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!
Alastair Campbell has rarely missed an opportunity to launch a demolition job on journalism and in the second round of his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry he was given free rein to go back onto the attack: he claimed David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband were all getting “disproportionately whacked” by the press in retaliation for having given their backing to Lord Justice Leveson’s investigation into media ethics.
All three party leaders were in the frame because journalists were getting in their “revenge” on the Prime Minister for having set up the inquiry. Campbell felt the motivation for such hostile reporting should not be overlooked: he feared that deep down among politicians there was not much of an appetite to follow through any recommendations which the Leveson Inquiry might make for tightening up press regulation. Therefore adverse press coverage could become a critical factor.
“I would not rule out the possibility of politicians thinking about how this might affect their own position vis-à-vis the next election; there is some appetite for change but I would not overstate it.”
There was a danger that the judge and the politicians might conclude that the whole issue of media ethics was so complicated and changing so fast that nothing could be done. “Too many parliamentarians want to turn away from this...they want this to go away.”
As he listened to the unfolding argument Robert Jay QC seemed nonplussed both by Campbell’s performance and by his own reaction: here was the inquiry’s legal counsel allowing a noted spin doctor to accuse journalists of habitually spinning a line yet at the same time Jay almost seemed to be encouraging Campbell to spin away about his own conspiracy theory on the motivation for the way the news media were reporting the collapse in the public’s respect for politicians.
Having been disadvantaged so often by the ability of the Murdoch press to deliver politically-inspired exclusives, I found Rebekah Brooks’ testimony to the Leveson Inquiry a telling confirmation of what I and most other journalists had always suspected: the Sun and the News of the World had no scruples when it came to exploiting the privileged access which their editors enjoyed in return for the political endorsement of their papers.
Unless a Prime Minister or relevant minister was prepared to comply and give their backing to the latest editorial campaign, the story line could just as easily be turned against the government of the day. But surprisingly often – despite Rebekah Brooks’ denial that threats were ever made – the Sun and the News of the World succeeded in gaining precisely the ministerial support they were seeking.
Brooks was challenged repeatedly (11.5.2012) over the role she played behind the scenes in gaining government backing for a succession of campaigning initiatives – from the “Sarah’s law” campaign to identify paedophiles, to the sacking of Sharon Shoesmith over the “Baby P” affair and finally David Cameron’s decision to order the Metropolitan Police to re-open the files on the missing youngster Madeleine McCann.
Although the inquiry’s counsel Robert Jay QC failed to question Brooks on the impact of these manufactured story lines on the behaviour of the rest of the news media, she perhaps inadvertently gave the clearest possible exposition of why both Labour and Conservative spin doctors have always been so keen to adopt a policy of divide and rule when dealing with journalists.
David Cameron’s former spin doctor Andy Coulson gave an assured account of himself before the Leveson inquiry into press standards – he certainly avoided giving any incriminating answers about the way the coalition government dealt with News Corporation’s controversial bid for full control of BSkyB.
Coulson did admit that he when he became the Downing Street director of communications in May 2010 he overlooked mentioning his own potential conflict of interest – in holding News Corporation stock options worth £40,000 – but he insisted he had no involvement in discussions over the aborted take-over bid.
Unlike Rupert and James Murdoch when offering their evidence to the inquiry, Coulson avoided making comments or asides and he stood loyally by the Prime Minister (who had give him a “second chance”) and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne who had recommended him for a job with the Conservative Party after his resignation from the editorship of the News of the World.
It seemed the harder Robert Jay QC, the inquiry counsel, tried to lead Coulson into offering fresh insights – even when backed up by Lord Justice Leveson – the easier it became for the former spin doctor to close down potentially incriminating lines of inquiry.
During an evidence session lasting for two and a half hours, Coulson’s repeated refrains were a variation of the same themes: “No, I don’t recall any discussions...I am not sure what I knew which day...No I don’t know what he was thinking...” and so it went on.
Despite seven hours of questioning at the Leveson Inquiry – and his abject apologies for the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World – Rupert Murdoch was not challenged directly over the reasons for the “culture of illegal payments” which the Metropolitan Police have alleged became a regular practice among some journalists at the Sun.
Murdoch was clearly troubled by the recent arrests of Sun journalists – “great journalists, friends of mine” who had been with the paper for twenty to thirty years; and he explained at length the steps News Corporation had taken at considerable cost to introduce new ethical procedures. (26.4.2012)
But although counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC – and Lord Justice Leveson himself – asked repeatedly about the culture which tolerated illegal phone hacking at the News of World – and then covered it up as Murdoch claimed – there were no follow up questions about Scotland Yard’s allegation that authorisation had been given at a senior level in the Sun for the payments of “regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money” to police and public officials.
Yet the Sun was the newspaper which Murdoch said mirrored his views and he insisted that the company’s new editorial standards demonstrated that it was still possible to produce the Sun – the “best newspaper” in Britain – without the bad practices which had previously been disclosed.
It has been a wait of nigh on thirty years to hear a chapter and verse explanation of the unprecedented access which Rupert Murdoch has enjoyed with successive with Prime Ministers as he shamelessly exploited the pages of the Sun to influence the course of British politics.
But time again as Murdoch was confronted at the Leveson Inquiry (25.4.2012) with entries from an engagement diary and telephone log which stretched back as far as a hitherto secret lunch at Chequers with Margaret Thatcher in 1981 Murdoch denied the recollections of those involved and their interpretation of events.
He was adamant that he had never used the Sun – or any of his other newspapers – to further his commercial interests.
Robert Jay QC was left floundering as he struggled to persuade Murdoch to accept that there must have been a pay-off for the Sun’s endorsement during general election campaigns; and that even if there was no empirical basis for thinking there was a quid pro quo that was at least the perception and the influence of the Murdoch press had distorted the democratic process.
Murdoch smiled enigmatically at Jay’s life line: “Yes that perception irritates me...because I think it is a myth. Everything I do every day proves it is a myth.”
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