MEDIA STUDIES
Mr Mandelson the Palmerston of our time (the Disraeli too)
STEPHEN GLOVER
Something extraordinary has happened at the Express. I have already written about it elsewhere but I do not apologise for doing so again, particularly since, with a few honourable exceptions, no one appears to be very agitated. I feel as though history is being made and not many people grasp its significance.
Here, for those who do not know them, are the essential facts. Two weeks ago Rosie Boycott, newly installed as editor at the Express, appointed Paul Routledge as her political editor. He was an old mate from her stint on the Independent on Sun- day. Mr Routledge was rather chuffed. Yet within a few days his appointment was rescinded, and Tony Bevins of the Indepen- dent was given his job.
Mr Routledge is old Labour and a `Brownite'. He is distrusted by Downing Street because he has written a sympathetic biography of Gordon Brown and is plan- ning a much less sympathetic one of Peter Mandelson. Mr Bevins is a dependable Blairite, and has been described not long ago by Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minis- ter's press secretary, as `great'. No one would dispute his integrity. It is just that he is a paid-up Blairite, pure and simple.
Ms Boycott did not change her own mind. It was changed for her by Lord Hol- lick, the Labour life peer who runs the Express, and his colleague Philip Gould, a pollster who is very close to Mr Blair and organises all kinds of 'focus groups' for the government. Mr Gould has for many months been a presence in the Express building. He appears to have been instru- mental in the recent sacking of Richard Addis as editor and in the appointment of the very New Labour Ms Boycott. He hangs around the Express as if he were some sort of political commissar.
Mr Gould is also an old friend of Mr Mandelson, who is almost certainly the brains behind the supplanting of Mr Rout- ledge in favour of Mr Bevins. Mr Mandel- son has been finding time to help out in the affairs of Express newspapers. Last Thurs- day he enjoyed a meeting in the newspa- per's building with Lord Hollick and Ms Boycott. But he cannot always be there. It takes no great leap of the imagination to envisage Mr Gould reporting back to Mr Mandelson what he picks up during his reg- ular tours around the Express. By the way, proprietors and editors who have secret trysts with 'Mandy' may want to think again after this debacle.
This sort of governmental inference in newspapers is Vot unprecedented. There was a great deal of it in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lord Palmerston was a notorious manipulator of the press, and is thought to have written anonymous articles for the Morning Chronicle while he was foreign sec- retary. Disraeli founded the Press (a weekly competitor to The Spectator) in 1853 when in opposition and, according to one con- temporary estimate, wrote ten of its first 11 leading articles. Lord Salisbury frequently made amendments to the Standard's edito- rials which its political leader writer, Alfred Austin, was good enough to show him, though these alterations were often subse- quently struck out by the editor.
That was the game, that was the way things were. But as newspapers began increasingly to cover non-political events, becoming much more than political fly- sheets, so they slowly freed themselves from direct government interference. Journalism was no longer merely a continuation of pol- itics by other means. There were naturally politicians who still sought to control news- papers, perhaps the most egregious exam- ple being Lloyd George. When in 1918 he could not persuade the editor of the Daily Chronicle to desist from criticising him, he put together a syndicate to buy the paper.
The doctrine of modern newspapers was admirably stated in 1966 by Sir Colin Coote, editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1950 to 1964: 'Practically all of our big papers take, broadly speaking, one political line — Conservative, Labour or Liberal but not one of them would dream of taking orders from a party political office.' This is what we all believe. It is one thing to be partisan, quite another to take your instruc- tions from a government. That is why the conduct of Lord Hollick, Mr Gould and Ms Boycott is so shocking. This is not how pro- prietors and editors now behave.
Some might say that what they are doing is no worse than what Palmerston, Disraeli and Salisbury did, but it is. Those 19th-cen- tury politicians were playing the game according to the rules of the time. The much narrower readership probably knew what was going on. The readers of Ms Boy- cott's Express do not. They unthinkingly accept the modern conventions. They do not expect their paper — which, after all, supported the Tory party until a year ago — to be manipulated by a Labour govern- ment. Few of them are likely to know that its political editor has been appointed on the say-so of Downing Street.
On Monday Margaret Beckett, President of the Board of Trade, explained in the Commons why the government would not accept a Lords amendment specifically ban- ning newspaper predatory pricing. The real reason, of course, is that it does not want to risk angering Rupert Murdoch, but accord- ing to Mrs Beckett such legislation was undesirable because it `would give the state the power to control how newspapers behave'. Perish the thought! Perhaps she would be good enough to tell us what Messrs Gould and Mandelson and Lord Hollick are doing at Express newspapers.
When Simon Kelner was recently appointed editor of the Independent, his writ was said also to run to the Independent on Sunday. But that paper has appointed a new editor called Kim Fletcher, until now deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Mr Fletcher is taking Rebecca Nicolson, a sen- ior executive on his old paper, with him to the Sindy. This joint departure cannot have been welcomed at the Sunday Telegraph.
Mr Fletcher's elevation is another blow to the discredited doctrine of seven-day newspapers. This states that a Sunday paper can be run as though it were a mere offshoot of its daily sister and need not have its own editor. I have lost count of the number of times the Sindy has been merged, demerged and remerged with the Independent. Meanwhile the Express on Sunday is being unpicked from the Express and given its own executive editor, Amanda Platel. Will newspaper managements ever learn that in this country seven-day papers do not work?
This is my last column here for several weeks. When I return I hope it will be in a slightly different form. In the manner of modern journalism my various agents are locked in complex negotiations with the editor's own representatives. Max Clifford may well be called in. It would be wrong of me to make a prediction but I feel confi- dent that a settlement can be reached, and that I shall be back soon.
Previous page
