Say yes and let’s enjoy the…

Did I say I loved the Financial Times?

When everyone else was frontpaging with Princess Diana, the paper had the following stories on the front: the BAE investigation kibosh (this was the lead), Blair grilled by the rozzers (number two, opposite the lead and separated by a photo of the man), then the OPEC meeting and Vodafone’s €67 million fine in the Greek snooping case.

Spyblog, via Iain Dale, carries a table of journalists using illegal “data brokers” to get at private information. It’s fascinating that the more illegal snooping was done, the less actual news. Here’s the data. The left column shows the total transactions, the right the number of individual hacks involved.

Daily Mail 952 58
Sunday People 802 50
Daily Mirror 681 45
Mail on Sunday 266 33
NOTW 182 19
Sunday Mirror 143 25
Best Magazine 134 20
Evening Standard 130 1
The Observer 103 4
Daily Sport 62 4
Sunday Times 52 7
The People 37 19
Daily Express 36 7
Mail Weekend mag 30 4
Sunday Express 29 8
The Sun 24 4
Closer Magazine 22 5
Sunday Sport 15 1
Mail Sunday mag 9 2
Sunday Business 8 1
Daily Record 7 2
Express, Sat 7 1
Sunday MirrorMag 6 1
Real Magazine 4 1
Woman’s Own 4 2
Daily Mirror Mag 3 2
Mail in Ireland 3 1
Daily Star 2 4
Marie Claire 2 1
Personal Mag 1 1
Sunday World 1 1

Do you see a pattern? Quality is inversely proportionate to bastardness. This even holds for the Guardian Media Group papers – The Grauniad isn’t in there with even one request, but its super-Blairite stablemate the Obscurer put in a performance worthy of the Daily Beast. It’s also noticeable that the Murdoch press was almost restrained compared with Rothermere and Northern & Shell titles.

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