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Sunday, 14 October 2018

Con Coughlin 'owned' by Owen Jones

Readers of this blog will know we have long regarded with some humour Con Coughlin's defence pieces in the Telegraph; too many are clearly the result of a good lunch with an MoD official and a rehash of an MoD briefing to endow it with the gloss of journalism. His columns have always been useful in stating the official MoD policy without the MoD having to, erm, state its official policy. We thought everyone knew. 

Perhaps not. In a surprising piece of actual journalism, lefty polemicist Owen Jones has just taken Coughlin's entire journalistic career apart in a series of linked posts on Twitter. Con Coughlin is reported to have deleted his twitter account in response. If true and accurate, Jones has indeed 'owned' Coughlin, in the vernacular of the young. But two questions are foremost -

- Why was this not published in the Guardian? Was the story spiked on a 'dog don't bite bitch' journy-chums basis? 

- Will Coughlin now sue? 

I shall sit down with a large glass of port and re-read the whole thing again. This kind of waspish MSM in-fighting is just the thing to round-off Sunday.

Update - from this blog

27/9/17
"It's always good to know there are some certainties in life, and Con's willingness to parrot the message of his contacts at the MoD are amongst them. Sometime, though, during his most recent lunch, he must have confused the reality..."

24/12/16
"Poor old Con Coughlin must be coughing into his Christmas cornflakes this morning. Following instructions from his FCO and MoD masters, poor old Con has being doing his best to talk-up a war with Russia all year...."

6/1/16
"Con Coughlin has earned his establishment biscuit again with a crawling encomium to the sagacity, tolerance, wisdom and mercy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and urged us all to back the primitive head-choppers against the primitive crane-hangers..."

7/5/14
"One must have to be both wilfully stupid and amazingly gullible to get the defence correspondent's job on the Telegraph these days; EU shill Con Coughlin, perhaps repeating what some bloke told him in a bar, writes today..."

and so on. 


11 comments:

Span Ows said...

I haven't read the Twitter feed yet but the two items in the image (Iraq war, Saddam etc) are of a period where 99.5% of the MSM were "taken in" and fed BS, hardly Owen Jones being a star, just being wise after the event.

(I may reconsider this comment after reading the rest of the Twitter thread...)

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry but moral preening from Owen "Twat" Jones is hard to take.

It was obvious Coughlin was a shill, but isn't the entire media right about now?

The only journalist I can name who I think isn't just another glove puppet is Brendan O Neill..

Ed P said...

The clue was there all along in his first name - it's a con.

mikebravo said...

Didn't one of the old Greek writers already do this story?

John Miller said...

Anyone with a tiny particle of brain knew the whole thing was a charade because of the mendacious phrase “weapons of mass destruction” which in earlier years would have been “Big Bang thing”

We’re it a real thing it would have a name or at least a code name.

I could not believe anyone would think the whole tatty script was the truth unless they were desperate to do so.

Jones could have picked on any one of a hundred hacks, but he chose a “right wing “ paper..

The same elite that hates Brexit should hang its head in shame for being responsible for all the atrocities that followed.

Thud said...

Nothing that comes out of little Owen is good, the little shit is past saving.

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

The butchers in Riyadh are well used to having their whores in the western MSM prattle their stuff.

There is though a harder edge to present outpourings.

see here

What we need now is a fresh outbreak of "I'm the Mahdi"

What little Owen says is neither here nor there but what the Guardian publishes - or perhaps more to the point doesn't publish tells you that they are closer to "the establishment" than perhaps many expect....

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

in case you can't be arsed to click a link

the present tally of threats from KSA:

1. Install a Russian base
2. Take oil to $200
3. Kill the petro dollar
4. Stop buying US weapons

2,3 & 4 would be on the Islington politburo's agenda.





Budgie said...

The Telegraph has always been the house Tory newspaper. In recent years that has become more blatant, and they have also lost the quality reporting and decent comment they used to sell. Even when I bought the paper I never read Con Coughlin.

What I cannot understand is why the FCO is so arabist (nowadays expressed as love of the KSA) - and so euro-federalist. Also why we are so anti-Russia when in the 1950s/60s/70s Russia was a very real threat compared to now. Didn't a lot of FCO men graduate to the USSR; or shouldn't I mention that?

Elby the Beserk said...

They are both utter cunts.

Let's just leave it at that eh?

LOJ blocked me ages ago when I asked him how it was going in Venezuela. Sensitive little soul. Not like a Stockport lad at all.

Anonymous One said...

@ Budgie Why is the FCO so arabist?
It is written through them like a stick of Blackpool rock! They absolutely lurved Lawrence of Arabia in his day, they sought to undermine the Balfour declaration as soon as it had been uttered and have undermined it consistently ever since. The inhabitants of the FCO can't be a drain on the British taxpayer! It certainly seems that someone else is signing their pay cheques.