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The truly awful Murdoch press

If you didn't know that the Murdoch press is amongst the worst around, read this piece from The Independent on what low-lifes the journalists at The Sun, in London, are:

"Gillian Duffy, the Rochdale pensioner whom Gordon Brown described as "a sort of bigoted woman", turned down the chance to make a small fortune from selling her story to The Sun because the newspaper wanted her to say things she did not believe.

The offer was made during a classic newspaper attempt at a "buy up", conducted in cloak-and-dagger style only hours after Mrs Duffy's chance encounter with the Prime Minister had made her a media star.

After Gordon Brown had emerged from a 39-minute meeting in Mrs Duffy's home to announce that he was a "penitent sinner" and that she had accepted his apology, about 50 newspaper and broadcast journalists, photographers and camera crews spent the rest of the afternoon and evening camped outside Mrs Duffy's white PVC front door, hoping that she would come out to speak to them.

It could have been a long, dull wait for them all, because the only action at the front of the house was a brief appearance by John Butters, of the public relations firm Bell Pottinger, who told them that Mrs Duffy would not be saying anything else that evening.

What they almost missed was the action round the back, where an intrepid Sun reporter, Richard Moriarty, and a photographer, Jimmy Clark, were clambering across hedge and fence in failing light to sneak in through the back garden, unseen by their commercial rivals."

The "story" continues here.

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