Gordon Rayner is The Telegraph’s political editor, today his byline was on a story claiming that “new advertisements have started appearing yesterday following criticism that the Government slogan was too vague”. An astonished government source tells Guido “Gordon is a moron, Telegraph executives helped devise the campaign, taxpayers just paid for it”.

It is not a government campaign, it is a backdoor subsidy for financially desperate newspapers to keep them alive. The campaign was created by the dead tree press trade body Newsworks, who explain in a press release:

“Branded content ran in today’s papers and online with the words “keep our distance, wash our hands, think of others and play our part” highlighted the heartfelt stories that show how the country is working together.

Sponsored stories include everything from a school trust delivering food hampers to the families most at need in Yorkshire (via the The Telegraph) to a team of engineers aiming to supply an incredible 10,000 ventilators within 100 days to hospitals across the country, something that would have normally taken over two years (via Kent Online).
The “All in, all together” campaign idea was developed by the newspaper industry as a way of delivering government communications in an intimate, human and compassionate tone that readers can relate to.”

Slagging off an advertiser in these financially challenging times for newspapers is brave. Slagging off the government for a campaign your own paper helped create is special…