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!
Let me start with a question. Do the annual party conferences serve a useful purpose? Yes they do. And I’ll explain why. But their impact on the democratic process is nothing like it once was. The reason is simple: presentation now takes precedence over policy.
Instead of being the forum which used to have a significant role in determining the polices a party might adopt, the conferences have now become a showcase at which to present the party and its leadership in the best possible light, more like an American political convention.
Labour Party conferences once played a vital role in influencing issues like taxation, employment law or long-running controversies such as nuclear disarmament. Conservative and Liberal Democrat conferences also made a significant contribution to their decision-making processes but today they’re more about news management than giving the membership a say in deciding what the policies will be.
While reshuffles are often an unpleasant ordeal for the cabinet members who have lost their jobs those ministers who have been sacked no longer face the humiliation of having to run the gauntlet of television cameras in Downing Street in order to get their marching orders from the Prime Minister of the day.
Losers in the first shake-up of the coalition government were told of their fate by David Cameron in the privacy of the Prime Minister’s rooms in the House of Commons.
He learned at first hand as a 26-year-old political adviser the brutality of a badly-managed reshuffle and was keen that the first ministerial casualties of his administration were shielded from the kind of public pain suffered by his ex boss the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont who was dumped by John Major in the cabinet clear out of May 1993.
Lamont was summoned from No. 11 to No. 10 to be told the news just after 10am – he refused to accept Major’s counter offer of a switch to the Department of the Environment – but he was left hanging out to dry for the rest of the day with only Cameron to keep him company.
Tucked away in a personal archive from thirty years of Rupert Murdoch watching was a dusty file dated May 1991 which told the tale of an ill-fated bid to expose the Sun’s malpractices. Perhaps it was no more than a mere footnote in the troubled history of Murdoch’s malign influence on British journalism but it was nonetheless a salutary reminder of the political power wielded by his newspapers.
As successive witnesses were questioned during the many months of the Leveson Inquiry, the judge and his legal counsel seemed to be working on the flawed narrative that it was Tony Blair who began the Labour Party’s overtures to win the support of the Murdoch press.
But the first tentative steps to establish a working relationship with the Sun began under Neil Kinnock’s leadership in the long lead up to the 1992 general election and, as I found to my cost, the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring of Kinnock’s inner circle would later become a template for Blair and ultimately for David Cameron.
Such was the chilling effect of Murdoch’s influence that Kinnock’s advisers had been making secret overtures long before polling day; their fear was so great that they were prepared to disregard the unethical and potentially illegal behaviour of the Sun if that was the only means of closing down damaging smear stories.
Although I am sure it was against their better judgement, Kinnock’s aides were being pushed relentlessly towards trying to reach an accommodation with the Murdoch press, an acquiescence which would come to haunt their successors.
By allowing a newsroom culture to develop at the Sun and the News of the World which gave reporters the freedom to pay cash for unauthorised disclosures Rupert Murdoch opened the floodgates to the sale of dubious information to tabloid newspapers.
More than any other group the Murdoch press was responsible for fostering an expectation on the part of the British public that money can be made from the trade in private data, personal records, unauthorised tip-offs and the like.
As the number of arrests has continued to mount during the summer – especially for the alleged bribery and corruption of police and public officials – Lord Justice Leveson has insisted that his inquiry into media ethics must be fully briefed before completing its report in the autumn.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers has been asked to provide a full update at a special hearing in September. If looked at solely on the basis of the number of arrests, the phone hacking investigation is now being rapidly overtaken by what the judge concedes are the two other “fast moving” inquiries which began once potentially incriminating evidence started being hand over to the Metropolitan Police by News International.
Rupert Murdoch’s step-by-step retreat from his UK media interests has often been followed by yet more damning evidence about the extent of phone hacking and the alleged bribery of police and public officials. And so it was with the news that Murdoch was finally quitting as a director of his British newspapers: the announcement pre-empted another grim day at the Leveson Inquiry.
An update on the unparalleled inquiries into unlawful journalistic practices revealed that the investigation by the Metropolitan Police continues to break new ground.
Among the latest to be arrested for taking illegal payments from journalists were two officers at high security prisons; the newspapers involved were not only those of News International but also Trinity Mirror and Express Newspapers; and some of the illicit information obtained by News International’s journalists had been downloaded from stolen mobile phones.
Lord Justice Leveson was so concerned by the fast-moving nature of the criminal investigation that he asked Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers to give him a further update in September so that his report, due out in the autumn, would be based on the latest information regarding arrests and possible prosecutions.
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