Our press, the worst in the west, demoralises us a

[Teddy Bear]

Our press, the worst in the west, demoralises us all

Britain's frenzied media make sane politics near impossible, but this government still won't denounce their extremes

Polly Toynbee
Friday April 13, 2007
The Guardian

Pictures of the coffins of the latest soldiers killed in Iraq filled the front page of yesterday's Daily Mail. "They won't be selling their story, minister", read the bitter banner headline. "Their silent homecoming from Basra in coffins draped with the union flag could not have been more different from the return last week of the 15 sailors and marines held captive in Iran - with goody bags and a green light to hawk their stories for cash."

Most people must instinctively agree. The Sun and Trevor McDonald paid Faye Turney £80,000 for a story of not much derring-do, while the families of those coming home in coffins will get scant attention for their unbearable loss. The Mail wants a ministerial scalp: "Last night, Defence Secretary Des Browne was facing calls to quit as he admitted he should have blocked the decision to let the hostages sell their stories."
But one key element is missing from its reportage. The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday made their own bids for Turney's story. They were among the papers who wooed her with money, flowers and sympathy, but savaged her when she sold her story elsewhere.

The Ministry of Defence agreed to pass bids on to the sailors: the Daily Mail emailed an offer of "a very substantial sum". The Mail on Sunday combined its bid with the Sunday Mirror and jointly offered £100,000 in another email. The News of the World offered to outbid all others. Sky made an offer but the BBC did not. The Daily Express offered £30,000. Throughout the sailors' captivity, the press laid siege to their desperately anxious parents and friends. Entry to front doors was gained by delivering huge bunches of flowers with envelopes attached offering fabulous sums.

The Sun, of course, is double-smug: it got the story and now it can crow at the losers. "The very same people shouting loudest in uproar this week were making some of the biggest offers. I know - I've seen the emails," Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun's defence editor, told me yesterday.

It is worth regularly quoting the Daily Mail and other poisonous newspapers because most Guardian readers never see them, and so may not quite understand what politicians are up against. But this episode is in a realm of its own for heart-stopping hypocrisy. Here is the Mail's thundering leader headlined, Selling Out Britain's National Honour: "It is clearly wrong that those who are in the forces should be able to sell their stories. And it is an insult to those who are fighting." The Mail called it "repugnant to see Faye Turney cashing in ... it sticks in the craw of all right-thinking people". Here is the same flabbergasting shamelessness in the Express: "How repulsive must be this spectacle for those who have suffered serious injuries and are now disabled. There will be no six-figure sums for any of them." Why not? Because the Mail, Express and the rest will not be offering them any. Why not? Because death and disability are boring.

So as the stampede to trample Des Browne into dust thunders on, pause to consider the near-impossibility of conducting sane politics in Britain's frenzied media. Of course Browne shouldn't have disappeared: to empty-chair all the main news programmes instead of coming out fighting was a bad media-handling error. But refusal to appear on Newsnight is hardly a resigning offence.

The MoD, trying to protect the sailors, warned them that selling their stories would invite hot vengeance from newspapers whose bids failed. Thirteen of them wisely took that advice and kept their heads down. By now Faye Turney and Arthur Batchelor may feel the money wasn't worth the abuse and mockery.

But even if the interviews had been banned, the sailors' stories would still have been sold. A review of the regulations that will try to make it illegal won't stop friends and family selling stories. Squaddies secretly sell stories of "bonking in the barrack room" or kit shortages. The police get fat fees for tip-offs of celebrity arrests or the progress of crime investigations. Deep press chequebooks always find the bribable.

But you have to pinch yourself over this latest hue and cry. The press is blaming the government for failing to stop them buying stories? The circularity of it makes the head spin. Why is there no queue of angry cabinet ministers itching to get on to the Today programme to denounce press hypocrisy? Why aren't they challenging the BBC's reporting, which follows the tabloid frenzy without investigating tabloid behaviour? Instead, the BBC repeated a much-denied tabloid smear that Downing Street chose which favoured papers got the interviews.

Cringing to the media was always New Labour's weakness. They tried to ride the tiger, wooing Murdoch, schmoozing Dacre, imagining the press could be surfed or squared. Now the tiger's out of its cage and in full roaring attack on every front, there is nothing to lose by fighting and some public credit to gain.

The British press, the worst in the west, demoralises the national psyche. It makes people miserable. It raises false fears. It proclaims that nothing works, everything gets worse, and it urges distrust of any public official or politician. Now it has the government on the run and a chance for Tory victory, there is no holding back its doom-mongering in this most healthy, safe and prosperous age.

Yesterday Max Hastings offered readers of the wailing Mail a tale of national decline and moral woe such as rolls off some Associated Press repeat key, spreading national despair and anomie in high tones, for base political ends: "Loyalties erode, whether towards Queen, church, state or kith and kin ... Every road in the land is strewn with rubbish, discarded by people who care nothing for beauty ... People seem generally discontented ... There is a longing for times gone by ... Our forebears shared an understanding of how to cohabit with each other. This has been shattered by manic indulgence of self ... "

What is so squalid about these newspapers is their use of figleaf sermons to cover their real business, done with corrupting chequebook, threat, intimidation, invasion of privacy, paparazzi aggression and vicious cruelty. Labour should use this disgrace to reign in chequebook tell-all by public servants, from those at the top such as Christopher Meyer to those at the bottom such as these sailors. It's time to look again at privacy legislation, a quid pro quo for the Freedom of Information Act the press abuses with petty assaults on government. The media is in danger of making government by any party impossible.

[steevo]

Wow, nothing like a little perspective. When I read rather rare critiques coming from the media about the media, its usually with a grain of salt. In the states, with rare exception they're approached with kid gloves, even defenses with underlying victimization its not their fault. Nothing but exercises in false humility about how objective they think they are. This one is not but I say that with some reservation. I would love to see your media which I consider similar to mine go at each others' throats and do some real reporting, exposing the powerful creators of news in the guise of telling about the news. But it is totally ironic reading such pointed exposure and disgust, easy to believe as sincere, coming from person working for the Guardian. One has to wonder what Polly thinks when she looks in the mirror.

Anyway, whoever the source, it would be great if they all took off the gloves exposing one another's destruction of a nation. That would be news indeed.

Good article Teddy.

[Teddy Bear]

Steevo, the recent example of Robin Aitken, the former BBC journalist who having left now exposes their left wing bias, is about as close to 'objectivity' as we're likely to get from the media. Even if a journalist wrote a story against their own company, would it be run? None want to start a precedent that could backfire on themselves.

A perfect example of "Nothing but exercises in false humility about how objective they think they are. " (nicely put) can be seen almost daily in the 'Editors Blog' of the BBC. Here's the one related to this story, and I've just noticed they also included my comment to them about it, which I wasn't expecting, and which I'll also post below.

Bear in mind while reading this blog below that the BBC do pay people for their stories. There was a case a a little while ago concerning a farmer who shot 2 burglars, killing one of them, and was actually imprisoned for protecting his family and property this way. When the BBC ran a documentary about it, they paid the surviving burglar for his story, and there was quite an outcry about this, as you might imagine.

Here, the BBC knew if they would have offered license fee money to these marines for their story they would have been torn to shreds. So here they are being 'holier than thou' about not having done so.

Selling stories
Alison Ford 11 Apr 07, 12:31 PM

Faye Turney reportedly received more than £100,000 from ITV and the Sun newspaper for the story of her capture and detention in Iran. The response to this, and the (temporary) permission given to her fellow crew members to sell their stories, has been vociferous.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the MoD's decision, the BBC was just as anxious as every other news organisation to hear first hand what had happened during the crew's thirteen days in captivity. The problem for us is that we don't pay for stories.

We'd been very careful during their time in captivity not to bombard the sailors' families with requests for interviews and to try to respect their privacy - a request which had come from them through the Ministry of Defence. We wrote to all of them asking if they would consider speaking to the BBC once their ordeal was over. And, as soon as news of the crew's imminent release was announced on Wednesday last week, many of them did.

As for the crew themselves - of course we were disappointed that a couple of them decided to sell their stories rather than speak to us. Lieutenant Felix Carman, who said 'he wasn't in it for the money' spoke to the BBC (watch the interview here) at the weekend. Now that the MoD has changed its mind and banned the others from selling their stories maybe a few more of them will talk to us too.

Alison Ford is UK news editor

7. At 10:44 PM on 11 Apr 2007, Ted Berra wrote:
So typical of the BBC bias, that it desires the stories of the failures and shortcomings of our troops as displayed by these sailors, yet declines to make a programme about the heroism of our most decorated living soldier, because 'it would alienate the anti-war audience'. This was reported in the Telegraph a few days ago, and speaks volumes about the real 'balance' of the BBC.

However the BBC has no problem reporting on the valour of the Taleban news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6081594.stm our enemies in case you had forgotten. You really have your priorities wrong, not to mention the question of treason, and continue to denigrate our nation and destroy the moral of our soldiers who serve and protect us. It is the likes of your reporting that creates the situations and responses that these marines found themselves. An absolute disgrace, and you are totally without morality.