Tony Blair made a speech today decrying the "feral" relationship between politics and the media. Why don't the press report MPs' maiden speeches any more, he asked, or all those "excellent second reading speeches" in the Commons?
Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA Wire
The media is "increasingly and to a dangerous degree driven by 'impact'," he noted. "It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed ... The way that people get their news may be changing. The thirst for the news being real news is not."
Just hours later, Mr Blair met two people dressed as Wallace and Gromit, the animated cartoon characters, on the steps of Downing Street, in order to promote "Wrong Trousers Day", an event raising money for children's hospitals and hospices.
"As a result of being at the top of the greasy pole for 13 years, 10 of them as prime minister, my life, my work as prime minister and its interaction with the world of communication has given me pretty deep experience, for better or worse," Mr Blair had pointed out earlier on.
