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!
Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, spent two and a half hours in front of the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics but to my great disappointment he did not offer an opinion on the government’s six-year freeze of the licence fee, by far the greatest restraint on the quality and quantity of BBC journalism.
There could hardly have been a clearer example of the chilling effect of government interference and the threat to the plurality of the British news media – two of the key issues which Lord Justice Leveson has been asked to investigate.
When invited to comment on his relationship with politicians, Thompson insisted that he always tried to keep them at arm’s length. But throughout his oral evidence (23.1.2012) he did not address the impact of the hurried and largely secret negotiations which he had to conduct on the BBC’s behalf in October 2010 when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government froze the licence fee for six years and effectively reduced the BBC’s spending power by 20 per cent.
Instead of exploiting the platform he had been given and dealing head on with the repercussions of the biggest setback to BBC’s independence and vitality for a generation, the director general retreated to the safer ground of his role as the Corporation’s editor in chief.
Without actually naming names, the BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten has condemned recent Prime Ministers for having kidded themselves that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers determined the outcome of general elections. When giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry (23.1.2012), he condemned the “unseemly” behaviour of both Premiers and Opposition leaders in getting too close to Rupert and James Murdoch and their executives.
But Lord Patten did get personal when welcoming David Cameron’s decision to instruct ministers to publish a record of all their future meetings with media proprietors. He acknowledged that since becoming chairman of the BBC Trust in May last year, he would probably have met Cameron more than once if he had been a “News International executive”. Personally he saw no need to have “sleepovers” – a back handed swipe at Rebekah Brooks’ visit to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence.
One of Lord Justice Leveson’s roles is to examine the future relationship between media proprietors and politicians as it affects media plurality and regulation and Lord Patten left the judge in no doubt that the level of contact had been “demeaning” and that there was at least a perception of collusion.
But although Lord Patten rebuked Cameron for his conduct in relation to News International and its executives, he did not address – nor was he asked to – the impact of the coalition government’s decision in October 2010 to impose a six-year freeze on the BBC’s licence fee.
Cameron’s promise, as Opposition leader, in 2008 to rein in “the bloated BBC” ( in a signed article in the Sun) and freeze the licence fee was welcomed at the time by the News International titles; Cameron's attacks on the BBC were seen as an important cog in reconnecting him to the political and commercial agenda of the Murdoch press which backed the Conservatives in the 2010 general election.
Without the ability to use the Freedom of Information Act to probe the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, the Labour MP Tom Watson doubts whether a House of Commons select committee would have made the progress it did in exposing the cover-up over the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World.
He fears that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is trying to find ways to restrict the scope of the Act – a move recommended by the former Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, and a view echoed by the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.
By using repeated Freedom of Information requests the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee forced the Metropolitan Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions to reveal the contents of their hospitality registers which contained details of social engagements with News International executives.
By using the Act, the committee gained the disclosure of information which otherwise would “still be hidden” and which was far more revealing than could have been obtained by parliamentary questions to ministers.
Trade union outrage over Ed Miliband’s support for the coalition government’s public sector pay freeze – and even the prospect of wage cuts to protect jobs – has echoes of the confrontation twenty years ago when rank and file labour activists were dragged kicking and screaming into accepting Margaret Thatcher’s employment laws.
However short-lived it might prove to be, an assault on the perceived power union bosses is almost always guaranteed to win support from the Sun and other Conservative-supporting newspapers; the determination of the “Red Eds” to take on the “Reds” seems destined to provide plenty of fodder for the headline writers.
Trevor Kavanagh’s first reaction piece in the Sun to the opening salvo by the shadow chancellor Ed Balls – heralding Labour’s first step towards the endorsement of coalition policy – had a classic headline: “Labour has finally found the Balls to tackle union dinosaurs...now barons must listen”. (Sun 16 January, 2012).
Kavanagh could hardly hide his glee that the “dinosaurs who run Britain’s giant unions” were once again in the firing line. He regarded Balls’ declaration of support for the coalition’s three-year pay freeze as “effectively endorsing its entire economic austerity programme.”
Meryl Streep’s gripping portrayal of Margaret Thatcher did not do full justice to her remarkable ability to make sure that not only male politicians – but also radio and television interviewers – were kept firmly in their place. Her mere presence was enough to strike fear into the hearts of eminent broadcasters and producers.
Unlike so many of her political opponents she treated each interview as a battle for supremacy and from the moment she entered a studio and sat down in front of the microphone, she took no prisoners.
Streep’s portrayal of Thatcher in The Iron Lady captured the all-conquering nature of her Premiership at the height of her power. But some of the early scenes – as she fought to get elected as MP at Dartford and then succeeded at Finchley – did give a hint of vulnerability.
I remember my first interview with her in early 1975 – as she campaigned for the Conservative Party leadership – because there was a degree of informality which was not to be repeated. Indeed on seeing The Iron Lady I can hardly believe it myself.
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