The Sun's treatment of Wayne Rooney is barmy even by its own standards
Gentle readers of this column may not see the News of the World or the Sun very often, so they may be unaware that both Murdoch papers have gone bonkers in the grip of Rooney-mania. It started on Sunday with the News of the World devoting its front page and four inside pages to the life story of the footballer Wayne Rooney. It was comic stuff. We learnt that Wayne fell for his fiancee Colleen as he mended her bike chain. Love blossomed as they sneaked behind a local church for their first kiss, and they celebrated their engagement by watching EastEndets. Wayne and Colleen then spent their first night alone in a Marriott hotel.
The editor of the News of the World has a far better idea than I do of what his readers want, but I find it difficult to believe that they enjoyed wading through these treacly trivia. The Sunday Mirror in the meantime had bought up the Murdoch newspapers' former hero, David Beckham, who was revealed to be renewing his wedding vows in Morocco with Posh. Possibly this was a very slightly more arresting story.
One might have thought that the NoW had got everything out of young Wayne that it was possible to do, but the Sun seized the baton with enthusiasm on Monday, presumably because the Murdoch chequebook had been lavished and the newspaper felt that it should try to get its money's worth. We were treated to more stories about Wayne and Colleen, as well as an encomium by Wayne to his new mentor, David Beckham. Tuesday brought a front page in which Wayne confessed that he had nearly given up football, a theme developed at some length on the inside. On Wednesday we were told that there was a backlash in Liverpool against Wayne because of his association with the Sun. It was at this stage that the paper really lost the plot, devoting a rambling and often illogical full-page leader to Wayne and the supposed backlash against him. It contrived to link his alleged persecution to its own error 15 years ago in criticising Liverpool fans after the Hillsborough disaster. One passage made me seriously worry for the sanity of the Sun's editor, Rebekah Wade: 'Fifteen years ago the Sun made a mistake over Hillsborough, for which we are truly sorry. But it is wrong to visit our past sins on Wayne Rooney.'
Eh? The Sun has given over so many pages to Wayne Rooney that it regards his interests and its own as indistinguishable. Or had it built him up as a sacrificial victim? Even as it clasps the green young footballer to its bosom, one can foresee the eventual betrayal. The Sun loved Paul Gascoigne once and forsook him. David Beckham used to be the apple of its eye. The time will come when Wayne and Colleen are portrayed in a very different light. They have been built up and they will one day be cast down.
Yet even by its own standards the Sun's treatment of Wayne seems wildly overblown. It is not often that one sees a newspaper behaving in so barmy a fashion. Is Rebekah everything she has been cracked up to be? This leads me to a wider question about all of Rupert Murdoch's editors in this country. Only John Witherow of the Sunday Times could be described as a very safe pair of hands. People are so used to taking it for granted that Mr Murdoch is a kind of diabolical genius that they cannot easily conceive of the old boy getting things badly wrong by appointing a duff editor, But even accomplished masters can lose their touch.
The Independent's Robert Fisk is a polemical journalist who arouses opposing passions. No one has been a fiercer critic of the American and British invasion of Iraq. Now he has enraged the head of the tribunal set up to prosecute Iraq's former leaders, as well as Downing Street, by identifying the judge who will preside at the trial of Saddam Hussein. It is suggested that this might expose the judge to the danger of reprisals from Saddam loyalists. Mr Fisk may face prosecution in Iraq, though I would be very surprised if it were to come to that.
Let us try to set aside whether we are prowar or anti-war. What do we think of Mr Fisk's naming of the judge? His defence is that two Arabic-language papers in Baghdad had already published the judge's name. 'There is a language called Arabic,' Mr Fisk points out, not unreasonably, 'that is the language of Iraq and is spoken by the people of Iraq.' Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent, claims that the judge had been immediately recognised by many Iraqis from his voice and the side view of his face. Presumably he was told this by Mr Fisk himself.
So it seems that Mr Fisk has done nothing to increase the dangers which this poor judge already faces. Nonetheless one has to ask why he felt it necessary to identify the judge, since his name will have meant nothing to any of the Independent's British readers. Perhaps he wished to show that he had his finger closer to the pulse than most correspondents in Baghdad, which may well be true. But his naming of the judge did not enlighten us. Although I accept that he has almost certainly not put the man at greater risk, he has given his name wider circulation for no good reason that I can see.
Loyal readers of this column may remember Captain Gove, an old favourite of ours. Why did we call him Captain? I am not sure. It may have been because he showed an impressive grasp of military tactics which at one stage seemed likely to propel him to the editorship of the Times. Alas, it never happened. It was Robert Thomson, not Michael Gove, who stepped uneasily into Peter Stothard's shoes. Mr Gove did eventually become so-called Saturday editor of the Times. The general view is that he has not fulfilled this role with enormous distinction, though one wonders how easy it would have been to do so when the Monday to Friday Times is rather weak.
Mr Gove has now made a decision that will surely eventually lead him to turn his back on full-time journalism. He has been adopted for the safe Tory-held seat of Surrey Heath. This is brave of him. It is also apparently at odds with something he said last November in a speech at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. Mr Gove reportedly asked his audience: 'What can you remember Boris [Johnson] having achieved in the Commons? We remember nothing. It is as a journalist and not as a politician that Boris has achieved fame.'
I make no comment as to the justness of this observation regarding the editor of this magazine. But what about Mr Gove? My prediction is that with his supple mind and mellifluous Scottish accent and well-modulated ambition he will go very far indeed in the Conservative party. Much further than he has in journalism. It will be as a politician, not as a journalist, that Captain Gove will achieve fame.
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