‘This is dark s***’: inside the political smear campaign to discredit journalists
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Labour Together, the think tank which helped Sir Keir Starmer become prime minister, has been accused of paying a PR firm to investigate Sunday Times journalists. The subsequent report contained personal information and false claims about Whitehall editor Gabriel Pogrund’s faith and family background, including the incorrect suggestion he was part of a Russian conspiracy to bring down Starmer. So why did a political organisation pay for a smear campaign against journalists?
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Guests:
- Emanuele Midolo, investigations reporter, The Sunday Times.
- Ben Clatworthy, Whitehall editor, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producers: Julia Webster, Micaela Arneson.
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Read more: Labour activists paid for smear campaign against journalists
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:06.2 | I'm Manvine Rana. |
| 0:10.0 | The rough and tumble of journalism politics is just that, |
| 0:13.3 | and we don't normally complain when people complain about us. |
| 0:16.4 | The editor of the Sunday Times is normally behind the headlines, |
| 0:20.5 | not the focus of them. |
| 0:22.3 | But on this occasion, I just think it went way too far. |
| 0:26.2 | When the Sunday Times published an explosive piece reporting on financial irregularities |
| 0:32.2 | in the think tank that was fighting to get Kirstamamer elected, they didn't like it. |
| 0:39.5 | That part was to be expected, but what came next definitely wasn't. |
| 0:45.3 | The response wasn't just to apologise, except they got something wrong and learn from it. |
| 0:50.9 | It was to engage a corporate intelligence firm to try and analyze the sourcing |
| 0:57.0 | the origins and the funding of the story. It was a very, very odd thing to do. |
| 1:01.3 | This firm produced a report that attempted to discredit two of the most respected political |
| 1:07.7 | journalists, investigating their personal lives and claiming they were part of a Russian |
| 1:14.1 | conspiracy against the state. When the report came in, Labour together were quite happy to talk |
| 1:21.1 | about its conclusions widely around Westminster, claimed that the Sunday Times was being used |
| 1:26.1 | by the Russian state, which is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. |
| 1:30.0 | These smear tactics weren't being used by the Kremlin or Tehran, but by a group that was run by a current |
| 1:38.1 | minister in the British government. So who are Labour together? How much influence do they still wield in Westminster? |
| 1:46.9 | And what made them attack our colleagues at the Sunday Times? |
| 1:59.3 | The story today, the Labour activists paying to smear journalists. |
... |
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