This article is a response to 'British journalists have become part of Johnson’s fake news machine' by Peter Oborne.
The issue of anonymous briefings by senior officials is an important one, but not new. Jill Rutter won't mind me reminding her that her life as the director of communications at the Treasury was made a misery in 1997 after Labour's landslide by the systematic private briefings to journalists made by Gordon Brown's senior aides, Charlie Whelan and Ed Balls.
