All international crises have a local angle. For Britain and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it is the infamous ‘good day to bury bad news‘ affair. This was when Jo Moore, a political advisor to the transport secretary, Stephen Byers, suggested within an hour of the second plane flying into the World Trade Center (but prior to either tower collapsing) that this was an opportune moment for the government to hide controversial decisions or difficult news.
The memo was leaked and caused problems for a government that had already cultivated a reputation, not always fairly, for spin. I think it also serves as a ‘there but for the grace of god go I’ in terms of the number of emails, texts and slacks we all send in the heat of the moment that we would hope do not appear in the newspapers.
