Bitch Slappery at Dawn

Handbags are fully loaded on "Fleet Street" as two grand old dames of the left bitch slap each other, or do so according to the Unindependent, in an unonline article, by Jonathan Brown, about Nick Davies's new book, Flat Earth News, which promises to lift the lid on the allegedly declining standards of journalism, you don't say. He will be revealing the truth about a "profession corrupted to the core" where journalists are content to peddle myths from the Millennium Bug to WMDs in Iraq oh and possibly about the EU Constitution. See the Independent Press Release.

In the book he looks at the rift between The Grauniad and the Observer, the former against the Iraq war and the latter buckling on its sword of truth and hoisting its shield of something else, maybe its shield of freedom. Pouring oil onto the bonfire of the journalistic vanities Nick says The Observer's political editor in the run up to the war Kamal Ahmed "partly crafted" the dodgy dossier that Tony Blair waived around.

Mr Ahmed strongly denies the claims, insisting he had nothing to do with the dodgy dossier.

The publicity for the book says Davies will name names, that's what you're there for son, and expose, ditto, the "national stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry, and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a new machinery of international propaganda."

Let's nail that bombast.

A spokesman for the Grauniad bitch says "This is all utter nonsense peddled by rival newspapers whose own internal feuds make the Borgias look tame in comparison."

A peddling we will go, a peddling we will go...