Word on the Street: Gerald Kaufman, Paul Dacre, Patrick Weever

Gerald Kaufman, the combative chairman of the Commons select committee on culture, found himself in a sticky spot when, at the committee's hearing into media breaches of privacy, it found itself accused of the very same. Details of people "monstered" by the press were inadvertently distributed to press covering the deliberations. Mike Jempson, director of the Presswise Trust, which helps victims of media intrusion, made a complaint, and Kaufman was forced to apologise.

¿ There was an unsurprising dearth of Express executives at the Media Society's dinner in honour of Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, last week. With one notable exception. Maninder Gill, Desmond's legal eagle, listened carefully as everyone from David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, to Veronica Wadley, editor of the London Evening Standard, extolled Dacre's virtues. "I'm just here taking notes," Gill said. Perhaps he wanted a few lessons in sycophancy.

¿ Patrick Weever, former deputy City editor of The Sunday Telegraph, famously lifted the lid on how certain financial spin doctors gave potentially market-sensitive information to certain journalists. He's now promising to expose further such relationships by launching the website Anti-spin.com. It's starting with a novel plan. Weever has pledged to use his friends in PR as a "force for good" – by having them publicise a meditation for world peace.

¿ Journalists at the Financial Times continue to be baffled by the shenanigans on their picture desk. The bosses have decreed that everyone doing a picture-desk job is a picture editor. Which must leave Chris Lawson, the picture editor of long standing, in a difficult position.

¿ The elaborate preparations for covering Tony Blair's MTV war forum ended in anticlimax. After a rigorous security vetting procedure, journalists were bussed to a secret location. But if the anonymous studio in an unglamorous corner of north-west London wasn't enough of a let-down, the reporters watched the debate on TV monitors and never even shared a room with the PM.