Press
Closed file Bill Grundy Mr Martin Walker writes a column called 'Open File' in the Guardian. He will, however, not be writing it much longer. 'Open File' isn't a bad name for the column, because the stories Mr Walker prints do seem to have been obtained by opening somebody's file and stealing the contents. If I have any complaints about Mr Walker though, it is that he opens too few files. He has an extraordinary acquaintanceship with the files of Colonel Stirling and General Sir Walter Walker of the National Front, and of General Sa'ad el-Shazly, the Egyptian ambassador to Britain. But not many others, or so it seems. For Mr Walker has a somewhat steam-rollering style. It is not colourful, it is just plain relentless. When he has finished pouring a couple of columns of Colonel Stirling over you, it is possible simultaneously to feel two contradictory, things: one, that it is time Mr Walker turned to some other subject; and, two, that there is no other subject. Mr Walker is standing proof of the fact' that investigative journalism is not, per se, riveting. It is possible, as Mr Walker demonstrates, to be boring even while revealing all.
But, his editor loves him. At least, that is the impression that I get from the amount of space that Mr Walker has at his disposal. Take last Tuesday, for example. On page one there was the story, spilling over onto the back page, about British arms being sold by Jordan to South Africa. On page thirteen there were the usual endless inches of the 'Open File' column, including the exciting news that Nelson D. Rockefeller is a part owner of a Rhodesian chicken farm. And the whole of page sixteen was taken up with a fuller version of the arms to South Africa story. I turned to the publisher's imprimatur on the back page, half expecting it to say, "Published by Guardian Newspapers. Edited by Alastair Hetherington. Written by Martin Walker."
Mr Walker's work usually demonstrates two apparently mutually exclusive qualities: political bias and political ignorance. In fact they are two qualities which often go together. in Mr Walker's case they are inextricably intertwined. His political bias shines through every sentence. Even someone unable to read would be able to discern that Mr Walker is not a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party. His political ignorance comes over more subtly. In the recent TUC debate on the social contract, that celebrated mythical creature whose existence has only ever been noted in Huyton and Lord North's seat, there were, you will remember, two motions, one standing in the name of the Engineers, and the second in the name of most of other unions. Neither seemed to be agin the contract until you read the small print. Jack Jones and co. were for the contract and no messing about. Hugh Scanlon and his lads were for the social contract after 'substantial progress' had been made on the matter. To old TUC hands the implication was obvious. There was a gap. 'Twas not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'twas enough, 'twould serve.
Mr Walker couldn't see it though. As he puts it, "like any confused journalist, I decided to go back to the documents," i.e. the agenda. From this he accurately transcribed the wording but still couldn't 'get the drift. "No, doubt I am naive and do not see the deep significance of all this." Well, he said it, not me. A bit more experience of the smoke-filled rooms where the horse-trading known in the TUC as 'compositing' goes on, and Mr Walker might have understood just what the debate was about. He didn't, and all praise to him, he said so. For him, the debate was pointless (in this, it resembled many other debates I have listened to at all the conferences I seem to have been attending since the year dot) Mr Walker's problems stem from the fact that although he has practised as a journalist in America he hasn't got a lot of contacts with the trade unions and the main parties in this country. This is not an offence. Everybody has to learn to walk. Even people called Walker. Which is why at the February election he wasn't allowed to cover any of the three major parties, and why he therefore spent all his time dealing with the National Front and the Communist Party, which in its turn explains why Mr Walker's National Front sources are so good.
But opinions are, changing. It is reliably reported that the editor of the Guardian, that splendidly rubicund man, Mr Alastair Hetherington is cheesed off with Mr Walker's Was and his ignorance. This, despite the space he has been bestowing on him. He appreciates Mr Walker's undoubted skill and assiduity and therefore has decided to remove him from the column to which he has become accustomed arid install him in his own right as a roving investigative journalist. His unfortunate deputy, Maggie Gillon, Will now bite the dust, because that IS implicit in the contract on which she was hired. Sad, but that is life. The new man is Mr John Torode, Whom Guardian •readers will remember as the Labour correspondent of the paper before he succumbed to seduction and fell into the arms of London Weekend, out of which he fell into a limbo from which he is but shortly recovered. Seen wearing a dark jacket, starched collar and well knotted tie the other day at a Labour Party reception, he looked the very model of a modern Guardian columnist. What the new column will be called — it won't happen until after the election by the way — is still not clear. It certainly won't be called 'Open File'. Mr Hetherington's hope is apparently that 'Open File' will soon be forgotten. The Guardian, it seems, can re-write history as well as the Russians. proportion of all beer consumed is drunk by a relatively small number of heavy drinkers, mostly manual workers. So television commercials made it quite clear, from their choice of characters and settings, that these were the people they were aiming at and that not only was drinking beer a good thing but drinking a great deal of it was even better.
The logic of the approach has beguiled some advertising men on this side of the Atlantic. Collett Dickenson Pearce, the ad agency which works for Whitbreads Tankard, has come up in the past with ideas not too far removed from Schaefer's. It proposed, for example, to run a campaign on the theme of "the beer you can stay with." But the proposal got nowhere. The copy committee of the Independent Television Companies Association stamped on it hard. The ITCA, which runs a joint system of censorship of commercials with the Independent Broadcasting Authority, will pass nothing which appears to encourage drinkers to consume more than is good for them.
Alcohol advertising on television has always come under pretty close scrutiny — unlike the press. But the booze manufacturers — gently but firmly propelled by John Methven's Office of Fair Trading — prepare to publish next month a new agreed code of advertising practice for their industry — the ITCA's control is becoming even more rigorous.
Recent commercials which probably wbuldn't get on the box if they were submitted today include Watney's "Red. We've mat'de it stronger." Dear me, no. You mustn't try to persuade people to .become intoxicated. And another, which ran at the end of last year, but would be likely to fall foul of ITCA in its new more critical mood, was the Pennine bitter ad, seen regionally, featuring Fred Trueman. Like the existing tobacco advertising code, the alcohol rules to be published next month will almost certainly forbid linking the product with popular heroes.
The ITCA has long insisted that characters in beer commercials should appear to be at least in their twenties. In recent months the line has been interpreted yet more strictly. Not that any of the brewers have deliberately tried to show under-age drinkers, but a number of commercials have put the accent on youthfulness — it's at the younger end of the market, after all, that brand loyalty is most easily influenced.
Has advertising actually got anything to do with the changes seen in drinking habits over the last few years? Difficult to say, since factors other than advertising have obviously been of great importance. One has been the change in the character of the English pub, once essentially a male preserve, now increasingly a social and entertainment centre for both sexes. This development may well have something to do with the growth of the lagers, which now account for 11 per cent of the total beer market, compared with four or five per cent four years ago.
Advertising for the lagers has to a large extent concentrated on reassuring male drinkers that lager is real beer and not the effeminate stuff it was originally thought of as being. To the extent that a lot of men as well as women now drink it these campaigns may be judged to have had some effect.
The lagers, have, with the keg bitters, been among the heaviest advertisers on television. Black Label, for instance, spent nearly £600,000 on TV advertising last year. more than any other single beer brand except Guinness which spent a staggering total of nearly E2 million to defend its seven per cent market share.
Guinness was, with Double Diamond, the pioneer of the humorous approach to television advertising of beer. The theorists say that humour, especially the slice-of-life kind, which Guinness's agency J. Walter Thompson has specialised in, involves the consumer more than simple product claims.
Humour can do more, mind, than simply create a warm feeling. It can enable you to make the most outrageous claims without fear of censorship. No brewer would be allowed, for instance, to tell viewers that his beer increased their potency — a belief which, incidentally, is seriously held about Guinness in certain African countries, But Collett Dickenson Pearce can declare that Heinken lager "refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach," and not even Mrs Whitehouse raises an eyebrow.
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