WHY I CAN'T WORK FOR THE EXPRESS
Mary Kenny says she will not write for a paper owned by the proprietor of Horny Housewives and Big Ones International
WHEN it comes to the role of a Christian in the media, I take my cue from Malcolm Muggeridge. A Christian in the media, said Muggeridge, was like a vicar who is a piano-player in a brothel. Occasionally, he may get to play 'Abide with Me', but he is still in the bordello.
This telling observation is both a warn- ing against pomposity and a Pauline reminder that we live in the world of power, money, and man's fallen state, which we all share. So accept the world the way it is, and live with it.
The news that Mr Richard Desmond had acquired the Daily Express, Sunday Express and Daily Star was broken to me while I was sitting in a Radio Five studio discussing Prime Minister's Question Time with Anthony Howard and Kevin Maguire of the Guardian. The presenter, Ian Payne, suddenly announced that the item had appeared on his screen and asked me, as a Daily Express writer, for a comment. Since I knew nothing of Mr Desmond or his organisation, Northern & Shell, I had nothing to say. Ian Payne went on to remark, with a smirk, that Mr Desmond was the publisher of OK! magazine and also a string of top-shelf soft-core porn such as Big Ones and Asian Babes (and a wankers' television channel called 'Fantasy). I made some limp joke.
I had been hired by Express Newspapers in 1996 as a columnist and commentator, though I chose to come off the staff of the Express earlier this year and become instead an Express writer under contract. This means that you are associated with the newspaper, are identified in public with it, and agree to write a minimum number of articles for it: in my case it was at least 20 pieces a year, for a retained fee of £25,000. Being on contract, rather than on staff, gives you some freedom to write for non-competing outlets elsewhere — broadsheet newspapers, or magazines. But whenever I did any broadcasting I was identified as 'Mary Kenny of the Daily Express'. My career hadn't always been favoured under Rosie Boycott, who was made editor in 1998, yet I understood what Rosie was trying to do, and she had com- mitment and conviction. I also had grown to like Daily Express readers, who seemed to me what the Irish call 'relics of auld daycency'. I was formed in the Beaver- brook tradition, which emphasised rapport with the readers and the journalist's hunch, rather than modem marketing, for which the Beaver had contempt.
Newspaper proprietors, starting with Beaverbook himself, are not noted for flaw- less character. So what? Is a porn king any worse than an arms-trader (a possible alter- native)? The first Express editorial confer- ence under the new regime was, a colleague told me, 'rather chipper'. Richard Desmond was about to put investment and energy into renewing the Daily Express and its stable- mates. Rosie Boycott and her editorial team were staying on — for the present, anyway.
Girlie magazines: what's wrong with them? Some people like them, some peo- ple don't, and it's a free country. If you're a Thatcherite (which, in economic terms, I am), you must applaud diversity and reward the spirit of enterprise (which Mr Desmond has shown). But I felt a wave of dislike when I looked at the extent of the Desmond empire. For it's not just the odd girlie magazine that has been the founda- tion of his wealth, but a string of tacky titles: Big and Black, Forty Plus, Big Ones International, Contact Girls, Private Lust, Stuffed, Xtreme, Horny Housewives, Mother- in-Laws (eh?) are among his stable. I had just interviewed Ray Wyre, an expert on paedophilia, and he had said to me that the sheer ubiquity of porn is contributing to the lowering of inhibitions which facilitates the sexualisation of , children — and pae- dophile offences. How was I ever going to publish that kind of reflection in Mr Desmond's Daily Express?
I'm not a ban-it-all prohibitionist and I don't take the Andrea Dworkin feminist line, either, that all sexual material exploits women. You have to accept that some peo- ple choose to peruse sexy images. Moreover, saucy jokes can be funny and some erotic writing can be thrilling. But the drip-drip effect of so much explicit material is coars- ening; and invasive, too. When the pornog- raphers take over, no one has any choice left, because the stuff is everywhere, from advertising to W.H. Smith. Ubiquity creates coercion: small newsagents are now obliged to stock top-shelf material Did I have any choice but to work for a porn merchant?
My sister Ursula in New York emailed me with a strong, unambiguous message. You absolutely must hand in your notice, she wrote. You will despise yourself unless you make a stand. It doesn't matter if you have no money, or if your career crashes: cut your links with this enterprise now. God never closes a door but He opens a window (to help you jump out, I thought grimly).
Initially, I was defensive. I emailed back explaining that I couldn't be without a basic salary, that the family depended on my income, and that, anyway,-who am I to sit in judgment on Mr Desmond or his doings? Who says I'm any better? And then I went for a walk and it just came to me, suddenly, that my sister was right. The money didn't matter. I couldn't be associated with Richard Desmond's values. I sat down and wrote my resignation letters.
I don't think I was being particularly vir- tuous. First, it would probably have harmed my own standing as a Catholic writer to have remained associated with the new Daily Express. Readers have to feel that they can trust what you are writing as a commentator, and that you are not just a hired hand. Second, I might very well have been fired by the new regime anyway: my profile might not have suited them any more than theirs suited me.
I feel for my colleagues, who are nice people. But I cannot, in all sincerity, wish the new Daily Express success. In fact, / have to hope it will fail because if it suc- ceeds, then it gives the green light to every other pornographer that the road to acceptability and respectability is to pur- chase what was formerly a family newspa- per. And so the culture will be coarsened and lowered just that little bit more, notch by notch, until all our choices, all our little efforts to aspire to what is beautiful and sublime, are whittled away.
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