A journalist of fifty years standing offers a personal and independent assessment of the often troubled relationship between public figures and the British news media.
My aim is to try to monitor events and issues affecting the ethics of journalism and the latest developments in the rapidly-changing world of press, television, radio and the Internet.
Expect too an insight into the black arts of media manipulation. So spin-doctors, Beware!
After another a week which began with the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne trailing his own Parliamentary announcements – this time on the future of the banking industry – a Conservative MP close to the Prime Minister has defended the practice of government by leaking.
Nick Boles, a founder member of the Notting Hill Set of Conservative activists who backed David Cameron’s bid for the Tory leadership, told fellow MPs that the “public’s right to know” was more important than giving the House of Commons “a monopoly on first communication of the government’s decisions.”
He readily acknowledged – and defended – the fact that modern government had become “a leaky sieve”. But it was, for example, because George Osborne’s proposals in the autumn statement had been trailed so effectively in advance, that the public’s “awareness and understanding” of the difficulties of the current economic situation was “far higher” than if nothing had been released in advance.
A grim year for journalism was hardly the most promising backdrop for the annual carol concert held by the Journalists’ Charity but readings from the works of Charles Dickens and Hilaire Belloc ensured a hearty, uplifting finale for the congregation at St Bride’s Church.
News of the celebrations planned next February for the 2012 bicentennial of Dickens’ birth provided another optimistic note and an opportunity for the charity’s supporters to reflect on the author’s role in helping to encourage the formation of the original Newspaper Press Fund.
“Gullibility” is the word which Chime Communication’s chairman Lord (Tim) Bell is reported to have implied when trying to explain away the ineptitude of senior members of his staff in allowing themselves to get caught in a newspaper sting.
Bell has condemned what he considered was an “unethical, underhand deception” by undercover reporters from the Independent’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism in tricking Tim Collins, managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, into believing they were agents for the government of Uzbekistan.
Disciples of the New Labour school of spin doctoring must have been purring with delight when the shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper silenced the BBC television presenter Andrew Marr by giving him a master class in not answering the question.
She followed the rule book to the letter: prepare and learn a soundbite and then deploy it relentlessly; when an interviewer finally gives up and beats a retreat, do not smirk.
Inaccurate speculation and the use of invented anonymous quotes were identified by Alastair Campbell as two of the greatest failings of political correspondents when he gave evidence to Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry.
Tony Blair’s former spin doctor ranged far and wide in presenting a damning critique of media ethics but neither counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, or the judge asked Campbell whether his own approach to political public relations might have contributed to the very shortcomings he was complaining about.
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