Does my memory serve me right? Does anybody else recall the last 24 months or so of John Major’s administration and the role it played in enhancing the power of the press? If not, let me remind some of us…
I’ll hold my hand up and admit to being one of Margaret Thatcher’s biggest fans; who wasn’t in the ’80s and early ’90s (save for the blighted mining industry)? But it seems as sleaze, arrogance and intellectual bankruptcy brought that era to a close in May 1997, the eternal New Labour hegemony that followed ended in a similar downward cycle. But the roots of the current extraordinary power of the UK press began as the Thatcher administration faced a flaccid and vanilla opposition at Westminster. The government f the day was being held less and less accountable by a toothless Labour opposition, and – in the absence of this natural counterbalance to political misdemeanours – it was the mandarins of Fleet Street that stepped into the breach. As the voice of journalism supplanted the role of HM Opposition in calling ministers to account, press vigour and confidence naturally grew alongside it.
Even lifelong Tories could not begrudge hacks the scalps of the likes of Jeffrey Archer, Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken. The egregious carry-on of the three aforementioned politicos just begged to see them brought low. And it was the media – not Labour in opposition – that rightly claimed credit for the kills.
During the intervening years in Opposition, the Tories were not quick to become effective in the role of calling the government to account. Indeed, most of us will likely recall seeing the party scrabble around for years just to regain some equilibrium; as the Irish saying goes, they couldn’t find their arse with both hands.
In the background, meanwhile, the muscles of the press continued to flex and grow. Hacks of all colours (not just political writers) were rather enjoying their new-found power. And with a growing well of public support or even admiration, the press themselves became less and less accountable. Accountability to their readers might have mirrored the accountability that parliamentarians should owe the voting citizenry, but in the same way politicians of this generation and the last seem to have grown arrogantly unaccountable, a lack of accountability among some of the media has
led to the current scandal of intrusion into privacy such as phone hacking.
But whose fault is it – truly? Where were the checks and balances?
If you want an example of this, you might have heard John Humphrys’ interview on Radio Today this morning (BBC Radio 4) with Neil Kinnock. Humphrys embodies the kind of journalist evolution I’ve described as well as any other. He really is the most brutish thug as an interviewer, and his contempt is never more obvious than when sparring with politicians.
The irony of this morning’s bruising encounter is that Humphrys shows himself to be prominent among the barrack-room lawyer / hacks crying Shame!
at the scandal of how elements of the media / politicians / policemen have
behaved so disgracefully. One wonders, does he himself retain any of the
objectivity that would allow him to listen to a playback of his recent
performances like this and conjecture: who the hell do I think I am?
I don’t necessarily seek to suggest that the shortcomings of MPs on both sides of the House in the 1970s / 1980s / 1990s were the original cause and effect of the current ‘meltdown’ among some of the country’s most august institutions. Observers much better read and informed than I might well point to events in further back in history, but I have little interest in going over the Reformation or the Great Plague of Europe in the Middle Ages.
If I do nothing else with this splenetic little piece of citizen journalism, I will be content if I at least get one or two of you thinking about the mechanics of this most complex of modern relationships. And more importantly, do a little housekeeping of our own, along the following lines…
If we were witness to events of recent history, how much of the above scenario did we truly take time to comprehend? And what could we have done – if anything – to influence it or at least question it? And ultimately, on the day that two Murdochs and one Brooks go before a select committee to account for themselves, how much of the blame should we shoulder for allowing this to develop unremarked over so many years?