MEDIA STUDIES
Dog devouring dog used not to be a story. Now it is
STEPHEN GLOVER
Ever since I entered Fleet Street I have heard occasional rumours about financial journalists enriching themselves through tip- ping shares. But to the best of my knowledge there has never been any public scandal of the sort now engulfing the Mirror and the Sun. There has been nothing to compare with the famous Wall Street Journal case in America in 1983, when one journalist was imprisoned and another put on probation after they had been found guilty of 'ramping' shares. The case involving Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, will no doubt prove to be much less serious: on 17 January he bought shares worth £20,000 in Viglen Tech- nology which nearly doubled after his own paper tipped them the following day. This may very well turn out to be a coincidence, and Mr Morgan may be guilty of nothing more than foolishness and naivety. Nonethe- less, this case marks a momentous develop- ment in the British press.
In some quarters the whole matter has been represented as a silly spat between two tabloid editors, Mr Morgan and David Yel- land, editor of the Sun. So it is, up to a point. It certainly has little to do with principle and a lot to do with testosterone. For some rea- son, Mr Morgan seems to hate Mr Yelland, though the two of them were supposedly chums when they were young journalists on the Sun in the early Nineties. When Mr Yel- land was appointed to his present position in June 1998, Mr Morgan was quoted as saying, `I intend to do everything in my power to give [David Yelland] a good kicking.' Per- haps Mr Morgan could not bear the idea of a man of near equal youth — he is 34 and Mr Yelland 36 — being appointed to the editor- ship of a rival paper. Perhaps he genuinely does not rate Mr Yelland as a journalist. At all events, Mr Morgan has been true to his word, persecuting his old friend at every opportunity. He gave him an almighty bash- ing after Mr Yelland foolishly published that topless picture of Sophie Rhys-Jones, as she then was. He also created the rather amusing notion that the bald and admittedly odd- looking Mr Yelland hailed from the 'Planet Tharg'. Mirror readers were invited to vote as to whether Mr Yelland should be returned to Tharg. Not surprisingly, they thought he should.
On the whole, Mr Yelland did not retali- ate, though he could not resist pummelling the Mirror and its editor after the paper had placed Mohamed Fayed on a pedestal at the end of the Hamilton libel trial. His chance came last Wednesday in a more advanta- geous way than he could have ever dreamed. The Daily Telegraph ran a story revealing that Mr Morgan had bought the Viglen Technol- ogy shares the day before the Mirror's City Slickers column recommended them. Mr Yelland went into superdrive, remaking the Sun's front page for the story as soon as he saw early editions of the Telegraph. Two days later the Guardian added more fuel to the fire by revealing that Anil Bhoyrul, one of the two writers behind City Slickers, had 10,000 shares in a restaurant group called Belgo which the Mirror had repeatedly tipped. Then the Sunday Times alleged that James Hipwell, the other half of City Slick- ers, had bought and sold shares in at least two companies that had received favourable reports in his column. Tina Weaver, the Mir- ror's deputy editor, was said also to have bought shares in a company mentioned by the paper. The effect of all these stories on Mr Morgan was dreadful, and on Tuesday the Mirror struck back, alleging that Ian King, the business editor of the Sun, had admitted secretly owning shares in companies that his own column had plugged in the past three weeks. Somewhat surprisingly, given the playground quality of the exchanges, the Sun is suing the Mirror over these allegations. For me, the really interesting aspect of this affair is not the spat between the two tabloid editors, though it has served to make the controversy more public than it otherwise would have been. It is the role of the other newspapers. First the Daily Tele- graph broke the story, an enterprising young financial journalist called Suzy Jagger hav- ing followed up a tip-off. The Guardian and Sunday Times subsequently weighed in. Though the Sunday Times may have been offering a fraternal helping hand to the Sun (both titles being part of News Corp), the same cannot be said of the Telegraph or the Guardian. For them the Mirror is neither a rival nor a stablemate. Perhaps — who knows? — they would have been less anx- ious to run their stories if the subject had not been, in their estimation, a low 'red top'. But that, surely, is a peripheral considera- tion. The point is that they wrote about Mr Morgan and Mr Bhoyrul not as though they were fellow journalists, whose errors could be fondly indulged, but as though they were politicians who would have to be held to account if they had done anything wrong.
This is an amazing development. Up to this moment journalists have for the most part treated their own kind differently, on the principle that dog does not devour dog. Since journalists are only human beings, it may be confidently supposed they are as sus- ceptible to human weakness as any other group of people who wield a great deal of power. But, by and large, journalists have not subjected their own sort to the kind of scruti- ny they bring to bear on other groups, most notably politicians. In recent years, corrupt politicians have received a tremendous kick- ing, even when their misdemeanours have been relatively minor. According to your point of view, newspapers have grown much more vigilant or aggressive than they were only ten years ago. And now something admittedly, only something — of that vigi- lance or aggression has been turned inwards, and a group of journalists find themselves being treated almost as though they were politicians. The Sun's outrage is only to be expected, and is so over the top that one is inclined to think that it is partly ironical. It is the investigative skills employed against jour- nalists by other newspapers that make this case novel.
I obviously have no idea whether Piers Morgan is guilty of knowingly profiting from his own newspaper's promotion of Viglen Technology. My guess is that he is not, and that, as he says, he carelessly bought those shares without realising that the next issue of the Mirror was tipping them. But isn't that a pretty serious oversight which would be judged unacceptable in any other walk of life? Though cleared with implausible haste by his own newspaper group, Mr Morgan faces investigations by the Press Complaints Commission, the Stock Exchange and the Department of Trade and Industry, as does Mr Bhoyrul. There will be an outcry if there is a whitewash. Mr Morgan and Mr Bhoyrul are receiving a dose of the medicine that they have so often and so cheerfully admin- istered to others.
Previous page
