MEDIA STUDIES
Peter Stothard is elevated above humanity by the rest of the press
STEPHEN GLOVER
My admiration for my old friend Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, has soared to new heights. No one can doubt that he has landed a heavy punch on Michael Ashcroft and sent him reeling, along with William Hague and Michael Ancram and sundry other members of the Tory party. When you consider that Mr Stothard is a mere newspaper editor, his achievement seems pretty extraordinary. It appears utterly epic, given that the story which had this devastat- ing effect was almost completely bogus.
The Times blew up because Mr Ashcroft, treasurer of the Tory party, has donated several million pounds to party funds while living in Belize. The size of these donations was not new. The fresh element, so far as my old friend was concerned, was that the money had been 'channelled . . . through a secretive trust based in Belize'. According to the Times, this called into question Mr Hague's commitment not to accept foreign gifts to the party. Whereas Mr Ancram maintained that Mr Ashcroft was as British as the white cliffs of Dover, Mr Stothard asserted that he was not even registered as an overseas voter. It turned out that he is, though only since February. More interest- ingly, it transpired that Mr Ashcroft was not uniquely sinful since five wealthy peo- ple who also happen to live abroad have given money to the Labour party. One chap by the name of Robert Earl, resident in Orlando, Florida, since the 1970s, gave £1 million to Labour in 1997. Another was a New Zealander, resident in Ireland. The Times, however, was not interested in these disclosures, of which I could find no men- tion in its pages. By this time the paper had worked up the rest of the press into a terrific lather over Mr Ashcroft, and the BBC was wondering why he had not resigned.
Mr Stothard showed quite breathtaking ruthlessness, worthy of a top-class politi- cian. When I recall the kaftan-clad, poetic youth whom I knew 25 years ago, wander- ing alone on the banks of the Cherwell, a much-thumbed copy of the Aeneid clasped firmly in his hand, I am amazed that he should not only be prepared to take on a man like Ashcroft but also knock him out of the ring. Mr Ashcroft, it will be remem- bered, is suing Mr Stothard and the Times's deputy political editor, Tom Bald- win, for having allegedly linked him with drugs-related crime. In similar circum- stances many editors would lie low, but not my old friend. During the recent Tory party conference he wrote a long piece ask- ing the faithful to dump Mr Ashcroft advice which they ignored. And now, much more devastatingly, he has re-spun an old story which a credulous press, its appetite for sleaze already reawakened by the Archer affair, has gratefully lapped up.
My purpose here is not to weigh the rights and wrongs of Mr Ashcroft. Still less is it to criticise Mr Stothard. It is simply to note that the true nature of the affair was nowhere explained in the media. To read the newspapers you would think that the editor of the Times was a disembodied presence pursuing the cause of truth and justice in a wholly disinterested way. In reality he is a man whose job and reputa- tion might be at risk if the Times were forced to pay millions of pounds to Mr Ashcroft. If Mr Stothard had been a politi- cian or even a businessman, as Mr Ashcroft is, other newspapers would have set the Times's allegations in the context of a per- sonal duel between the two men. They would have described how in a very daring way Mr Stothard was using the Times to advance his own interests and do down his enemy before they eventually meet in the Royal Courts of Justice. But because Mr Stothard is a journalist he is somehow ele- vated above the fray. Journalists, so other journalists assume, are superior creatures who pass judgment on politicians and the rest of the humanity but do not expect their own conduct to be dissected and assessed in a similar way.
The same feeling that journalists are above it all could be glimpsed at the end of last week in the libel trial involving Neil Hamilton, the former Tory MP, and Mohamed Al Fayed. Mr Hamilton has admitted enjoying the hospitality of Mr Al Fayed on a lavish scale in the company of his wife, Christine, at the Paris Ritz in 1987. In the view of many commentators this was largesse no politician should have accepted. George Carman, QC, counsel for Mr Al Fayed, made a great deal of capital out of it earlier in the trial. Then, last Thursday, Desmond Browne, who is Mr Hamilton's QC, produced a list of well-known people who were put up at the Paris Ritz at Mr Al Fayed's expense in December 1989. These included four journalists — Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, Lord Deedes, Donald Trelford and Michael Buerk — as well as the newsreader Moira Stuart. Sir Peregrine Worsthorne and Lord Deedes are friends of mine, and it is inconceivable that they could have done anything they ought not to have done. My point is that newspapers think that what is permissible in a journalist is reprehensible in a politician. Only the Times bothered to report that these jour- nalists had, like Mr Hamilton, accepted Mr Al Fayed's hospitality. No one followed up the story.
I know the argument: politicians are elected by the people, paid by the people and therefore accountable to them. No one elects journalists, who are paid by press tycoons or publishing conglomerates. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to main- tain the absolute importance of the old dis- tinction. Journalists are so much more pow- erful than they were even 20 years ago. Once they were either bystanders in the political process or servants of political magnates. Now they are involved in the process in their own right: judging politi- cians in a superior way, putting forward their own manifestos and, above all, destroying those politicians who do not live up to their own conception of proper behaviour. Greater power must carry with it greater accountability. It is hardly surpris- ing that we are held in such low esteem if we seek to judge without being judged and if we think we are above the fray.
Last Wednesday the Daily Telegraph carried an astonishing story on its front page by Rachel Sylvester under the head- line 'Car companies threaten to quit UK over euro'. Once I had got over the shock, I reflected how sporting it was of the anti- euro Telegraph to give such prominence to a story harmful to its cause, According to Ms Sylvester, BMW/Rover, Fiat and Ford had all warned Tony Blair that they would have to reconsider their investments in Britain if the government delayed entry into the euro.
Scary stuff — except that it seems not to be true. Fiat has described the story as 'complete nonsense'. Rover has also denied that it issued any threat to Mr Blair or that it has any plan to leave this country. So what is going on?
Might it be that Ms Sylvester was sold a pup by a pro-euro organisation? And might that organisation be Britain in Europe?
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