Distant Voices Read online

  To understand the falsity of this claim, one need only look at the period immediately before Maxwell took over in 1984.23 After more than a decade of decline in the 1970s, during which the Mirror had tried and failed to compete with the Sun, the paper’s fortunes began to improve in the early 1980s. For example, during the Falklands War the Mirror’s circulation rose when it countered the Sun’s racist hysteria (‘Argies’ and ‘GOTCHA!’) with calm, erudite leaders (written mostly by Joe Haines) that, while not opposing the war, expressed the misgivings of a large section of the British population. This was popular journalism at its best.

  Not only did the circulation continue to recover, but there was the prospect of a new kind of ownership that had every chance of guaranteeing the independence of the paper for many years. The chief executive of the Abbey National Building Society, Clive Thornton, was appointed chairman of the Mirror Group with a brief from the owner, Reed International, to prepare the company for flotation on the stock market. Thornton was an interesting maverick who had grown up in poverty on Tyneside, left school at fourteen, and studied law the hard way. While at the Abbey National, he broke the building societies’ cartel and financed inner-city housing. He drew up a ‘protective structure’ for the Mirror in which no single shareholder could own more than 15 per cent of the company; and he began to assemble a portfolio of solid, institutional capital. On top of this, he intended to give the workforce a substantial share of the company. He had no airs. He shunned the executive lift. He ate in the office canteen.

  Reed was taken aback: it had hired Thornton on the implicit understanding that he would ‘cut the unions down to size’ and instead he was winning them over. He found the unions co-operative and the real canker in the management. He also proposed that the company launch a ‘serious left-wing tabloid’ in addition to the Mirror, with a second London evening paper. For all of this, he was criticised as ‘naive’ by managers and journalists alike. When Reed chairman Alex Jarratt broke his public pledge not to sell to ‘a single individual’ and looked like selling to Maxwell, the unions, including the journalists, gave Thornton a pledge of industrial peace for a year: a commitment unprecedented in newspapers.

  I well remember the passion expressed at the Mirror chapel meeting at which we voted for Thornton. A red-faced Joe Haines said he would have to be ‘dragged through the door to work for a crook and a monster like Robert Maxwell’. Indeed, Haines was one of those who all that week had been warning us that Maxwell might plunder the pension fund. Within 48 hours, Thornton was virtually thrown out of the Mirror building by Maxwell, and Haines was Maxwell’s man.

  One year later the leader of the Labour Party was guest of honour at a lavish party which Maxwell held to celebrate the first anniversary of his takeover of the Mirror. Neil Kinnock, it was said, did not approve of Maxwell, but Roy Hattersley ensured they kept smiling. Of those who now controlled Britain’s press, Maxwell was all they had. Seen from the point of view of Mirror readers and Labour voters, the scale of the tragedy became clear. And if the journalists could not spot the con man, the readers could. They resented their paper being turned into a Maxwell family album; and they stopped buying it in their droves. In June 1984 the Mirror under Thornton was selling 3,487,721 copies daily. After eighteen months under Maxwell, this had dropped to an all-time low of 2,900,000 and falling.24 Calculating readership figures, at least a million people stopped reading the Daily Mirror in the wake of Maxwell’s takeover. ‘It takes something close to genius’, according to an observer quoted by Marketing Week, ‘to lose so much circulation so quickly.’25

  The Murdoch press have had wonderful sport at the expense of the Mirror, and who can blame them? But surely we can now expect the Insight team of the Sunday Times to dig into Murdoch’s own, huge indebtedness and the allegations regarding his business practices made by Christopher Hird in his book on Murdoch and his Channel 4 investigation?26 And will they now ask how Murdoch ended up controlling 70 per cent of the press in his native Australia when the Foreign Investment Review Board opposed his acquisition of the Herald and Weekly Times empire?

  In Britain, the Murdoch and Maxwell papers between them have the biggest single share of the daily tabloid market. On Sundays, their papers are the majority. Such is the influence of Murdoch that a whole generation of journalists have come to the craft believing that Murdochism is an immutable tabloid tradition: that sexism, racism, voyeurism, the pillorying of people and fabrications are ‘what the British public wants’. This means, at best, patronising the readers. For journalists on the Mirror it meant – and still means – a breathless wait on the editorial floor for the arrival of the first edition of the Sun. It means a vocabulary of justification and self-deceit. ‘The readers’, that strange amorphous body, are constantly evoked. ‘The readers’ are no longer interested in real news and serious issues; ‘the readers’ are interested mainly in royalty scrapings, and handouts from those who hustle television soaps and pop music business.

  In last week’s Sunday Mirror, under a front-page headline ‘Bedded and Fired’, a secretary claiming to have been ‘seduced’ by Maxwell, a man she found ‘repulsive’, complained that he ‘made’ her go home on a bus and did not keep a ‘promise’ to give her a flat and a car. As part of the Mirror’s current spasm of contrition, the aim of this story was no doubt to show what a rat Maxwell was. It didn’t work. Instead, it provided yet another example of how deep the rot in popular journalism is. Over the page was some self-serving nonsense about how the paper had had ‘an awful week’ and it promised ‘at all costs, to continue to expose corruption WHEREVER we find it . . .’ The reference to ‘continue’ will puzzle those Mirror pensioners embezzled by the publisher of the Mirror. The rest was oddly familiar. ‘Our rivals in Fleet Street’, it complained, ‘are trying to talk us down because they can’t beat us down. Jackals and reptiles in harness!’ Did Cap’n Bob dictate this from the grave? ‘Our heart’, it finished up, ‘beats strongly because we and you, our readers, care for each other . . .’27

  The last line has become something of a refrain lately as the rudderless Mirror papers lay claim to a legacy that is no longer theirs. The years of Murdoch and of Maxwell show. The obsequiousness of yesterday has been replaced by abuse of Maxwell that abuses too much and protests too much. Meanwhile, the newspapers of the ordinary man and woman are, on many days, hardly newspapers at all. It is almost as if there is a missing generation of journalists. As young journalists are often told that the standards of Hugh Cudlipp’s Mirror are ‘not what the readers want’, many are unaware that a popular tabloid, the Mirror, brought the world to a quarter of the British people every day, and did so with humanity, intelligence and a flair that never patronised readers; and that such a paper encouraged its writers to abandon what Dr Johnson called ‘the tyranny of the stock response’ and, above all, to warn their readers when they were conned – conned by governments or by vested interests or by powerful individuals. Mawkish tracts about ‘caring for each other’ were never necessary; care was evident.

  Since popular journalism was redefined by the Sun, the effect on young journalists has, in my observation, been phenomenal. Denied a popular paper that allows them to express their natural idealism and curiosity, many instead affect a mock cynicism that they believe ordains them as journalists. And what they gain in cynicism they lose in heart by having to pursue a debased version of their craft. This applies to the young both on tabloids and the ‘quality’ papers.

  This need no longer be so. The demise of Maxwell offers an opportunity to journalists to confront not only the truth of proprietorial crookedness but the corruption of journalism itself and to purge it with a paper that is truly on the side of its readers. The Mirror could be this paper again – as long as the residue of Maxwell’s influence is cleared away completely. Or another could take its place.

  It is significant that, of all the discussion about Europe, none has been about the press. In France, anti-trust media laws prohibit any individual or group
from owning newspapers with more than 30 per cent of combined national and regional sales. In Germany, a cartel office sees that minority shareholders in newspapers have rights to veto the decision of a block majority. In Sweden, a Press Support Board ensures, independent of government, the health of a wide range of papers. In none of these countries does the existence of specific legislation restrict the freedom of the press. Rather, freedom and independence are enhanced.

  My source for this is a Labour Party discussion document, ‘Freeing the Press’, published in 1988. It proposed a Media Enterprise Board similar to the Swedish board that provides ‘seed’ funds for new newspapers. It calls for a right of reply and legal aid on libel cases. It recommends a Right to Distribution, similar to that in France which allows small imprints to reach the bookstalls; and, most important, it says it is time for an anti-trust legislation and a legally binding obligation on owners to ensure editorial independence.

  Are Labour still serious about this? If they are, they should say so now before their enemies catch them for having consorted with Maxwell. Of course, there is much to add to these reforms, notably that aspiring young journalists are taught and encouraged to believe that achievement of that ‘noblest purpose’ is indeed possible, and that in the end it depends on them.

  December 13, 1991

  A CODE FOR CHARLATANS

  THE NATIONAL FILM Theatre is to hold a series of debates and films about censorship. I hope the discussions about television are not too late to galvanise real opposition to one of the most blatant, audacious attempts to impose direct state censorship on our most popular medium.

  The arts minister, David Mellor, has described a proposed amendment to clause six of the Broadcasting Bill – due to be published this week – as ‘British and sensible’. Mellor is a lawyer; he will understand that the corruption of language is the starting point. Indeed, there is something exquisitely specious about the conduct of this affair. Censorship is never mentioned. The code words are ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’; words sacred in the wordstock of British broadcasting, resonant with fair play and moderation: words long abused. Now they are to provide a gloss of respectability to an amended bill that is a political censor’s mandate and dream.

  Until recently, lobbyists within the industry believed they had secured from David Mellor ‘safeguards’ to protect quality programming from commercial domination as ITV was ‘de-regulated’. Mellor was duly anointed ‘civilised’; and the lobbyists did not watch their backs, or the House of Lords.

  In July, the home office minister in the Lords, Earl Ferrers, announced that the Government wanted to amend the Broadcasting Bill with, in effect, a code of ‘impartiality’ that would legally require the television companies to ‘balance’ programmes deemed ‘one-sided’. Moreover, the amendment would ‘include the ways in which impartiality could be achieved within a specific context . . .’

  The point about this amendment is that it has nothing to do with truth and fairness. Charlatans and child abusers, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot, all will have the legal right to airtime should they be the objects of ‘one-sided’ journalistic scrutiny. But control is the real aim. The amended bill will tame and, where possible, prevent the type of current affairs and documentary programmes that have exposed the secret pressures and corruption of establishment vested interests, the lies and duplicity of Government ministers and officials.

  Thames TV’s Death on the Rock exemplified such a programme. Unable to lie its way to political safety, the government tried unsuccessfully to smear both the producers of Death on the Rock and the former Tory minister whose inquiry vindicated them.28 The amendment is designed to stop such programmes being made.

  All this has clearly come from Thatcher herself, who, the record is clear, has done more than any modern British leader to use the law to limit basic freedoms, notably freedom and diversity of expression. She achieved this distinction (the Official Secrets Act, the Interception of Communications Act, the Contempt of Court Act, the Criminal Justice Act, etc.) while protecting and honouring those who have done most to damage and devalue modern journalism.

  It is hardly surprising that a Government majority in the Lords saw off a very different kind of amendment to the Broadcasting Bill. This would have forced Rupert Murdoch to have relinquished control of Sky Television in 1992. It would have brought him into line with proposed rules that prevent any national newspaper owner from taking more than a 20 per cent stake in Sky’s rival, BSB, and in any new domestic satellite broadcasting service.

  A skilful political game has been played. Thatcher’s stalking horse in the Lords has been Woodrow Wyatt, whose brief career on BBC’s Panorama was marked by his obsequious interviews with Government ministers. Mostly, he is remembered for his red-baiting in the electricians’ union. His prejudices are now published in Murdoch’s News of the World and The Times.

  Wyatt’s refrain has been that broadcasting in Britain is a quivering red plot: ‘left-wing bias’ he calls it. In the Lords, he tabled an amendment to the Broadcasting Bill that would ‘define impartiality’. He and Thatcher agreed this at a meeting in Downing Street. When Earl Ferrers picked up the scent and replied that the Government would table its own amendment, Wyatt and his backers withdrew theirs.

  At last month’s Royal Television Society dinner David Mellor went out of his way to describe the Wyatt proposal as ‘unworkable’.29 For this he received appreciative applause from television’s liberal establishment. However, the publication last week of the amendment shows that Mellor’s speech was massage and misleading.

  The amendment gives Thatcher and Wyatt much of what they want, and is to be rushed through Parliament. The haste is likely to intimidate broadcasters in time for the next election; or that is the hope. Such obsession with political control stems mainly from a significant shift in how the establishment and the public regard the media. In many eyes television has replaced the press as a ‘fourth estate’ in Britain. This alarms those who believe television is there to present them, their ideology and their manipulations in the best possible light.

  In contrast, much of the public now looks to television current affairs, documentaries and drama documentaries to probe the secrets of an increasingly unaccountable state. Every survey shows public approval of television current affairs, and offers not the slightest justification for new restrictions. Television’s successes have been notable. The Guildford Four might not be free now had Yorkshire Television’s First Tuesday not mounted its original investigation. For more than a quarter of a century Granada’s World in Action has exposed injustices, great and small, and made the sort of enemies of whom serious journalists ought to be proud.

  Not surprisingly, the series has borne the brunt of the Thatcher/Wyatt wrath. This has come lately from the ‘Media Monitoring Unit’. Last March the MMU was exposed by the Independent on Sunday as little more than a propaganda shopfront following a series of well-publicised attacks on Radio 4’s Today programme for its ‘anti-government bias’.30 The MMU’s founder is Lord Chalfont, a pal of Thatcher, who appointed him IBA deputy chairman. Chalfont is also a pal of Wyatt, whom he supported in the Lords debate.

  Factual programmes are expensive, particularly investigations that require time and patience. Under the new bill, how many companies will now risk controversy if it means having to make two or more ‘balancing’ programmes? What happened to Ken Loach’s Questions of Leadership in 1983, to be shown this week at the NFT, is salutary. Loach’s four films demonstrated how the trade union leadership often collaborated with government against the interests of millions of working people. After months of circuitous delay and decisions taken in secret, the IBA decided that each of the four films would need ‘balancing’ and that another longer programme would be made to ‘balance’ that which had already been balanced. Arguing against this absurdity, Loach maintained that because his films provided a view of trade unions rarely seen on television, they themselves ‘were the balance’. They were never shown.31
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br />   In 1983, David Munro and I made The Truth Game, which sought to decode the language of nuclear inevitability and to illuminate the history of nuclear weapons as an exercise in keeping information from the people the weapons were meant to ‘defend’. The IBA decided that The Truth Game could not be shown until a ‘balancing programme’ was made. Central Television approached several ‘pro-bomb’ names but they refused. Finally, Max Hastings agreed to make a separate programme but not to do as the IBA wanted: to rebut our film virtually frame by frame. The Truth Game was made when television reflected the bellicose establishment view of the ‘Russian threat’; this was a time when Washington’s ‘first strike’ strategy included the possibility of a ‘limited’ nuclear war. Thus, like Questions of Leadership, our film provided modest ‘balance’ to an overriding ‘imbalance’ in the coverage of the nuclear arms race. Under the new amendment, it probably would not have been made.32

  That Britain already has television censorship ought to be enough to alert us to the nature of the demands of Wyatt and Co. This is known as ‘prior restraint’, a nod-and-wink system instituted in the name of Lord Reith, founder of the BBC. In 1937 Reith boasted that he had ‘fixed up a contract between Broadcasting House and the Home Office’, and had ‘made it clear that we must be told ahead of things that might cause trouble’.33 When in 1988 Home Secretary Douglas Hurd decided to make criminals of TV and radio journalists who interviewed members of certain Irish organisations, including those elected to Parliament, he first informed the BBC as was customary. ‘Impartiality’ is spoken about at the BBC as a ‘Reithian principle’. The irony is usually unintended.