sort of thing even though it believes voters are entitled to know it and that Ken Livingstone should have made it public. And now it's gone and published it anyway.

"One of the charges which has most dogged Mr Livingstone in his re-election bid is the perception that he lacks transparency - only 28 per cent in the recent ICM poll considered him the most honest candidate."

So not going public about his private life is an example of lack of transparency - that would be about the private life that is "his own business," would it?

"In terms of the election race, the Mayor says he is confident he will shake off any damage from the disclosure over his children. It would have been a sign of greater openness if he had put the basic facts about his family on the record in the first place."

That simple, eh? What if members of that family didn't want these "basic facts" about them put "on the record" by Ken Livingstone in order to satisfy the appetite for "transparency" of newspapers that hate his guts? What if they assumed that if such newspapers - and half of London it appears - already knew these "basic facts" and had chosen not to publish them, then the question of "going public" with them did not arise in the first place? What if senior figures at the Evening Standard were in the position of Ken Livingstone and members of his family? Would they have been as "transparent" as they seem to think Livingstone ought to have been? Just wondering.

Comments

[The Tory Troll]

I have stopped even bothering to read the Standard in recent months. I used to buy it on the way home as it had much better reporting than the free sheets. However, it has become more and more biased and I can't see myself buying it again, which is a shame.

On the subject of bias, Stop Boris blog has a really good question by question analysis of today's Boris interview/ front page in the Telegraph:

http://www.stopboris.org/blog/2008/04/06/dirty-tricks-in-the-telegraph/

[Stop Boris]

Dave,

No political point-scoring in this comment from Stop Boris for once - indeed you need not even approve this commnet through moderation. I just wanted to alert you to some sort of unclosed blockquote tag or similar somewhere in this post which is causing havoc with your blog's design, turning everything italic, and in more strictly standards-compliant browsers (e.g. Opera) resulting in all the black text of your whole front page appearing on a navy blue background, which is hard to read to say the least!

Perhaps if you have five minutes to spare at some point you could track down and insert the necessary closing tag? Thanks!