THE PRESS
Dog fight
BILL GRUNDY
A friend of mine remarked the other day that while it may be true that in the newspaper world dog doesn't eat dog, that doesn't stop them being remarkably bitchy to one another from time to time. Obvious examples are the way Mr John Gordon of the Sunday Express goes for the Interna- tional Publishing Corporation—it used to be in the person of Mr Cecil King, now it's Mr Hugh Cudlipp; the way the Sunday Mirror goes back at Mr Gordon (oddly enough, a week or two ago they coupled my name with Mr Gordon's in a little counter-attack they were mounting. Me and the Old Sage; odd bedfellows we; now there's a consummation devoutly not to be wished). Yet another ex- ample is the way the People and the News of the World have been camping it up at each other over the last few months. There are many more.
On the other hand I feel that if it's true that imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery then there's quite a lot of evidence to suggest that as well as hating their rivals, the papers also love one another. The way they go around copying each other for example; has the Daily Whine got a story we haven't? Then my 'God, let us change the front page. This practice of edition-chasing can, of course, be very funny, as when paper A changes its lead to paper B's, only to find that paper B has changed its lead to paper A's.
There's been a fine example this week of one paper leading on a story which all the
others have more or less had to follow. It was the Times's tale of alleged police cor- ruption and bribery. It's not often the populars can be following the Times in such a field but there they all were, and glad to do it. For though there are certain arguments which could be levelled against the Times for publishing the story—that it was obtained by means that might be frowned on in other areas; that publication may very well pre- judice the chance of a fair trial for the policemen named in the story, if charges are preferred against them—the general opinion in the newspaper industry seems to be that the Times has pulled off a really good job. The best proof of this is the way the other, copied the story and didn't begrudge a men tion of their source.
The Daily Mit-7yr, for example reorganised its front page, leading with the story and properly crediting the Times with -long extracts from it. The Express mentioned the Times in the very first sentence of their story. My edition of the Mail didn't lead with it, but it did front-page it, and there were three mentions of the Times, one from the Scotland Yard statement, one from the lead-in to the story, and one in the tailpiece. The Guardian had a properly credited piece on the back page. Which leaves the Daily Telegraph.
Ah yes, the Daily Telegraph. What did that august journal do? It front-paged the story right enough, but somehow there was no mention of the Times in it at all. Even the Scotland Yard statement (which did mention the Times ) was missing, which is unusual in a paper which reports things as fully as the Telegraph. Presumably it was left out in ca,, the infecting name of Lord Thomson's paper got into Lord Hartwell's sanitary sheer Well, well. i5f the Sundays, only the News of the World ignored the story completely. Whic' reminds me, the News of the World led or the story of the sacking of `Robert Odams the, man who wrote about National Insur ance spongers. According to the News the World Mr Odams `wrote articles in the News of the World revealing the scandal of spongers . . .' Well actually he didn't He wrote them for the SPECTATOR and the News of the World merely bought the second right to them. So the News of the World phrase 'articles which were also published in the magazine the SPECTATOR. barely seems to be quite the whole truth. But then I suppose that would be too much to expect. At least the Telegraph did the right thing by this journal on this occasion.
Not so long ago we were assured by an editorial word that the Times and the Sunday Times were separate papers. They may share facilities from time to time, but they have different editorial policies and separate identities. I would have thought that was obvious, anyway. But it was under- lined quite splendidly last week. The Sunday Times Colour Magazine started with a long advertising feature written by a man called Philip Gardner. It was Ibiza. It was beautifully illustrated. I felt uneasy with Mr Gardner's prose but I persevered: 'I am not gregarious by nature and the suggestion that I should write a feature about "Inclusive holidays" was not immediately appealing . . . The trip chosen for my experiment was a Sky Tours holiday in Ibiza. Sky Tours is one of the companies in the Thomson Holidays. Group . . • All these companies belong to Lord Thomson . • • 1 suppose if I had thought about it I would
have realised that he would not be associated willingly with anything second rate . . . crystal clear water lapping all around . . . idyllic ...' and so on.
But that reminded me of something. I looked up the Times for Saturday 8 Novem- ber. It contained an article by John Carter. It was entitled 'This septic isle'. It was about Ibiza. It read slightly differently from Mr Gardner's piece. For instance: 'There is a water shortage . . . The electricity system is also erratic ... There is certainly nothing quaint about a rubbish dump alongside a hotel .. . Drainage and sewage disposal are two more problems that the island has to
face. That there is a difficulty in Ibiza town is quite apparent to anyone with a rudiment- ary sense of smell ... one [sewage disposal] method is to run a pipe into the sea ... the Mediterranean is virtually tideless and if the wind brings the mess nearer to shore it is likely to stay there with no dispersing tide movement to speak of . . .
Which seems to prove three things at least: that the Times and the Sunday Times are distinctly different; that considerations of advertising in one do not affect editorial policy in the other; and that there might be something to be said for Eastbourne after all.
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