Do we have the press we deserve?

What makes millions of people buy a peepshow masquerading as a newspaper? Isn’t it time that the reading public took a stand?

The Press Council received a complaint against the News of the World for running a front page story about Eastenders actor David Scarboro. Although he had a history of mental illness and was particularly vulnerable, the News of the World reported that Scarboro had tried to kill himself over a “flagging TV career and turbulent sex life”. A few months later, he killed himself. David’s father believed that the lies told by the newspaper were a major contributing factor in his son’s death.

While we cluck our tongues in disapproval at the way some papers behave, as a nation we also lake a prurient interest in salacious reporting, whether it is true or not. Perhaps we as readers are partly to blame for the low standards of which we complain. The British are voracious readers of newspapers. At the top end of the market. There are our “quality” newspapers which stand comparison with any in the world. We are spoiled for choice, though in practice people choose the paper that best reflects their personal views and tells them what they want to hear.

A wit once remarked that the Times is read by those who govern the country, The Daily Telegraph by those who used to govern the country, The Guardian by those who think they should be governing the country, the Financial Times by those who own the country, the Daily Mail by the wives of those who own and govern the country, and The Sun by those who don’t care who governs the country as long as she’s got big boobs.

The gulf between the “posh” dailies and their raunchy, down-market siblings is wide and getting wider, reflecting Britain’s continuing class divisions. The “quality” papers such as The Independent and the Financial Times delve behind the headlines, while the tabloids such as The Sun and Daily Mirror, seem more determined to provide their readers with entertainment.

What makes millions of people buy a newspaper in which news play such a minor role? The circulation figures of The Sun and the News of the World tell their own tale: boobs are big business, and naughtiness – especially in high places –commands a high sales premium, while life and death issues like nuclear disarmament are treated cursorily, if they are treated at all.

If the standards of our press are deteriorating, it is because the press barons – the Murdochs, Maxwells and so on – are in it to make money, and they do so by giving the punters what they obviously want. So the market rules, OK?

Maybe it was always so: the press barons of yesteryear – the Northcliffes and Beaverbrooks – were also market oriented, but at least they had some sense of social responsibility. Perhaps today’s ogling tabloids merely reflect our more avid lust for the instant fix and looser social mores leading the press downhill rather than up.

Other countries have their low-brow press, but the British variety is peculiarly British in its puritan-fed taste for voyeurism, hypocritically peering at the neighbours from behind the lace curtains. Many women are known to buy The Sun, which (for those of you who don’t know) now carries male as well as female cheesecake.

Sex apart, what is news? To millions of people the comings and goings of Bush and Thatcher and the problems of Gorbachev are boring – and utterly remote from their immediate preoccupations. If you can’t affect decisions made for you on high, why worry about them? Why not sit back and enjoy the passing show?

Everyone loves a laugh, and what better than to laugh at the pompous representatives of authority when they are caught with their dignity around their ankles? The great British public – just like its counterparts abroad – feels reassured, even morally vindicated, when its governors are seen to be only human after all, no better than the rest of us at fighting the temptations of sex, drink or whatever. But at the bottom of this fairground populism lies a nasty snake. If the wages of sin are increased circulation, the penalty of exposure can be harrowing, even tragic, for a hapless victim. The editors of The Observer and The Sunday Times (Donald Trelford and Andrew Neil) were both recently lampooned because of their association with Pamella Bordes, a former House of Commons research assistant. Worse, the brilliant captain of England’s cricket team, Mike Gatting, was sacked after a barmaid recounted her association with him to The Sun and Daily Mirror. Much worse, an obscure but worthy MP, John Golding, was forced out of office after the News of the World had run lengthy interviews with a prostitute with whom he had allegedly shared “£100 nights of kinky sex”.

How can it be in the public interest to expose the flawed private lives of public figures like these, whose ability to do their job was in no way impaired or reduced by their peccadillos? What a sneer waste of talent!

When a government minister with a sensitive security job (John Profumo in the early ‘Sixties’) had a liaison with a call girl who also entertained a Soviet diplomat, the muckraking press was concerned less with national security than with the battle to boost circulation and scoop their rivals. The distinction has long been blurred between stories of salacious interest that titillate the public, and stories which it is genuinely in the public interest to expose, e.g. fraud and corruption in high places.

News has always had some of the qualities of soap opera – witness the Ted and Maggie saga. But it is frequently in local papers that one finds the worst examples of juicy parish pump scandal. How many terrified, apparently respectable burghers have seen their lives crash around them, as gloating neighbours tuck into their tabloids to see the vicar exposed as a transvestite and his wife as a nymphomaniac?

The question that arises from this theatre of cruelty is why a government that guards its own privacy so jealously through the Official Secrets Act gives its citizenry no legal right to privacy. Why should we have to read horror stories of news hounds harassing accident victims or their nearest and dearest, as it is alleged happened after Lockerbie? Can people in such circumstances not be protected from the crass insensitivity of some pressmen and their accompanying photographers?

Film stars, TV stars and pop stars, politicians and the royal family – all have at one time or another suffered the intrusions of ambitious reporters and freelance photographers peering over the wall in the hope of catching them off-guard “relaxing”. The rumour of scandal, even when it’s proved to be groundless, leaves an indelible stain. Mud sticks and reputations can be irretrievably besmirched. Surely everyone should have the right to reply when they have been wronged by the press.

A bill to give us this right was recently introduced by the Labour MP Tony Worthington, but it was then talked out by a Conservative backbench filibuster.

In a bitter debate Mr Worthington said he was aware of the risks of interfering with press freedom, but the lying of some newspapers was undermining the freedom of individuals. The Conservative co-sponsor of the bill, Jonathan Aitken (himself a former journalist), said some tabloids had abandoned journalism for voyeurism. “The reporter’s profession,” he declared angrily, “has been infiltrated by rent boys, pimps, bimbos, spurned lovers, prostitutes and perjurers.”

Another Conservative MP, John Browne, tabled a bill to curb press intrusion into privacy, but he withdrew it after it got a rough ride not so much from Parliament as from the media. The News of the World’s managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, protested that it would prevent him even from publishing that Mr Browne was at home in bed with a cold. He also pointed out that many stories of public concern had to start in some cases with inquiries into people’s personal lives. There is some truth in all of this; a badly drafted, catch-all law designed to protect privacy could indeed throw out the baby with the bath water, if it muzzled the press by frightening journalists off all forms of investigation. If journalists went in daily fear of fines or prosecution they would shy away not only from salacious matter but also from serious issues of definite public concern.

Cynics argue that in reality the government and most Conservative MPs are reluctant to curb press freedom for fear of offending the newspaper magnates who tend to support them politically, notably Rupert Murdoch with his Sun, News of the World, Times and Sunday Times.

But times are nevertheless changing; the Government is slowly responding to the demand for curbs on the more outrageous abuses of press freedom. Freedom is not the same as license, and abuses of press freedom are increasingly seen by some as jeopardizing freedom itself.

Timothy Renton, Minister of State at the Home Office, has served notice on newspaper bosses that they have a “year or two in which to clean up their acts” – though he has not specified what he will do if they fail to comply. Still, the press has been put on probation. Mr Renton has set up a committee to look into invasions of privacy, so we await further developments.

Meanwhile there are straws in this wind of change; the Star has broken its connection with an even more earthy tabloid, the Sunday Sport, after protests from its advertisers, and the Sun has appointed an ombudsman.

Last but not least, that venerable institution, the Press Council, has acquired a discreet but tough new chairman, Louis Blom-Cooper, who means business in his sanitising of the press. The Council’s function is to hear and adjudicate on complaints brought by the public against newspapers. Up to now it has been rather a toothless watchdog but Mr Bloom-Cooper, a legal eagle of distruction, has instilled a new method of urgency. He has moved quickly to propose the creation of a new offence under civil law which would protect both an individual’s reputation and privacy. He wants this offence to include defamation and the unauthorized disclosure of personal information that would cause annoyance or embarrassment, unless justified by a genuine public interest. Cheque-book journalism id not exactly the hallmark of a decent, “caring” society. It is about time that personal privacy and civilized journalism values were given the force of law. Most of our press say they would welcome it; only papers whose profits were built on others’ pain would have anything to fear.

But let’s not be priggish about it: we get the press we deserve just as we get the government we deserve. For press standards to improve, the impetus must come from us, to show the press moguls we prefer news to boobs. At present, though, most of us are giving them the opposite message.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1037