Abstract
The Associate Editor (Politics) of the Daily Mirror writes: Should the good people of Surrey Heath decide at the coming general election that Michael Gove in the man for them, The Times writer and executive will join an entire newsroom sitting on the green benches of the House of Commons. Peering down from the press gallery to take notes or commentating from a distance proved insufficiently satisfying for some hacks. Instead of watching politics, they wanted to be players on the stage. The third and fourth estates have long been locked in a tussle for supremacy, drinking and dining in the same restaurants with briefer and briefed at times difficult to distinguish. But wild talk of the fourth estate's victory in the historic battle ? the emergence of what has been termed a "mediaocracy" in Britain ? is challenged by the number of hacks swapping pens and notebooks for political parties and order papers.
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