As so often happens, who broke the story first is fiercely contested.  Guido doesn’t have a dog in this fight, but for the record, since the Staggers is trying to cite Guido as evidence to back up its claim that it broke the news, here is the timeline:

• Unnoticed by Guido when it happened was Andy Sparrow’s PMQs live-blog, which had this at 11:57:
  

  11.57 am: Hot news: We’ve just heard that Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt are going to make some kind of statement about Brown’s leadership after PMQs. That’s all I know at the moment.

• The first Guido knew was when someone shouted out across the newsroom after Andy Sparrow’s Tweet came up on the Guy News Tweetdeck screen, that was time-stamped at 12:01.
• The Guardian’s website also had a teaser headline at 12:15.
• The New Statesman at 12:17 publishes what it calls an “Exclusive“ that “A letter is being circulated among Labour MPs this afternoon calling for a secret ballot on Gordon Brown’s leadership. According to one MP who would like Brown to leave office, the letter is being co-ordinated by a number of rebels, including the former cabinet ministers Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon.”

So there you have it. The Guardian was first, though in the augmented reality of the Staggers “It was the NS wot got it“.  In reality, you snooze, you lose, it ain’t news.

Sparrow told Guido that “it would be nice to take the credit myself, but actually Patrick Wintour obtained the information.” Incidentally, Guido understands that ITN’s Channel 4 News has changed policy on breaking news.  Whereas it restricted scoops to the 7 p.m. broadcast they now put it up as soon as they can on the website and tweet the link.  A cultural change for a mainstream media source.  Steve Hilton getting nicked was tweeted last night by Cathy Newman in advance of telly viewers being told.

It almost goes without saying that Guido tries to be first.  If not first, fast.  When inevitably occasionally wrong, not for long.  We no longer have news cycles, we have news streams…

The PMOS, Simon Lewis, and the chairman of the Lobby, Jean Eaglesham, yesterday announced that the system of Downing Street Lobby briefings is to be reviewed  “in light of the changes in the reporting of the work of government in an increasingly fast-moving and on-line media world”.  On hearing the news Guido – enjoying a two bottle lunch since PMQs was delayed – paraphrased  lyrics from the Buggles hit on Twitter in celebration.

A working group of six lobby hacks and five government spin doctors is going to come up with recommendations to be implemented next year. No one from the fast-moving online media world is on the working group. Guido has made his views about the Westminster embedded client media that constitutes the Lobby system clear over the years (see Newsnight and The Times). The meek acceptance of non-attributable briefings, often of questionable truth, is hardly helpful to the functioning of an open democracy. This method of information distribution is glorified as “on Lobby terms”.

Friends of Mandy have spun the Guardian the idea that the Dark Lord himself should give twice weekly televised briefings* in a new information minister role.  The prospect of Comical Mandy batting off questions from the Lobby has some appeal.  It will all be a pantomime until the clubby culture of the Lobby changes.

*Guido has long supported televised Lobby briefings, ask yourself why is it that Lobby hacks oppose televising them?

The blogosphere and Twitterati come out of this quite well. M’learned friends will have to rethink strategy. Guido will have more to say about the bigger picture tomorrow. It is time to take the freedom of the press into our own hands.

The full story is on the C4 News site here.

Raw (unedited) video for Guido’s interview:

Wikileaks still hosts the the Minton report which you are not allowed to see, by order of the Court, here.  Suck on that Carter-Ruckers…

Who really removed the Shadow Leader of the House from his position? David Cameron?

No, not really. Tim Montgomerie and Heydon Prowse, the blogosphere’s sheperd of the Tory grassroots and the angry young man with a video-cam did the job:

Tim Montgomerie runs a regular poll asking the ConservativeHome grassroots to rate the Shadow Cabinet.  Do not for a second underestimate how much of a whip hand this gives him.   Whereas once upon time a frontbench Tory politician would worry about keeping the proprietor, editor and political correspondent of the Telegraph happy, as well as perhaps sharing a few drinks with the young and upcoming editor of the Spectator, now his horizon is much more extensive.  Fail to keep Tim Montgomerie and ConservativeHome’s readers onside and he might just commission a special poll on how you are doing.   If that poll finds tells the party leadership 65% of Tory members want you to resign…  you won’t last a month.

Old media looks on in bemusement in Washington as cable news’ Glenn Beck gives White House Environmental Czar and former communist 9/11 “truther” Van Jones his marching orders, and the White House demurs.   Heydon Prowse, who is he? He just destroyed the career of a greasy pole climbing Westminster slitherer.  No house trained political nouse, no insight, in fact a little naive.  He still did it.  The news is now disintermediated. 

Power has shifted from the top down to the bottom.  Adjust your sets and tighten your belts, it is going to be a bumpy ride…

The race for exclusives and scoops is of more interest to hacks and bloggers than it is to the readers and viewers.  News distributors take great pride in being first with the scoop.  Guido is no different in this respect from Channel 4 News, and boasting emails like this from newsrooms are not uncommon:

from: Laurent, Fiona <[]@itn.co.uk>
date: Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 7:12 PM~
subject: C4 NEWS EXCLSV: DEFENCE AIDE RESIGNS – ERIC JOYCE’S LETTER TO BROWN
Embargoed until 19.30 hrs on 3rd September 2009
*LEAD STORY* LEAD STORY* LEAD STORY
CREDIT CHANNEL 4 NEWS WITH ALL MATERIAL USED  CHANNEL 4 NEWS EXCLUSIVE:
PARLIAMENTARY AIDE TO THE DEFENCE SECRETARY RESIGNS

Sure enough the lead story on C4 News at 7pm had been Eric Joyce resigning. Was it really an exclusive? Co-conspirators will note that at 6.27pm Guido reported a rumour that a PPS was resigning, just after that Guido publicly tweeted @EricJoyce to badger him to answer the phone – he hadn’t been answering his mobile for hours – (the Twitterati picked up the hint).  At 6.46pm Guido named Eric Joyce after a co-conspirator emailed some corroborative information on the back of the 6.27 pm teaser.

Cathy Newman confirmed the story and lead with the contents of the resignation letter at 7.01 on C4 News, she apparently had got the story the night before. Guido heard the story late yesterday afternoon, as Cathy tweeted after her broadcast “So hard to keep a secret in Westminster. Somehow the mod got wind of our Eric Joyce scoop mid afternoon. Hmm.”

Cathy undoubtedly had the resignation letter first, nevertheless the first news source to put Joyce’s resignation into the public domain was this blog, as PoliticsHome’s “as it happens” newswire confirms. You snooze, you lose…

UPDATE : Remember Dizzy’s story which became a “C4 News Exclusive” the next day?

Guido was at the Index on Censorship Awards ceremony last night, deep in the bowels of the Guardian’s new fancy offices. The purpose built modern building will make a great museum when the paper eventually goes bust.

The event was packed to the gills with media luvvies and Islington’s finest. David Hare gave a splendidly acerbic speech. Chairman Johnathan Dimbleby raged against the “censorship” of the BBC’s Middle East reporter Jeremy Bowen, who was mildly criticised for his blatant anti-Israeli bias by the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee. Guido thought it a gentle rebuke to Bowen given how biased his broadcasts from the supposedly impartial state broadcaster seem. Hardly makes him a dissident, does it? He has been given no punishment, no demotion, nothing. Wonder if he had been criticised for anti-Palestinian bias would the room have been so concerned?

Stereotypically the auction fundraiser saw a week in a Tuscan villa get the top bid from the assembled Hampstead liberals and Guardianistas. No, it really did. Guido was very pleased to win the auction for a copy of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto signed by Václav Havel himself. The dissident playwright was imprisoned multiple times during the Soviet era by an authoritarian socialist Czech regime, his plays were banned and he was reduced to working in a brewery. After the Velvet Revolution he ended up being President of the freed Czech Republic. It went for a tenth of the price of that week in Tuscany. Guardianistas really do have different values…

Not often that Polly Toynbee, Tim Montgomerie and Guido agree: popular anger with the political class is rising.  Something that Polly wants Labour to adjust to by moving policy to the left as well as limiting public-sector fat-cat pay. Tim Montgomerie agrees on the latter but wants the Tories to wake up to popular anger by putting on hair-shirts and getting their own snoughts out of the trough.  Guido welcomes both pundits to the anti-politics banner.

Democracy is broken, the political media elite distant from the people with the two main parties offering no choice and no change.  Osborne is promising no change and blaming the economic crisis.  Taxation will remain penal, spending will remain prolific, there will be some reforms of a failed state bureaucracy but no rollback and no radicalism.  Hannan is at least making the case for a radical shift of power from the centralised state bureaucracy to people at local level.

The Cameroons can’t seal the deal with the people with pragmatism,  “Triangulation Now!” is not the banner that will get people marching.  Voters are angry with Brown and disenchanted with politicians offering more of the same.  Bedazzled during the Blair years, Cameron, Osborne and Hilton have yet to show that they realise the times have fundamentally changed.  Taking strategic advice from the wrong Danny* has left the Tories outflanked on their USP – the LibDems are now the only party promising to reduce the tax burden on the low paid.  Hannan told Newsnight last night that people are fed up of being, “ripped off, lied to and ignored” by politicians.  Disenchantment with politicians has never been higher, most think they are overpaid and dishonest.  Hannan gets it.  This crisis is an opportunity to radically change the plan.

*Finkelstein.  Nice guy, but wrong.  Danny has been consistently one political zeitgeist behind the times all his life.

In an email tonight to Conservative Party supporters Dave hails

Dan Hannan’s brilliant response to Gordon Brown in the European Parliament. It was so effective and shows the growing power of the internet over TV.

Meanwhile Sir Michael White is getting a lashing from his own readers on the Guardian website for, well, just not getting it.  Douglas Carswell MP is taking the opportunity on his blog to remind Sir Michael that he recently mocked Carswell for saying YouTube was  going to be politically important.  On the other hand Guido has to give full credit to John Prescott, who clearly does get it:

I must say I find the internet sensation caused by Dan Hannan’s speech to the European Parliament remarkable. Normally, an obscure Eurosceptic Tory MEP would not get any coverage for a rant against the Prime Minister in the mainstream media. And it proved to be the case. None of the networks or the newspapers originally covered it. But once he uploaded it onto YouTube it took off. Firstly it got up to 30,000 hits after being promoted by Guido Fawkes on his website. Then it exploded in the US once it was put on the Drudge Report site. The mainstream media were then forced to cover it and it has now been seen by more than a million people. I think this is a perfect example of the power shift away from the mainstream media to the internet. Instead of having to get past the editorial filter of journalists and editors, people are starting to set the news agenda and the hacks are having to catch up.

All the left-wing think-tanks and pressure groups have been having seminars and meetings on how to harness the internet “after Obama”.  Maybe they should have looked to Ron Paul instead, he had a clear libertarian political message that he articulated via the internet.  The internet insurgency shook up the Republican party during the U.S. primaries when Ron Paul, then a little known anti-War Republican running for President, shocked the U.S. political establishment by raising over $4 million online – in one day.  It was not for nothing that his campaign song was “Google Ron Paul”.

Hannan’s first choice for U.S. president was the libertarian Republican, not really surprising considering Hannan and Carswell are two of the most libertarian leaning Conservative politicians.  If you read their book “The Plan“, you will see they both get the internet and the effect it will have on politics.  Right now some 1 1/4 million people have “Googled Dan Hannan”…

Rush Limbaugh says, “Hear, hear. Hear, hear. Republicans in Washington could take a lesson from the bravery of this man.”

Guido spoke to Dan earlier today, he seemed bemused at the colossal impact of his speech. Guido tried to explain to him he was about to go inter-continental. “I have to deal with a lot of constituent’s letters today”, “Dan, Drudge has just front paged you”, “Yes, it is strange, I have said the same thing before.”

Cometh the hour, cometh the man – we are all ditto-heads now; Rushies and the Co-Conspirators.   British politicians are mesmerised by Obama, without noticing that two months into his presidency Obama’s ratings are lower than Dubya’s were at the same time.  Dan, we know you won’t back down, stick to your guns…

Fox : Danny Tells Cavuto - “I Wanted Ron Paul, But I Backed Obama”

UPDATE : Hannan’s reply to Gordon Brown is already at 1/3rd of million views on YouTube and on course to be the most viewed political speech in the fastest time in internet history. It is the speech that many Republicans wish  they had someone to deliver to Obama.