MEDIA STUDIES
Mr Mandelson frightens newspapers now, but he won't always
STEPHEN GLOVER
Readers will be glad to hear that the head of Amanda Plate11, the executive edi- tor of the Express on Sunday, is still firmly attached to her body. Lord Hollick, chief executive of the Express, and Rosie Boycott, the paper's editor-in-chief, have sensibly decided that sacking Ms Plate11 to please Peter Mandelson would not be especially Clever. I described last week how Mr Man- delson was seething with anger after the Express on Sunday published a picture of 'Peter's friend', a young Brazilian gentle- man called Reinaldo Avila da Silva. It seemed that Ms Plate11 was going to carry the can.
So Mr Mandelson does not always get his way. I say that cautiously, suspecting that Ms Plate11's card may have been marked. In the wider world of Fleet Street Mr Mandelson will continue to instil fear, as the events of the past week illustrate. No Paper has dared to make more than a glancing reference to damaging allegations in the current edition of Punch. The maga- zine alleges that during a recent five-day visit to Brazil, paid for by the British tax- payer, Mr Mandelson visited several rather disreputable gay nightclubs and fell in with an exotic creature by the name of Fabulous Fabrizio, described as 'a wonderful-looking boy'.
In one respect, at least, Punch was com- pletely wide of the mark. I am told that far from being boyish or beauteous, Fabulous is no longer in the first flush of youth, and is as likely as not to be found in a pair of bedroom slippers. It may be, of course, that Punch is wrong on every count. This is certainly the line that Mr Mandelson has taken, describing the story off the record as 100 per cent untrue'. He appears reluctant to make the same denial on the record because that would inevitably lead to Widespread publication of the allegations he was denying. Poor John Major fell into this trap when a magazine called Scallywag ran a scurrilous and wholly untrue piece about his supposed relationship with a Cook.
However, Punch is not quite Scallywag, and the story, though very possibly inaccu- rate, does not immediately read like a far- rago of nonsense. I believe that had Mr Mandelson been a Tory minister, or even a leas powerful Labour one, newspapers Would have reported the article much more fully than they have. At the very least the more earthy among them would have dis- patched reporters to Rio de Janeiro, and Fabulous Fabrizio would have found him- self being wined and dined in the best restaurants that city has to offer. None of this appears to be happening. Even the downmarket tabloids appear loftily uninter- ested in what Mr Mandelson might have been getting up to in Brazil at the taxpay- ers' expense.
The near total silence can be partly explained by Mr Mandelson's precaution- ary tactics. He rang the Sun and was told by those natural guardians of good taste that of course the paper would not be touching the story. Heaven forfend! He talked on the telephone with Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph, who agreed to 'pull' his paper's short first edi- tion story on being assured by Mr Mandel- son that there was not a scrap of truth in it. Strangely, he did not make contact with the Daily Mail, which ran a brief item. Elsewhere self-censorship largely operat- ed. One or two papers were in any case too high-minded to concern themselves with the alleged nocturnal activities of Mr Mandelson, though, as I say, if he had been a Tory they might have taken a dif- ferent view.
What explains the arm-lock Mr Mandel- son has on the media? In part it has to do with contacts he has cultivated. He is close to Sir John Birt, Director-General of the BBC, which organisation obligingly banned all reference to Mr Mandelson's sexuality a few weeks ago. He is friendly with Elisa- beth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert, who owns the Sun, the News of the World and the Times. (The journalist Matthew Parris, who recently `outed' Mr Mandelson on BBC 2's Newsnight, has speculated that his subsequent dismissal as a Sun columnist may owe something to the Mandelson/Elis- abeth Murdoch connection.) Mr Mandel- son's contacts at Express newspapers are particularly strong, as I have discussed in the past. The Labour-supporting Mirror and Guardian are unlikely to rock the boat. The Independent is probably well disposed. Only at the Telegraph and Mail does he appear not to have a firm toehold.
But friendships only afford so much pro- tection, as Mr Mandelson discovered when the Express on Sunday, whose chief execu- tive and editor-in-chief are his personal friends, published that embarrassing pic- ture of Reinaldo Avila da Silva. There has to be an iron fist beneath the velvet glove. Newspaper executives are more frightened of Mr Mandelson than of any other living person, and see him as a rising power in a government that may be around for anoth- er eight or nine years. 'He has the power to ruin businesses,' one editor tells me. 'We are all frightened of him.'
Think of what New Labour might do. It could introduce VAT on newspapers, or it could bring in draconian privacy laws. Some executives at the Press Complaints Commission got the impression that Mr Mandelson was dangling this threat in front of them when he complained about the Commission's inability to stop the Express on Sunday publishing that picture of 'Peter's friend'.
This is not Fleet Street's finest hour. Whatever one thinks of a politician's right to privacy, surely nobody can feel comfort- able about Mr Mandelson's hold over newspapers and the BBC. Last week I was in South Africa, where I learnt about the recent attempts of Thabo Mbeki, the deputy president, to have a Zimbabwean journalist working for the Sunday Indepen- dent deported. There were some technical violations to do with the man's residence in South Africa, but the real reason for trying to get rid of him was that the government resented his criticisms. Happily, a judge ultimately found in his favour. Shocked though I was by this case, I hardly think that, living as we do under New Labour, we have any right to feel superior.
And yet I feel it will not ever be so. I hate making predictions out of a superstitious fear that once you write that something will probably happen it is less likely to do so. But I don't believe that newspapers will always be in Mr Mandelson's thrall. In the end the cowed monster that is Fleet Street will fight back. Will Mr Murdoch forever rein in the Sun and the News of the World because his daughter likes Mr Mandelson? What might the press tycoon do if Mr Man- delson, as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, felt compelled to turn down the bid by BSIcyB (controlled by Mr Murdoch) for Manchester United? I can't say how nemesis will occur, but I can sense the resentment of the oppressed. These partic- ular oppressed people have a lot of latent power, and they know where Mr Mandel- son is vulnerable.
Previous page
