Paper Monitor
11:05 UK time, Wednesday, 13 June 2007
A daily service highlighting the pack-like obsessive hunting of the feral beasts of the media.
There's plenty to distract one in today's papers, including a judge's underwear, illustrated instructions for stealing a presidential Timex, and clear facial similarities between the fathers and husbands of Nigella Lawson, Zoe Ball, Angelina Jolie and Kim Wilde.
And, in Sunspeak, "Paedo fiends to get chop".
But let's face it, for Paper Monitor there's only one story in town: Mr Blair's attack on the press. And out of all the press, the prime minister decided to single out the Independent as particularly loathsome. (Regular readers will remember "BLAIRAQ" as being the apogee of the paper's campaign against Mr Blair.)
So what do the papers make of it all? Here's a sample.
"Britain is blessed with the richest variety of media in the world. It can be belligerent, biased, and sometimes blatantly unfair. But for all our imperfections we play a vital role in the political life of this nation." (Sun)
"Even in his final days, the old rogue has not forgotten how to spin the truth." (Daily Mail)
"He forecast his speech would be rubbished. We do not do that: but, given his record on liberties of the subject, we do find his argument deeply disturbing, founded on false premises and worthy of the strongest refutation." (Daily Telegraph)
"Right sermon, wrong preacher." (Guardian)
"We welcome Mr Blair's contribution to what is an important debate." (Independent)
The Indy, to be fair, does also put its side of the debate, and asks if Mr Blair would be saying the same thing if it had supported him over Iraq.
But let's look a little deeper. In one passage of his speech, Mr Blair said: "'Some good, some bad'; 'some things going right, some going wrong' - these are concepts alien to today's reporting. It's a triumph or a disaster. A problem is 'a crisis'. A setback is a policy 'in tatters'. A criticism, 'a savage attack'."
Paper Monitor has done a quick count-up (or at least has access to a programme which can). And it seems the prime minister has a point.
The word "crisis" has made 14,234 appearances in the UK press this year, "in tatters" 642 and "a savage attack" 65.
The phrase "some things going right, some going wrong" hasn't appeared AT ALL (except in the reporting of Mr Blair's speech).
The phrase "some good, some bad" has only appeared three times, once in an interview with Bjorn Borg and once in an Observer gardening special about how one never knows just how Chinese tulip trees will turn out after planting.
So whatever might be said about it, this was a savage attack. Something somewhere is in crisis, indeed probably in tatters.
The 
