MEDIA STUDIES
Independent, Express and Mail apart, the papers did well that terrible day. Even Max was sensible
STEPHEN GLOVER
Newspapers have attracted opprobri- um for their reporting of what happened at Dunblane. I'm going to praise them. Last Thursday morning, 24 hours after the mas- sacre, I felt proud of my trade. The mur- ders had taken place shortly after 9.30 a.m. the previous day in a far-off Scottish city of which most London news desks were only hazily aware. Since most papers have a first edition deadline around seven or eight o'clock in the evening, there remained only nine or ten hours for reporters to be despatched to Dunblane and for them to put together their stories. This was a severe test not only of newspa- pers' resources and journalistic compe- tence but also of their ability to hit the right tone. Every title revealed its strengths and weaknesses.
The tabloids had the better of it. With one exception they threw themselves with all their energy at the story, whereas the broadsheets seemed to hang back a little, as though they did not grasp so quickly and instinctively that this was the most terrible thing which has happened in our country for a long time. The Sun's coverage was probably the most impressive. It devoted its first 17 pages to the murders, with few advertisements breaking the continuity, and produced what I thought the best pro- file of Thomas Hamilton, as well as an excellent background piece about Dun- blane. Though Hamilton was dismissed in customary Sun-speak as 'a sick pervert' and a 'weirdo', the paper generally tried to achieve a more elevated tone. 'Pray For Them', ran the front-page headline. On the leader page the editor, Stuart Higgins, threw away his page-three models' directo- ry and climbed into the pulpit to deliver a heartfelt and only slightly toe-curling homily. The Daily Mail got its tone a bit wrong. The 13 inside pages devoted to the mas- sacre were well-judged and professional, but the all-important front page was poorly conceived. The Sun, like all the broad- sheets except the Financial Times, used the picture of the children of 'Primary 1' on its front. The Mail used a nondescript photo- graph of Hamilton under the headline `Monster' which somehow put the emphasis in the wrong place. (The downmarket Daily Star employed a similar device, though the paper turned in an otherwise respectable ten pages on the massacre, proving that its editors' minds have not been totally addled by daily contemplation of Pamela Ander- son's breasts.) How did the Mail make its mistake? Possibly it was a simple error of judgment: put Hamilton on the front because he is the fiend. More likely, the Mail's editors felt the Primary 1 picture would not have maximum impact on a nar- row tabloid page. So they ran it across pages four and five, which was, admittedly, effective.The trouble was that this left them with just Hamilton on the front. A techni- cal consideration got in the way of what their hearts should have directed them to do.
At least the Mail had energy. So did the Daily Mirror, which devoted 15 pages to the massacre, though somewhat disjointedly because of the incursions of advertising and other editorial. The paper also mislaid its leader page, which was a shame; editorials may be vacuous on these occasions but readers still want them. Uniquely among the tabloids, the Daily Express seemed almost listless. It prudently used the Prima- ry 1 picture on the front. But it cleared only seven other pages, which restraint I doubt can be blamed on thin resources. It was surely a mistake to give over pages two and three to Ross Benson for a piece which was a very competent `pull-together' but lacked the sense of immediacy of other papers' reporting. I was left feeling that the Express did not care quite as deeply as I hoped it would do.
Among the broadsheets, the Financial Times made the Express seem passionate. It did not 'splash' with the massacre, prefer- ring the small rise in unemployment as its main front-page story. I suppose the pork- scratchings market had not trembled as a result of what had happened in Dunblane. All the other broadsheets gave over their front pages, and three or four inside pages. It was difficult to chose between the Daily Telegraph, the Times and the Guardian. As you would expect of the Telegraph, it print- ed the victims' names on the front, though rather surprisingly omitted to tell us in its main front-page story at what time they were killed. The Times had the best plan of the school, as well as the best map position- ing Dunblane. The Guardian's layout of pictures and quotations was particularly striking, reminding us that the editor, Alan Rusbridger, has a brilliant eye, even if he sometimes has difficulty in recalling recent events.
Only the Independent was disappointing among the broadsheets. With a long 'drop intro' to its front-page splash (Tess than a hour before, their mothers and fathers were asking if they had cleaned their teeth . . .') it approached the story in side- ways fashion, knowing that we had heard the news and therefore trying to recast it as a news feature. Nothing can beat the relentless recitation of events. The Indepen- dent was equally deficient on its leader spread where, apart from a short first lead- er, there was not a word about Dunblane. Andrew Marr droned on about Kenneth Clarke, about whom we did not want to read on that particular morning. It is diffi- cult for commentators instantly to think of interesting things to say, but it can be done. Colin Wilson in the Mail, Allan Massie in the Telegraph and William Rees-Mogg in the Times were among those who rose far above the commonplace. Hugo Young in the Guardian wrote a beautiful, wise col- umn such as could only have come from a religious person.
I haven't yet mentioned the Evening Standard. This paper had about six hours to prepare its final West End edition. It 'cleared five pages of news and managed to produce several thousand late copies with the Primary 1 photograph on the front. There was a leader page article, presumably written in a couple of hours, whose common sense and human feeling I much admired. As is sometimes the case, I did not look at the byline until I had fin- ished reading. Max Hastings!
A heartfelt if very slightly saccharine Sun; a Mirror which was a little unfocused; a Mail too preoccupied with technical niceties; an overly laid-back Express; an Independent which seems both under- resourced and lacking in heart; a breathtak- ingly quick-thinking Evening Standard. These impressions throw a deeper shaft of light into the character traits of each of these papers. The best were very good and the worst were not bad.
In subsequent days most of us became sated with too much news from Dunblane, and the people of Dunblane became sicker still. One or two tabloids began to misbe- have. But the sense of national loss which arose from the massacre, and the sense too that some kind of national redemption might be possible, came in large measure from our newspapers, and especially our much despised tabloids, that Thursday morning.
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