AND ANOTHER THING
The brave new world of Max Clifford, Peter Preston and Torquemada
PAUL JOHNSON
0 ne reason why we must tackle the low moral standards of the media is that its behaviour is corrupting ordinary people. I heard last week of a shocking case in which some nasty sneak, believing a neighbour was involved in a sex scandal, got straight onto the phone to the Sunday tabloids. In this case, there was no story at all but, before it was killed, there was a lot of worry for the person involved. Of course you never know who has been doing the sneak- ing. It is rather like being `delated' to the Inquisition in the later Middle Ages: your interrogator never disclosed the identity of the informant, thus making it far more dif- ficult to defend yourself. Questioned about the ethics of this secrecy, Torquemada said, We always protect our sources.'
As recently as ten years ago, I don't believe anyone would have gone running to the papers to sneak on a neighbour. But people have observed the News of the World, the chief offender, time and again handsomely reward people, be they girl- friends, call-girls or general busybodies, who kiss and tell or act as sex-narks. Such disgusting creatures are not punished by law or boycotted by all decent people or, so far as we can see, penalised in any way at all. On the contrary: the tarts get free pub- licity, Max Clifford rakes in his percentage and signs up fresh clients, the tabloids put on sales and increase their profits. The vic- tims — air marshals, politicians, bishops or what have you — lose their jobs or suffer ignominy, or both. Perhaps more impor- tant, their innocent wives and families go through hell. And the Britain of the Nineties carries on as if nothing wrong had been done. So it's not surprising if the man at the street corner thinks it's all right to make a few quid by dropping someone in the shit. A lovely world the media is creat- ing for us, isn't it?
Then again, take the case of Peter Pre- ston's forgery of the Aitken letter and the signature of a senior civil servant. A gener- ation ago he would have been charged by now and up for trial. He would also have been sacked from his job. But Preston is well protected. He is chairman of the com- pany which publishes the Guardian and is hardly likely to sack himself. The trust which ultimately controls the Guardian and is supposed to uphold the moral and pro- fessional standards set by C.P. Scott, is chaired by Hugo Young, who is employed by Preston. Cosy, isn't it? In any case, to judge by Young's comments on the busi- ness, he does not regard forging a person's signature as reprehensible: it's all in the day's work if you are engaged in assassinat- ing the character of a public figure.
You won't get today's media, so keen to condemn the moral failings — let alone the crimes — of anyone else, criticising journal- istic forgery, except in the most patsy terms. Forgery is nothing to them these days. The BBC sent a radio-van round to my house last week for me to debate the point with a person called David Banks, editorial direc- tor of Mirror newspapers. I found it hard to hear exactly what he was saying, but he appeared to argue that what Preston had done was a triumph of investigative jour- nalism, a huge blow struck for freedom, decency, morality etc.
This buffoon occupies the position once held by the great Hugh Cudlipp, as fierce and tough a journalist as ever lived, who would not have dreamed of stooping to such a trick as forging someone's signature. Most other papers behaved predictably. The Observer said forgery was 'a minor matter' compared with a politician accept- ing a freebie. The Daily Telegraph, the one- time bible of stern, unbending Tories, just waffled. The Sunday Times, which does not appear to have an editor at all at present Andrew Neil can't make up his mind whether he prefers television — had noth- ing to say, though as the victim of the Hitler Diaries you'd expect a certain ani- mus against forgers.
`It's Lord Lucan!' Preston himself still cannot get it into his head that he has done anything wrong. His only mistake, he concedes, was to write the letter on Aitken's Commons writing-paper, thus arousing parliamentary amour-propre, instead of getting hold of the Minister's pri- vate stuff from Lord North Street. Oddly enough, I met someone last week who said, `Know where I first met Preston? At Aitken's house, drinking champagne.' Pre- ston must be kicking himself he didn't pocket some of the stationery while he was on the premises as an honoured guest. An `investigative journalist' should always think ahead.
Among the general public there is bewil- derment. The only non-journalist I have heard actually defend Preston's action was a certain left-wing playwright. When the topic came up at a party, he seemed to be arguing that anything was justified if it helped to 'get rid of this government'. All the others I have spoken to condemned forgery, especially by a journalist. But there have been many silent voices. Nothing from the bishops, Anglican or Catholic. Nothing so far from the Press Complaints Commis- sion, other than an attempt by Lord 'Mac' McGregor to dissuade Preston from resign- ing from it. Nothing from the Attorney- General or the Director of Public Prosecu- tions. I met the DPP, Barbara Mills, during last year's Wimbledon fortnight, at a free- bie provided by the BBC (and very nice it was too, as I also met Ronnie Corbett, my favourite comedian). I have to report, dear reader, that she looked to me dangerously like a Guardian reader. So maybe she thinks everything's OK too.
It seems as if a kind of sea-change has come over our ethical perceptions in the last few years. Under Mrs Thatcher, every- thing was black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. God was on one side, the devil on the other, and you knew where you were. Under John Major, a man whose closest friends and advisers are, or at least were, David Mellor and Jeffrey Archer, nothing seems clear or firm any more, all is misty, muddy, treacherous and unsure beneath one's feet. It is truly amazing how quickly the moral declension has proceed- ed. We are, as Matthew Arnold put it, 'on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms', where indeed 'ignorant armies' — in the shape of greedy MPs pursued by unscrupu- lous journalists — 'clash by night'. Oh for a Thomas Carlyle!
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