Gabriel Pogrund is one of the most respected, fearless and feared journalists in the UK. He’s exposed endless scandals and misdemeanours. Perhaps all of this is why an organisation commissioned by Labour Together ended up investigating The Sunday Times Whitehall editor. Pogrund’s colleague, outgoing Deputy Political Editor Harry Yorke, was also targeted.
In summary: Labour Together helped get Sir Keir Starmer elected as party leader, setting him on the road to 10 Downing Street. It used to be run by Morgan McSweeney, who was recently ousted as the prime minister’s chief of staff. Josh Simons, now a minister in the Cabinet Office, succeeded McSweeney in running Labour Together. Pogrund raised questions about its financial declarations (or lack thereof).
Per The Sunday Times, the document produced by APCO “sought to portray Pogrund and Yorke as part of a Russian campaign to damage Starmer.” It also highlighted Pogrund’s religion (he is Jewish). The idea was to discredit his work.
The political fallout and embarrassment for Sir Keir are not really the concern of this newsletter. However, an apparent attempt to stifle journalists is. Whispers went around Westminster:
Contemporaneous documents seen by The Sunday Times show one of the prime minister’s closest aides and another government special adviser were among those who repeated — and appeared to believe — the report’s contents.
Sunday Times Journalist Gabriel Pogrund Subjected to Smear Campaign by Labour Group
Unsurprisingly, and quite rightly, there has been a huge backlash from Pogrund’s fellow hacks. Their is genuine fury that one of their own was targetted in this way.
The comment that summed it all up best came from Tim Shipman, current political editor at The Spectator (whose website CoffeeHouse I sometimes contribute to,) and previously Pogrund’s colleague on The Sunday Times. On Twitter, Shipman described Pogrund as “the best reporter on Fleet Street,” who us also “a lovely and gentle man”. He added that Pogrund’s “politics and ideology are… that lying, corrupt, cheating, toe rags in politics, business or the royal family deserve exposure. And no one does it better than him.”
PRs and organisations track and profile journalists all the time. If nothing else, this means they (mostly!) pitch the right people and don’t waste everybody’s time. That is entirely legitimate. What is entirely illegitimate, whoever you are, is to launch smear campaigns against reporters and their work. At its core, that is an attempt to stifle press freedom.
Anyone who ever engages in such behaviour should be ashamed, and journalists should come together to fight back. Let’s hope the outcry after this incident means that similar does not happen again.