Media: News Corporation
Debate between Baroness Wheatcroft and Lord Prescott
Baroness Wheatcroft
My Lords, I first congratulate my noble friend Lord Fowler on having pursued this issue with such vigour. I also support his opening remarks that we should not condemn all journalism because of the allegations surrounding some newspapers.
I do that with something of a vested interest, as someone whose career has largely been in journalism. I have worked extensively for what is now dubbed “the Murdoch press”, particularly the Times and the Wall Street Journal; occasionally I still write for the Times. Having listened to my noble friend Lady Kramer, I confess that, having always had the highest admiration for the editorial standards of the Wall Street Journal, I concur that this morning’s interview with the proprietor was perhaps not its most probing. Having been a journalist, a banker and now a politician, I feel that I am perhaps going to have to try estate agency to enhance my standing and public esteem.
There is no excuse for the phone hacking and bribery. Now, quite rightly, both practices and the industry in general will be examined by judicial inquiry. However, we must be careful not to endanger journalism in general. It can be a force for good. The London Evening Standard's current campaign to improve literacy has the potential to enhance many thousands of lives. It may not be on the same scale of bravery as was that of the Sunday Times campaign on behalf of thalidomide victims, but it is shining a light on something of which politicians should be ashamed.
Responsible journalism should continue to do that. It should inform, it should stimulate, it should even entertain—but it should never mislead. If it does err, it should be quick to point to the error of its ways. That is why I was somewhat surprised to see that great campaigner for press morality, the paper that has done so much to expose phone hacking, the Guardian, decide that its corrections column on page 36 was the place to tell readers that, actually, the Sun’s story about Gordon Brown’s son was not the result of information being obtained from accessing medical records, as the Guardian had so boldly declared to the world. Newspapers can be as guilty as politicians of finding a good place to bury bad news. I contend that page 36 is probably not the place.
Baroness Wheatcroft
That does not make it right.
Now that the spotlight is shining so intently on my trade, it is quite right that we should be focusing on areas beyond hacking. The relationships between the press, the police and politicians are now rightly under scrutiny. However—and I know that there will be many in this House who do not believe me—in many years of working for Rupert Murdoch, both at the Times and the Journal, I never felt under any pressure to write a particular story or take a particular line. I was free to express the opinions that I held, and they were rarely flattering to the Governments that my proprietor supported. Nevertheless, I wrote what I wanted.
However, I experienced appalling pressure from what I suppose one must term the other side of the divide. Noble Lords may recall that when Gordon Brown became Chancellor, he installed as his henchman one Charlie Whelan. My economics editor at the time wrote a story to which the Chancellor took exception. Mr Whelan called her and, when the swearing came to an end, told her that the Times would be punished. It would be ignored for a year—no invitations, no press releases and no interviews. As far as the Treasury was concerned, it would not exist. We took this to be bluster but the curse of Whelan duly took effect. My economics editor, a well respected journalist, tried reasoning but to no avail. We did not get the information that we needed on behalf of our readers. In the end I had to take up the matter with the Permanent Secretary, who quite understood that a politician or his adviser could not deprive a national newspaper of legitimate chains of communication with a government department. That was a dreadful attack on the democratic process.
Bullying on that scale is rare but it shows why we must be careful not to see the relationship between politicians and the media as merely the first always trying to curry favour with the second. In its current form, this relationship works both ways. Both have a degree of power and influence and use it, not always in the right manner. The media are hungry for scoops and politicians can hand them out. In City journalism, where I cut my teeth on a Sunday newspaper, in the old days we would wait for what was known as the Friday night drop. Before insider trading became an offence, public relations people would go around, distributing various “scoops” that we could print on Sunday. That dried up when the law was tidied up, but the same thing has not happened in political journalism; scoops, interviews and exclusives are handed out.
Increasingly, the trend has been for announcements that should be made by the Government to Parliament being made instead through newspapers to their readers. This is not healthy. The rot had clearly set in when Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, told his team, as they developed their policies on the family, that,
“we need two or three eye-catching initiatives … We need more. I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible”.
In those words are encapsulated two of the problems that have contributed to the current miasma: too much emphasis on the cult of personality and too little respect for Parliament. The former has led to the media being awash with stories about the private lives of people, many of whom I have never even heard of but who seem to be worthy of headlines. From what has come to light it seems that much of the hacking was aimed at establishing what footballers were doing off the field—a variation of the offside rule, as I understand it. The public are clearly interested in this stuff but it is not in the public interest that appetites for seedy gossip should be fed.
As these inquiries progress, we will examine what really is in the public interest. Things have to change. It will not be easy to reach agreement on this. It will be even harder to find a means of regulation that can safeguard it in an internet age. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Grade for his ideas; there is meat there on which we can build. Regulation clearly needs to be tightened up.
However, on the second point—that of relationships between the media and politicians—I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, for reminding us of the story of King David. The message is that politicians need to be brave. They should not quake with fear of newspapers, whether they are owned by Murdoch or anyone else. As Prime Minister, my noble friend Lady Thatcher did not kowtow to any newspaper baron. She did what she believed in. There is a message there.