It's pretty rum when Mr Murdoch can plausibly be represented as a cultural improvement
STEPHEN GLOVER
Readers who feel guilty because they are not interested in the government's draft Communications Bill need not reproach themselves. It will make a difference to media moguls and media companies, and it may excite media journalists. but I doubt it will much affect the quality of our television programmes.
On the one hand, we are told that the Bill will open the way for Carlton and Granada to merge. Big deal! The idea of regional independent television companies died a long time ago. If Carlton and Granada do merge, we will have one mediocre commercial television company rather than two. Look at the mess they have made of ITV Digital. The Communications Bill will enable American groups such as Disney to bid for Carlton or Granada, or both of them. So far as I am concerned, they are welcome to these national treasures.
Nor can I get very worked up by the prospect of Rupert Murdoch bidding for Channel 5 either through News International, owner of the Times and the Sun, or through BSkyB, in which he has a 37 per cent stake. Of course, Mr Murdoch already owns more of the media than one would like. But let us not pretend that Channel 5 is the jewel in the crown. With its mix of cheap soaps, imported American trash, third-rate documentaries and late-night sex, it must be one of the worst television channels in the Western world. In fact, it is so bad that Mr Murdoch would be likely to make it better by introducing Sky News (which is pretty good) and some of his American programming. It is a rum state of affairs when a man such as Murdoch can be plausibly represented as a cultural improvement.
I am, though, intrigued by the political ramifications. For if Channel 5 means little to you or me, it is certainly important to Mr Murdoch. Buying it would give him his first terrestrial television channel in Britain, and the opportunity to make lots of money. Only a day or two before the Bill was unveiled by Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, some pundits were predicting that the government would not let Mr Murdoch have his way. Why has it? Everyone assumes that it did not want to lose a friend — the Murdoch papers including the Sun generally support New Labour — and so a deal was done. But then the question is: what was the exact nature of the deal? One possibility is that by nods and winks Mr Murdoch has indicated that he will rein in his boys at the Sun when the euro referendum comes up. In that case only the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph — the Times having more or less deserted the battlefield — would wholeheartedly oppose membership of the euro. In favour would be the rest of the press and, of course, the BBC.
It is a diverting and chilling thought that this rotten prize of Channel 5, this tawdry excuse for a television channel, might help determine the political future of this country. But I wonder whether it will. I don't doubt that New Labour and Rupert Murdoch are bound together in various ways and that the offer of Channel 5 — though we don't yet know for sure whether he will take it — will bind them closer. I am sure the government can continue to rely on his general support. But I find it almost impossible to imagine the Sun either backing the euro or simply sitting on the fence. I suppose the boys at the paper would have to do as they were told, but, monster though he may be, this is surely one bridge which even Rupert Murdoch would not want to cross.
According to some columnists, No. 10's decision to reform the lobby system should be welcomed. Such people believe the lobby is nothing but a fuddy-duddy club for journalists who like to scratch one another's backs and to agree among themselves what the main story of the day is. Not so, say other pundits. According to them, the political lobby is a finely honed body of men and women who are so schooled in the ways of politics that it is very difficult for any government to pull the wool over their eyes.
What should we think? It is surely clear that the standard of political reporting in this country is pretty high. Political correspondents are generally well informed and some of them are robust. It is debatable how much this is due to the lobby. My guess is that the best political reporters do not rely on it very much, and will continue to thrive after the lobby has been diluted. It is not being abolished, since only the morning session is being thrown open to non-political specialists and foreign correspondents. The afternoon meeting will continue much as at present.
But we have to ask why No. 10 is changing the rules. It is doing so because it deplores what it regards as the aggressive, pack-like nature of the lobby. In other words, it fears it in its present form, Pundits who have defended the government's decision are being very credulous if they believe that Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications, is animated by noble motives. He hopes to shake the pack off his tail but he must know, as a former political editor himself, that the really tenacious journalists will not be put off.
Those pundits who believe that unattributable briefings will end are also being naive. One writer bemoans the 'cowardly anonymity' of British journalism which he thinks is fostered by the lobby. He complains that he still does not know who is supposed to have briefed against Mo Movvlarn, or why. But this sort of thing will continue to go on, since it is by no means peculiar to the lobby. Government spin-doctors will brief sympathetic journalists on the telephone, as they already do, and views and beliefs will still be attributed to unnamed sources.
Here is a private beef which has nothing to do with the media. A couple of years ago I was surprised by my irritation when I saw police motorcyclists stopping traffic in the Strand to make way for the Princess Royal's limousine. She was apparently unaware that she was causing a minor traffic jam — she was chatting to someone in the back of her car — and even a staunch royalist could hardly fail to be annoyed. Then, during last June's election campaign, I was appalled when the police held up the traffic in south London to ease the passage of William Hague's bus on which I happened to be travelling. I asked Mr Hague whether he didn't feel a bit guilty, and he laughed and said that without the help of the police he would never get to wherever he was going. So what? Why should people have been made late for appointments so that he could address a handful of supporters in a market square?
Last week around lunchtime I saw police outriders stopping traffic outside the Albert Hall to make way for Jack Straw's Jaguar. Admittedly they were very expert, and caused the minimum of commotion, but it was jolly annoying to see them gesture aggressively to drivers to pull up so that Mr Straw's car could speed him on to his lunch appointment. I can hardly believe that this sort of thing goes on in this country. Perhaps, if we all agree to hate politicians who behave in this way, they will desist.
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