When we first began writing some years ago about the twin subjects of the slow death of the UK press in its modern form and the corruption and greed lying behind the McCanns’ use of the media – both, of course, related – there were plenty of people who thought that our case was being grossly overstated or that, horror of horrors, we were harping upon the subject because we had once been overground journalists ourselves. Urgh!
So, for those who may be in doubt we’ll quote from a couple of pieces in the London Guardian – no friends of ours, the self-righteous creeps – over the past week to see what the turkeys themselves are saying in the run up to Christmas. When you read them you may well think that they’re not just reading the Blacksmith Bureau but memorising it, which could mean that they aren’t confirmatory at all but are merely dressing up and repeating what’s written here.
In fact that isn’t a problem because both are quoting chapter and verse examples of what we’ve been talking about from their own experiences. Listen to the sounds of the pennies beginning to drop. First Ian Jack.
Ian Jack. He is pictured listening to his fortune being told.
Jack isn’t a reporter of the nasty Clarence Mitchell type, barely educated and working his passage upwards through the trashy local press, but a literary figure, ex–editor of the quarterly literary magazine Granta, someone whose record and contacts earned him a features column in the Guardian. Here are some extracts from what he was writing last Saturday.
We’re All Doomed!
“Printed newspapers are shedding readers much faster than Greenland is losing ice,even if you take the Times Atlas's controversial (now withdrawn) estimate of Arctic shrinkage. People such as me (and you, if you're not reading this online) are melting away from "quality" newspapers at a rate not far below 10% a year.”
He then adds, in the fretful tones of someone suspecting his pay cheque might go missing in the foreseeable future
“This is a crisis. Newspapers need revenue, and their income still comes overwhelmingly from their printed rather than digital editions; a ratio of 80/20 in the Guardian's case. Nobody knows what to do, or at least nobody has any plan that looks certain to work”.
The eventual destination of the printed newspaper, then, looks likely to be the equivalent of the artisanal cheese….nobody will pick them from the doormat wondering how the world has changed from the day before. They will be badges, evidence of their readers' cultural or political tastes, with an artisanal-cheese kind of price that turns them from a habit into a hobby.”
He concludes
A Turkey Interrupts
“It seems impossible that they should go, and so quickly, and most of us carry on as though they won't. This week I went to a glamorous event in the Banqueting House in Whitehall where a panel of the great and good, led by Sir Harold Evans, debated regulation of the press. Someone from the floor said the phrase "dying industry" and produced a small stir in the chamber, as though some truths were better parked outside in the cloakroom.”
So much for Mr Jack. Perhaps he can go on a government re-training scheme some time, or go back into the magazine world – perfectly healthy, by the way, and likely to remain so because the newsmen, carriers of the lethal disease, are kept at arms length and their methods forbidden.
A Radical Turkey Writes
George Monbiot. He is pictured saving the world.
Next we have another Guardian figure, the hair shirt puritan George Monbiot, one of those chaps who once they’ve identified a Serious Issue, such as Climate Change, forget everything they’ve ever learned about freedom, whether of the press or any other kind and start demanding “radical action” – which of course means bossing people like us lot around and getting others to punish us if we don’t act, and think, the way little George and his like want us to. You know the type – we can sum him up both by looking at him and by noting that he claims to be a Green but believes fanatically in building nuclear power stations all over the UK.
But George, like all puritans is primarily a preacher, not a journalist. And he is suddenly beginning to have Doubts about his “profession”. Here he goes.
“Journalists are good at dishing it out, less good at taking it. We demand from others standards we would never dream of applying to ourselves. Tabloid newsrooms fuelled by cocaine excoriate celebrity drug-takers. Hacks who have made a lifetime's study of abusing expense accounts lambast MPs for fiddling theirs.”
Little George does sound like a Bureau contributor, doesn’t he?
“No one will be shocked to discover hypocrisy among hacks, but there's also a more substantial issue here. A good deal of reporting looks almost indistinguishable from corporate press releases. Often that's because it is corporate press releases, mindlessly recycled by overstretched staff.”
Yes, George, that’s the industry you work in. “Mindlessly recycled by overstretched staff"?” No, George, that’s a piece of bullshit excuse-making for your colleagues.
“But there are sometimes other influences at play, which are even less visible to the public. From time to time a payola scandal surfaces, in which journalists are shown to have received money from people whose interests they write or talk about.” You don’t say! “For all we know, such deals could be commonplace.” They are, George, they are indeed. “While journalists are not subject to the accountability they demand of others, their powerful position – helping to shape public opinion – is wide open to abuse.” Gosh, funny hardly any journalist has ever written about it before.
“The question of who pays for public advocacy has become an obsession of mine. I've seen how groups purporting to be spontaneous gatherings of grassroots activists, fighting the regulation of tobacco or demanding that governments should take no action on climate change, have in fact been created and paid for by corporations: a practice known as astroturfing.” Unfortunately George’s hair shirt Marxism prevents him from seeing that it isn’t a corporate problem – it’s the journalists themselves doing it on behalf of anyone who gives them the ackers, slipping between journalism and working in the PR industry.
Enter St George Turkey
“But if I'm to subject other people to this scrutiny, I should also be prepared to expose myself to it. So I have done something which might be foolhardy, but which I feel is necessary: I've opened a registry of my interests on my website, in which I will detail all the payments, gifts and hospitality (except from family and friends) I receive, as well as the investments I've made.”
“Like many British people, I feel embarrassed talking about money, and publishing the amounts I receive from the Guardian and other employers makes me feel naked. I fear I will be attacked by some people for earning so much” – yes, yes, yes! – “and mocked by others for earning so little” Nope. “Even so, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why it didn't occur to me to do this before.” So do we.
“A voluntary register is a small step towards transparency. What I would really like to see is a mandatory list of journalists' financial interests, similar to the House of Commons registry. I believe that everyone who steps into public life should be obliged to show who is paying them, and how much. Publishing this register could be one of the duties of whatever replaces the discredited Press Complaints Commission.”
“Journalists would still wield influence without responsibility. That's written into the job description. But at least we would then have some idea of whether it's the organ-grinder talking or his monkey.”
All too late
Funny how a death sentence starts making people reform, isn’t it? Bit late, George, but never mind. Go on reading the Bureau and you’ll discover it’s very much worse than you think.
