MEDIA STUDIES
Who is Piers Morgan? An unfunny young man
whom the Mirror's management has cruelly miscast
STEPHEN GLOVER
No doubt there was anti-German feeling during the Fifties and Sixties, but it was on the whole confined to comics, trashy books and films. What changed? It was the arrival in 1969 of Rupert Murdoch on our shores. Under his ownership, the Sun gradually developed a xenophobic, and particularly an anti-German, line. It didn't happen quickly, and I don't suppose Mr Murdoch personally thought of it. But he let it happen. During Kelvin MacKenzie's editorship of the Sun (1981-94), the nationalistic sensibilities of the paper were refined into their existing state. It was all largely a joke, or meant to be.
Until recently — in fact, until this last week — the Daily Mirror has been a junior partner. Of course, it has been the general policy of the paper under several editors to follow the Sun in as many ways as possible. But so far as xenophobia went, something held the Mirror back. Under its present ownership it has affected to be pro-Euro- pean, a point of view which tends to restrict Kraut-bashing. However, during the past couple of weeks the paper has thrown cau- tion to the wind. It has gone further than the Sun, or indeed the Daily Star, in depict- ing the countries of our football opponents as being populated by human mutants. Even the Daily Mail has been appalled, and last Tuesday it carried two articles critical of the Mirror.
Mr Morgan's leader was the low point. He has been forced to apologise. Mirror Group executives are said to be 'furious' which we can interpret as meaning that they know that Mr Morgan's jape went embarrassingly wrong. But how could the piece ever have been written and, having been written, how could it have been pub- lished? It is so childishly inane. 'It is with a heavy heart that we therefore print this public declaration of hostilities and urge every loyal subject to cut it out and place it in a prominent place in their home, office or car.' This sub-school magazine stuff has repelled almost everyone — German diplo- mats, Daily Mirror readers who can remem- ber the war, and Terry Venables. But in truth it is too feeble to be inflammatory. It merely tells us how vacuous the Mirror has become under its present management.
Who is Piers Morgan? He is a baby-faced 31-year-old who cut his teeth as the Sun's showbiz editor. Here he caught the eye of Mr MacKenzie, whose protege he became. At the age of 28 he became editor of the News of the World, whence he progressed to the Mirror, no doubt with a helping hand from his old mentor Mr MacKenzie, by now a Mirror Group director. Several things about him stand out. He appears to be wholly untroubled by any socialist con- victions. He is much less funny than Mr MacKenzie, who possesses a manic sense of humour. And he knows almost nothing about politics, being instead an expert on television and its stars who grace the pages of the Daily Mirror.
Mr Morgan clearly has many talents, but he has been cruelly miscast by the Mirror's management. He pretends to be a Labour- supporting man and directs simulated rage towards the directors of Camelot, which runs the National Lottery, on account of their allegedly astronomical salaries, though he himself earns some £200,000 a year. He indulges in semi-joky Kraut-bash- ing, of the sort he picked up at Mr MacKenzie's knee, without reflecting that even after everything that has happened to the Mirror, its readers may be a little differ- ent from those who read the Sun. I wonder when he last encountered any of them in their natural habitat. If they wanted crude anti-German jokes they could find them more humorously presented in Mr Mor- gan's old newspaper — where Mr Morgan himself might be more usefully employed writing his old showbiz column.
`They should have 90 minutes of penalty shoot-outs followed by 3 minutes of football.' Last week I chided my old friend Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, for not publishing a letter from certain luminaries concerning the Polly Toynbee affair. Mr Stothard, who eloquently defends himself on The Spectator's letters page this week, has since gone out of his way to show that he does not mind publishing letters critical of his newspaper. Last Saturday he ran two such letters, one of which, from Sir Timothy Sainsbury and Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith, complained that the Times had not carried details of amendments suc- cessfully introduced during the report stage of the Family Law Bill. This is the Bill which will change our divorce laws.
In the same issue the Times reported on its front page the ending of the 'beef war' at the Florence summit. The paper did not give a comprehensive account of the agree- ment. Although there were some details in the text, there was no exhaustive list of those concessions which John Major had won and those he had not. The Indepen- dent gave an even sketchier account, so that the reader was more or less invited to take on trust the authors' contention that Mr Major had been fleeced. A drawing of him helpfully showed him with a fig-leaf concealing his private parts. By contrast, the Guardian ran a table on its front page which sought to explain what Mr Major had achieved and what he had not. So did the International Herald Tribune. The Daily Telegraph used a similar device on an inside page. Rather surprisingly, the Finan- cial Times, which was singled out by Mr Douglas Hurd (though not by name) in a recent radio broadcast for its reliable reporting, was rather sparing with the facts.
How can it be that some supposedly seri- ous newspapers should fail to tell us the exact terms which mark the end of the most important disagreement we have ever had with Europe? It is no defence that the agreement was virtually a foregone conclu- sion, some details having already been leaked and published. The Daily Mail, which has probably been more exercised by the beef war than any other paper, put news of the deal on page two with a less than comprehensive summary. Many news- paper readers must be left with the general feeling that the Government has boobed again while being unable to supply chapter and verse.
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