#Carriegate: Downing Street admits demanding that The Times drop Carrie Johnson story
Why is Boris Johnson’s government so determined to be dishonest all the time?
Yesterday (June 20), Downing Street was adamantly refusing to comment on whether the government had intervened to force The Times to drop its damning story about Boris Johnson wanting to hire then-Carrie Symonds into the Foreign Office for £100,000.
Now the prime minister’s office has given up its pretence and
confirmed it contacted the newspaper on Friday night and asked it to retract the story.
But:
Contrary to online speculation, there is no superinjunction or specific legal issue preventing reporting of the story.
Handy, that – it means those of us who have been repeating the story left, right and centre won’t face reprisals for doing so.
But that leaves us asking: what was the point?
This Site and others have already mentioned the so-called “Streisand Effect”, whereby efforts to remove a story from the Internet only increase public interest in it.
Has this been an enormous “dead cat” story?
Source: No 10 confirms it asked the Times to drop Carrie Johnson story
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But why would ‘The Times’ comply? Obsequiousness? Did Downing St manage to confirm the story was bogus? If that was the case then it would be worth ‘The Times’ doing a follow up to confirm what the story was in reality. I had heard the journalist had contacted Downing St several times and mentioned this to them and had received no information to contradict the story. So it seems entirely reasonable for them to have run it..