The Brief – MIA: The FT, von der Leyen and their flight from Hell

German famously has a word for everything, even reporters who are in the tank for the people they cover. These Hofberichterstatter are named after the chroniclers of Europe’s royal courts who faithfully bent reality in the service of their sovereign.

Brussels is full of a contemporary incarnation of these poor souls, most notably (and influentially) at the Financial Times. While the Japanese-owned London-based paper has a glorious history of covering rogue traders and the business world writ large, its political coverage, which relies much more on maintaining access to key decision makers, has always been somewhat less aggressive, and at times hagiographic – especially in the European capital.

The ongoing furore over the paper’s inaccurate coverage surrounding Ursula von der Leyen’s r