MEDIA STUDIES
Have you heard the one about the biographer and the Archbishop? It's in the Times STEPHEN G LO V ER
Most journalists would say the paper was right to publish this stuff. If the two most important questions in journalism are 'Is it true?' and 'Is it news?', Mr Car- penter's book passes both tests with flying colours, No one has suggested that the author has cooked up anything. The argu- ment concerns only the nature of the understanding he had with Lord Runcie, who in 1991 asked Mr Carpenter, the son of his old mate the Bishop of Oxford, to be his biographer. Lord Runcie admits that he said all sorts of things to Mr Carpenter, as one might to a friend's son whom one knows pretty well, but he did not expect them to turn up word for word in print. He wrongly assumed that Mr Carpenter .shared the same values and observed the same conventions.
There was a time when, confronted by material such as Mr Carpenter's, an editor of the Times would have asked a supple- mentary question to the two already men- tioned. 'Would publication damage the Established Church?' If the answer were yes, he would almost certainly have not gone ahead. This is not to say that rela- tions between the Times and the Church of England were always those of mutual trust. During the editorship of William Rees- Mogg (1967-81), some Anglican clerics distrusted the newspaper, not so much because Lord Rees-Mogg was a Roman Catholic as because his religious corre- spondent, Clifford Longley, was a Catholic who was believed to be hostile towards the Established Church.
Even so, the general assumption was that the Times intended no harm to the Church of England. For most of the centu- ry the belief was that it wished only good. The happiest relations were enjoyed between Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1928 until 1942, and Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the Times. The two men were friends at Oxford, and both became fellows of All Souls. During the Abdication Crisis they thought alike not because they were in cahoots (though Lang wrote to Dawson during the crisis ) but because they had common values and instincts. The same could be said about each man's relationship with Stanley Bald- win at the time.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister and the editor of the Times were all on the same side, as in the famous story about the three men who are observed by police entering a seedy side entrance near Leicester Square — actually the Beefsteak Club. When the first of these suspicious-looking gentlemen is asked who he is, he replies that he is the Prime Minister. The second reveals him- self as the editor of the Times, 'And I sup- pose you, sir, are the Archbishop of Can- terbury?' a disbe'ieving policeman asks the third man — who replies: 'As a matter of fact, I am.'
Those days are gone, and I'm not going to mourn them now. But we should still view with a heavy heart the Times's promo- tion of Mr Carpenter's book. I think I would feel the same if the newspaper's vic- tim were,the senior Roman Catholic cardi- nal in Britain or the Chief Rabbi or who- ever presides over Muslims. The reason is that Mr Carpenter broke rules which gov- ern relations between the press and public men. Of course he is a mere biographer, not a journalist, but he should all the same be bound by the standards which reporters observe. Lobby journalists do not quote or identify politicians directly. Other journal- ists interrogate people 'off the record'. If they break undertakings which they have given to those to whom they talk, they are in trouble with their editor — or should be.
Mr Carpenter broke a looser but no less powerful convention. He knew that Lord Runcie did not expect everything he said to be repeated verbatim. 'He could hardly have been less concerned about putting himself in a good light,' he has told the Times. In other words, the former Arch- bishop of Canterbury was speaking very frankly, as to a friend. (He certainly said some things he should not have said to
anyone even on these terms, but that is another matter.) When Mr Carpenter wrote it all down, Lord Runcie was appalled. 'He asked me to treat it as an archive,' says Mr• Carpenter. 'I said that wasn't possible and he realised he wasn't in a strong position.' A nice way to treat your father's old friend. Having breached an understanding, Mr Carpenter was determined to go ahead with publication, although he agreed to some changes.
It is impossible not to feel for my old friend Peter Stothard, editor of the Times. Price-cutting has given his paper a great sates boost, but the drive for further circu- lation never abates. Perhaps some vicars who read the Times will delight to see Lord Runcie's discomfiture. And yet although Mr Stothard is not a religious man he is, I believe, an honourable one, and the thought that Mr Carpenter's mate- rial was improperly come by must gnaw away at him. Yet he can do nothing. He can't write a leader denouncing Mr Car- penter, having welcomed the man into his newspaper and profited from his presence there. So it is left to the Daily Telegraph to fulfil the Times's old role in criticising Mr Carpenter's behaviour and in standing up for the Established Church, even though the Telegraph's editor is a Catholic.
Iwon't yet write about the relaunch of Punch. Let's see how the magazine devel- ops. Meanwhile I must mention a fax I have received from a certain R. W. Row- land based in Bermuda. 'Tiny' — for it is he — is generous about a piece I recently wrote in the Daily Telegraph about Mohamed Al Fayed, proprietor of Punch. He and Mr Al Fayed are old adversaries, though their feud is supposedly ended. Mr Rowland encloses a copy of an interview of Mr Al Fayed from the German maga- zine Der Spiegel, which, he says, has been rendered into English by 'a court-certified translator'. It is stronger stuff than we have read in the British press. Mr Al Fayed does not disguise his bitter feelings arising from the Government's refusal to grant him citizenship. The Egyptian-born owner of Harrods and budding publisher says it is too late for a rapprochement with the Government. 'They have been shitting on me and my honour too long. And now they are going to pay the price for it.' I can't wait.
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