Personal website of journalist Jonathan Walker

Chasing A Fake Story

Tuesday, 16 September 2008 17:26 Written by Jonathan Walker

Strange day at the office. A colleague on another local paper was tasked with verifying a report their newspaper had received, from someone claiming to be a Downing Street press officer, that a Minister had resigned.

The MP in question (not David Cairns, the Scottish Office Minister who actually has resigned) was overseas and unavailable, so my colleague was reduced to phoning Downing Street and the relevant Government department to try to find out what was going on.

She collared the MP's researcher on the House of Commons terrace. I'm told the researcher was frantic, because she had been contacted by numerous journalists but had no idea what was happening.

My poor colleague was under extra pressure from journalists like me, who had not only started making our own inquires but were trying to get her to tell us what she knew (as she worked for the MP's local paper, she probably had the best chance of finding out).

Eventually, she managed to track down the press officer who had phoned her paper - except that he denied making the call, and actually now worked in the Cabinet Office, not Downing Street.

My colleague got the press officer to phone her newsdesk, so the news editor could confirm the voice was different.

The original tip-off had been a fake, but it clearly came from someone who knew the names of Downing Street press officers (or at least, of people who worked there recently), which takes a bit of inside knowledge or digging.

I'm not sure what the moral of the tale is, except that nobody knows what's going to happen next at Westminster.

Apologies for not giving names, but I don't want to repeat false rumours about Ministers even with the words "it wasn't true" in big letters.

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Comments (6)

Clifford, September 17, 2008

Minister overseas and unavailable? Didn't that raise any suspicions? I wonder how much the fact they wanted it to be true influenced what followed? As for naming names, at least you could identify the 'local paper', although since you use the word 'colleague' I suppose it is obvious.

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Jonathan Walker, September 17, 2008

It was the reporter for the Oldham Chronicle. She's still a colleague, although she works for a different company (we also share an office). The Minister was Phil Woolas, in the Environment department. The Chronicle is running something on it, so I don't see any reason not to name him if it's in the public domain, or soon will be.

He was in some kind of meeting in Argentina which did seem like an odd time to resign, but you can't just assume something's untrue based on that (especially when your bosses have told you to find out what's actually happening).

Personally I'd tend not to name someone who was the subject of some rumours which turned out to be unfounded even if they were one of our MPs, unless something else developed from it. But as I said, if they are about to write it up I may as well fill in the gaps for you myself!

http://www.walkerjon.com

Clifford, September 18, 2008

Thanks for the clarification. I'd assumed it was the Mail, forgetting that you also have a London office. 'Colleague' was slightly misleading, I think. There is another story of course - who was the faker? Tory dirty tricks? Is anyone flowing that up?

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Jonathan Walker, September 18, 2008

I don't know if the Chronicle is following it up. I'm not, as I didn't even speak to them and frankly I don't think it would be possible to find out who made the phone call anyway. I hear one of the Sundays is sniffing around so maybe they'll find out more, but I'd be surprised if they can do better than getting someone to speculate about the possible culprits (Labour rebels, Tories, a disgruntled civil servant, or just someone having some fun who knew the name of a press officer?)

I might be more interested if it was a West Midlands MP, but it's really a story about some journalists being led round the garden path than anything else. The Chronicle have written it up (but no speculation about who the "hoaxer" was): http://www.oldham-chronicle.co...down-brown

http://www.walkerjon.com

Clifford, September 18, 2008

Hi Jon - just you and me? Thanks for the link.

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Jonathan Walker, September 18, 2008

Mmm, I dunno - maybe I'll do something for the Post, as a first person piece or something. If you're interested then others may well be also. Thanks for the feedback.

http://www.walkerjon.com

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