THE BBC HAS NOT BEEN INJUNCTED

The BBC reports that the Attorney-General has obtained an injunction against BBC News, preventing it from broadcasting a story about the cash-for-honours enquiry. What is the story? Nick Robinson, the BBC political editor, cannot say, for fear of going to jail.

Guido Fawkes, an assiduous cheerleader for Deputy Chief Constable Yates, who has led the enquiry, claims it has to do with an incriminating email - the 'smoking gun'.

Blogger prisonlawinsideout claims, on what authority I do not know, that the email incriminates Ruth Turner. On the other hand, Iain Dale, who claims to know the identity of the person in question, has tagged his post 'Lord Levy' - leading some commenters to draw certain conclusions.

I have only two observations on all this.

1 However much the A-G seeks to keep the story, whatever it is, quiet, he will fail. It will be all over the Web in a week.

2 The verb from injunction is not 'injunct'; it is 'enjoin'. So the BBC has not been injuncted, it has been enjoined.

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POSTURING CLICHE

Journalists nurture the belief that PRs are vain, self-important fools who can't communicate in English. This is of course an unfair generalisation but every so often the cliche gets confirmed. Here's PR man Mark Borkowski 'writing' in Media Guardian about someone else in the business

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/02/the_power_behind_the_freud.html

"Just as a thousand liggers sharpened their patter to pass the clipboard test to slither into post Oscar parties, four days later in London I suspect the wannabes will try to assemble at Matthew Freud's send off hurrah for his arch lieutenant, Kris Thykier.
Tonight's bash promises to mimic some of the sumptuous parties that attracted the film glitterati in la la land. It has to be a fitting send off to mark the passing of a Freudian legend. I suspect it is not the whiff of vintage champagne and gourmet canapés that is enticing, but the promise of a networking frenzy.
Some whisper that Thykier has gone one better than his boss by exiting the mores of PRsville, at an age Matthew proclaimed that he would leave the profession, but has yet to find the egress. Kris leaves the PR world at a point when it is struggling to stamp real authority; it is a very different world to the one he entered as a callow youth a decade and a half ago."

What the fucking, shitting, buggering hell are you on about, you cock? What does 'exiting the mores of Prsville' actually mean? Also, you originally wrote "morays of PRsville". Illiterate cock.

"I first met him in a sweaty comedy club when I was promoting a forgotten household japester. My account handler at the time was none other than the brilliant author Jane Green who advised me to snap up the handsome dude before Matthew Freud. Jane spotted his talent but I couldn't be persuaded to scoop up the elegant young Turk. Perhaps he was just too good looking. I remember a self assured and determined kid that had his destiny mapped out. It's one hire that I regret I didn't make.
Matthew Freud his boss and mentor, entwined Thykier in his holy trinity of directors: all with differing skills they became the perfect set of clubs, fundamental in building the Freud brand. He has certainly helped morph it into something that is both respected and loathed, depending on your view of public relations. I am firmly in the camp that embraces the way Freuds have kicked the biz up the arse over the last two decades. Thykier bows out perhaps at the time when there are far too many practioners that have no idea what the game is."

"Brilliant author", "handsome dude", "elegant young Turk", "self assured and determined kid", "kicked the biz up the arse". Does this greasy sycophant have any idea how fucking ridiculous he sounds? Also, what the fuck is a "household japester"? Is it a comedian or something different? If it's a comedian, call it a fucking comedian. Cock.

"Kris is the consummate PR: not a posturing cliché but a bright and effectual operator..." etc ad nauseam.

There is much more of this stuff, including a baffling description of Thykier as "a true Argonaut", but enough is, in this case, more than enough.

PRs try hard to be seen as serious professionals providing a key service to the modern media. In a single article, Borkowski has kicked their image back to 1983. Cock.

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MORE BBC

Iain Dale has this to say on the BBC's desire to get exclusives

"Surely the role of BBC News is to report the news, rather than create it. Surely it is the role of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to challenge those in power, rather than BBC journalists. BBC journalists are there to report the news in the most impartial manner possible. That's not to say that no BBC journalist should report on matters unfavourable to those who wield power, but the story has to warrant it.

We need fewer hyped up reports which start with the words "the BBC has learned". This sentence is used to create the impression that a journalist has been burrowing away to discover information which someone has tried to keep from them. Sometimes that is indeed the case, but it often means that they have either picked up some good gossip which is worth a punt, or they have been leaked some information by someone with an agenda. You'll see the same thing on the front page of The Times most days. "

I don't agree completely but I think there is a lot in What Iain Dale says. The BBC is agonising over its failure to win much at the Royal Television Society awards and has identified 'exclusives' as the means of doing better next year.

Fair enough but, our expectations of the BBC are slightly different than those we have of newspapers. They have a duty to be impartial and to get things right, even if that is sometimes at the expense of splashy exclusives. That, essentially, was were the BBC went wrong over Gilligan/Kelly/Hutton.

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IS THE BBC BIASED?

Robin Aitken, a former BBC reporter, has written a book arguing that the corporation has a systematic left-wing bias on matters such as Europe, immigration, the war in Iraq and so on. He was debating the issue at the ICA this evening with Peter Horrocks, BBC head of News, Tim Gardam, the former Channel 4 boss, and Jane Seaton, the BBC's official historian.

I'm not in any doubt that the BBC has a liberal bias - not a systematic centrally controlled political agenda but a set of widely shared and largely unchallenged cultural assumptions around, for example, multiculturalism, discrimination, Europe, the Third World and much else - and, even though I share many of these assumptions, I think it's wrong, even dangerous, that a publicly-funded broadcaster should be so blinkered.

These allegations have been around for a long time and the BBC has traditionally denied them robustly. Recently, though, some BBC people have begun to acknowledge that there might be problem, and so it was with Peter Horrocks, this evening.

Horrocks can't help the way he looks but he very much fits the stereotype of an upper-middle class intellectual grandee looking down his flared nostrils at the rest of us. He did accept some of what Aitken said though he denied that the BBC had a liberal bias.

His view was that, on issues like Europe and immigration, the BBC had focussed on the debate as it is in Westminster and ignored the wider spread of views held by the public at large. So the BBC had failed to represent Eurosceptic and anti-immigration views, for example.

There may be something in this but I don't think it's the full story. I think a more accurate explanation would be that the BBC was reflecting issues in the way that they tend to be reflected in the broadly liberal metropolitan circles in which BBC staff move. As a London media type, I rarely meet people who profess themselves strongly anti-European or anti-immigration. I rarely, to be honest, meet people who admit to holding Conservative views (unless it's the touchy-feely green Conservatism of David Cameron). It's easy to see how people who move in such circles could come to believe that these views are beyond the pale - when, in fact, they may well be the dominant opinions of the British public generally.

Anyway, even if Horrocks can't bring himself to accept the reality of bias at the Corporation, it's good to see senior figures acknowledge that all is not well at the BBC. Let's see if they put it right.

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"Writer James Delingpole, who was at Oxford University with David Cameron, has been mischievously telling friends that the Tory leader did not entirely give up smoking cannabis after being punished for it at Eton. Suddenly, though, Delingpole has become more discreet.

“I’m not going there,” he said yesterday. Lord Delingpole has a certain ring, don’t you think?"

This little item in the Atticus column of the Sunday Times apparently conceals a deep well of bitterness. Delingpole, a nice, rather right-wing writer, is thought by ST editor John Witherow to have some tales worth telling about David Cameron. Delingpole refuses to spill and has received an email from the ST refusing to take any further pieces from him. Delingpole is a freelance writer who makes at least part of his living from the articles he sells to newspapers, so it is possible to admire his principled stand. But the fact that he needs to keep schtumm perhaps suggests that Cameron has more to hide than a couple of spliffs at the age of 15.

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BBC - BITCHING BY COLLEAGUES

The BBC was highly pleased with tonight's story by security correspondent Frank Gardner, who purported to reveal how and why the US might attack Iran. The story led the News at Ten and was heavily trailed in advance. Less impressed was the BBC's US correspondent Matt Frei; when the Ten crossed to Washington for his take he commented loftily: "The US would respond if Iran attacked it: some would consider that obvious". The waspish Gardner was not given the chance to respond.

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NUJ - what's it for?

My union, the National Union of Journalists, does many good things. I've worked at two places where it has provided invaluable support to striking journalists. It campaigns vigorously against the low pay and poor conditions that afflict many in the industry.

However, it has a student union-like desire to get involved in 'big politics', the latest manifestation of which is the proposal that the NUJ should affiliate to CND.

Why on earth? What has this to do with journalism? The current issue of the union's magazine carries support from Tony Benn, John Pilger and Hilary Wainwright. Benn argues that we should affiliate because journalists die in wars; Pilger says journalists should stand up and be counted and Trident is a waste of money; Wainwright says missiles create conditions of institutionalised war that lead to the suppression of the truth. On the other side of the argument are Polly Toynbee, Nick Cohen and Peter Hitchens, who say that the union should be as non-political as possible, since members will hold different views on political issues (Nick Cohen, also argues that CND is an unworthy organisation that cosies up to Iran).

I agree with Toynbee, Cohen and Hitchens. The union should concentrate on issues that affect journalists, as journalists. Nuclear weapons is not one of them. I hope NUJ members vote against affiliation (but I'm not counting on it).

PS The NUJ should be congratulated on allowing internet voting on this issue - it shows that they are committed to reaching as many of their members as possible, rather than allowing things to be stitched up by a committed minority.

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RIPPER?

You expect it from the redtops but it was slightly surprising to see the Independent christen the East Anglian serial killer the "The Ipswich Ripper".

The term summons up a particularly brutal form of killing (cf Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper) so is, to say the least insensitive (though maybe the Independent doesn't think the families of dead prostitutes are worth bothering about).

Just as importantly, giving killers nicknames glamourises what they do and gives their crimes some of the lustre of fiction. Naming him "the Ripper" will very likely boost the ego and self-importance of a sick man who can now boast to himself, thanks to the Independent, that he stands in the line of the most famous serial killers in history.

UPDATE: Sky is now reporting that at least one of the victims was strangled, which makes the 'Ripper' monicker plain wrong. Will the Indy still be using it tomorrow?

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OLD MEDIA v NEW MEDIA

At an Australian media awards ceremony an (old, fat, pissed) newspaper columnist storms the stage and attacks a (young, urbane) online commentator. Almost too perfect a metaphor for the frustration and stress the paper press is experiencing these days. The journalist, an Aussie poloitical commentator, says he was suffering from a migraine and was taking medication.

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GOODMAN, BAD MAN

Clive Goodman, royal editor of the News of the World has pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages and could go to jail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6194988.stm

His boss, NOTW editor says: "As the editor of the newspaper, I take ultimate responsibility for the conduct of my reporters. Clive Goodman's actions were entirely wrong and I have put in place measures to ensure that they will not be repeated by any member of my staff."

Editors don't ask too many questions about how their reporters get their stories. They may have their suspicions but they really don't want to know the details. That is how deniability works.

I first came across the practice of 'phone slamming' - hacking into mobile phone voicemail - when I was on the Express in the late 90s and a showbiz reporter casually tapped into the messages of, I think, Paul McCartney.

This sort of thing has been common on papers for years (and not just the tabloids), as has the equally illegal practice of paying to get information from the police national computer. Now Goodman has had his collar felt, I wonder if reporters will be quite so ready to continue with these practices.

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HANDS OFF BLOGS

Tim Toulmin of the Press Complaints Commission believes there should some sort of similar complaints system for blogs. Let's eschew the obvious jibe that he is trying to grab more power for the PCC; is he right?

He says that online generally"there are no professional standards, there is no means of redress. If you want to see how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked, then look at the internet."

Maybe so. Certainly, there is a lot of unpleasant stuff in blogs and blogs do tend to go further than papers in some areas - identifying celebrities and politicians involved in scandals, for example. But anybody who writes a blog is subject to the law and can be sued for libel or prosecuted for hate speech. It may not happen much, but it doesn't happen to papers a great deal, either. What's important is that the sanction is there.

Tim Toulmin is a regulator and naturally comes down on the side of control and protection. Many of us think the opposite: that people should be able to say and write what they want, subject to appropriate laws protecting others from real defamation (and not the hurt feelings nonsense that often ends up in the libel courts) and certain forms of speech likely to promote violence (racist language, incitements to kill) etc. (I think this principle should apply to newspapers too and the PCC should be abolished.)

Let's have debates that are vigorous, acrimonious, pungent, unpleasant. Let feelings be hurt, let pride be wounded, let offence be given and received. The internet is still a bastion of free speech: let's keep it that way.

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GRADE AND THE BBC

http://paullinford.blogspot.com/2006/11/trashing-of-michael-grade.html

Paul Linford is right to take exception at the sneering tone of some of the BBC's coverage of the defection of its chairman. The fact is that the BBC breeds an attitude of superiority in its staff and they simply can't believe that there is any virtue in working anywhere else. That, plus a love of bureaucracy, is the hallmark of the true BBC employee.

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FAREWELL PRESS GAZETTE

I wrote for PG a couple of times, and was a judge at one of their awards ceremonies as well as reading the mag regularly over the years. Its closure leaves a hole that I hope will soon be filled.

Naturally, I hope the staff all find jobs soon (and I expect they will).

And by the way...

http://staticsquid.blogspot.com/2006/11/save-grey-cardigan-poor-old-press.html

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THE BBC AND LITVINENKO

Radio 4's Today programme on Friday morning was beside itself with excitement at what it thought was a scoop on the Alexander Litvinenko poisoned spy saga. It revealed that it had sopken to someone who had seen his X-rays, which revealed some 'packages' inside his body, about the size of a two pence piece, one of which seemed to have split open. There then followed a good deal of speculation about what these packages might be and how they might have got there, the consensus being that he must have swallowed them deliberately. There was, it seemed to me, a clear inference that Litvinenko might have poisoned himself (other people I've spoken to who heard the broadcast drew the same inference). Here's the report on the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6175424.stm

Later in the day, it emerged that the story was rubbih and that these 'packages' were in fact shadows on the X-ray caused by his treatment. This clarification was buried deep in a story on the BBC's website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6176004.stm - without any acknowledgement that the original false story was the result of BBC speculation.

The BBC holds itself up as an authoritative gatherer and publisher of news, whose standards of accuracy and verification are far higher than the scoop-obsessed press. That being the case, why did it broadcast such a highly tenuous tale without proper checking? Why did its journalists speculate in such a damaging way about Mr Litvinenko? And why, once the story had been shown to be nonsense, did it not admit its error and apologise?

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A survey here shows that journalists work many more hours than they are contracted for. Roy Greenslade discusses it here

Interesting, but hardly surprising. The fact is that lots of people in lots of professions work longer than they legally need to- ask teachers, doctors, professionals in many walks of life.

What this is really about is the fact that journalists on local and regional papers have seen their wages fall in real terms and many exist on a pittance. The problem here is simply that there are too many people who want to go into journalism and the barriers to entry are quite low (compared to becoming a doctor, lawyer etc where a professional qualification is essential). Papers don't need to offer high salaries to attract staff.

It seems to me that journalism is becoming rather like acting (another profession that large numbers of young people want to get into and which has low barriers to entry). There are a small number of highly-paid people at the top of the tree (national newspaper editors, top columnists, star broadcasters) and an increasingly long tail of those (including many freelances) who are barely eking a living, in the forlorn hope that at some point they may get a big break. Somewhat reminiscent of the world portrayed by Ricky Gervais in Extras.

None of this is going to change until large numbers of people decide that the reality of low earnings in journalism is such that it is better to get a secure, better paid but arguably less glamorous job, and there a fewer journalists competing for the same scarce jobs.

Anyway, none of this is new, as any reader of George Gissing's 19th century classic New Grub Street will be aware.

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SAVE THE GREY CARDIGAN

Poor old Press Gazette has probably published its last issue. Shame. Under the editor, Ian Reeves, they produce a decent magazine and a good website http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ I'm sure they'll all find jobs before long.

I do fear for the future of the magazine's Grey Cardigan column, ostensibly written by a sub on a West Country local paper. Along with the Martin Luke column in the FT, it's the best-observed, funniest column currently being published.

If PG does go to the wall, I hope that somehow the Cardigan will be saved. Maybe Media Guardian could pick it up?

UPDATE Perhaps I spoke too soon in writing off PG. Roy Greenslade seems to think it may yet be saved.

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DESMOND WIELDS AXE

My old boss Richard Desmond defends his decision to lay off the entire Daily Express City desk and outsource the paper's business coverage to PA. Sorry though I feel for my former colleagues on the paper, I have to say I think he's doing the right thing.

Though the Express City pages are pretty good, they are not what the paper is about. In any case, most daily City coverage happens like this. Journalist goes to press conference, chats with colleagues from other papers, reads press release, listens to announcement, asks questions. then follows lunch during which he may discuss the story with other journalists, effectively ensuring that they are all saying the same thing. Back to office to write up story. As a result, all papers carry pretty much the same story. Frankly, PA will do the job just as well and a good deal more cheaply.

Just as papers don't individually compile their TV listings or their share price lists, neither should they individually create stories based on press releases. Get it done elsewhere, as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

This should leave more resources for the paper to focus on areas where it really can be different from the competition - be it investigative reporting or high-quality features. Unfortunately, I don't for a moment believe that Mr D is going to usethe money he saves on City coverage to invest in high-end journalism (it's more likely to go into his pension fund). However, he won't be the last proprietor to outsource his City coverage.

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PARIS-LONDON, HITCHENS-LEVY
I spent a pleasant hour this afternoon at the Royal Geographical Society listening to Christopher Hitchens and Bernard-Henri Levy "in conversation", part of the IQ2 London-Paris Festival. Levy is a dashing French philosophe, once summed up in the aphorism "God is dead but my hair is perfect", and he and Hitchens seemed to agree on just about everything, especailly their own importance as 'intellectuals'. To judge by the applause that punctuated the discussion, most of the packed audience were fans of Hitchens, Levy or both, so the atmosphere was cloying, to say the least. In one especially toe-curling incident a woman at the front stood and declared that she adored Hitchens, had written a book on the Elgin Marbles "to catch your eye", and insisted that were she not already pregnant she would love to have his child.

Hitchens and Levy are good value, though there were no suprises in what they had to say on Iraq, Palestine, Israel and so on. Things got more interesting when the discussion turned to India. Hitchens argued that America, after ignoring India for many year, was showing signs that it might be about to make common cause with "the world's other great secular democracy" against Al-Quaeda and Islamism. He pointed out fairly that Hindus are demonised as much as Jews by Islamists and that India had suffered attacks from Al-Quaeda. One of the good things about September 11, said Hitchens, was that the US discovered who its friends and enemies really were.

In which case, said Levy, why does America continue to support Pakistan, the centre of Al-Quaeda activities (not just in the mountains, but in Karachi itself). The US has been duped, he said, by Musharraf who hands over alleged Al Quaeda number 2s at strategic moments (such as when the Senate is voting on financial aid to Pakistan). He had made this very point to Condoleexa Rice ("who I found charmante") and she had no adequate response.

Hitchens (in response to the nutty stalker woman) talked interestingly on the link between sexual repression, political violence and totalitarianism, citing Wilhelm Reich, China's "one-child" policy, societies after major wars in which swathes of the male population are killed (he didn't specifically mention post-WW1 Germany, but clearly had it in mind). Islamist terrorists are denied access to women, and their sexual repression is translated into political violence - hence the power of the promise of virgins awaiting the suicide bomber in paradise. Though, if they had read the Talmud, Hitchens said, they would know that for every virgin, there is a mother-in-law.

Levy related this to the veil debate, arguing with reference to a French phenomenologist that to cover the face is to deny an essential part of humanity. When women are not veiled, it is possible to have relations with them that are far more delightful and passionate. Well, he is French.

Hitchens got the loudest applause of the afternoon by coming over all Clint Eastwood on the veil issue: "I can be offended too. So don't make me say something that I can't take back".

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"Meritate tutti ciò, voi gli enculato di musulmani, sporchi terroristici" is what Materazzi said to provoke Zidane according to a poster on Harry's Place http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ It translates as something like "You deserved all that you Muslim asshole, terrorist shit".

French sites suggest he merely called him a 'terroriste', which seems to fit with the video that shows him mouthing something fairly pithy.

Whichever, it is the Web that is leading the way spreading the story, as with the tales of John Prescott's infidelities (need we bother with the 'alleged' any more?). These are coming to light on websites such as http://5thnovember.blogspot.com/, home of Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines, an interesting figure to whom I shall return).

Guido is only minimally concerned by issues of defamation or of journalsitic propriety so, on this story at least, he has been faster and more entertaining than the press, and probably no more inaccurate.

There is clearly no reason why bloggers should not compete with the press for stories, at least those that involve tip-offs and 'scoops of interpretation'. Roy Greenslade recognises this in a different context and sees the consequences for newspapers.

Some of his commenters seem to believe papers will continue to have a role as sifters and evaluators of information that appears on the Web. I'm not so sure. Isn't this what search engines do algorythmically, for one thing? For another, Web users develop their own register of what is and isn't reliable, which is why I'm generally prepared to take seriously information and links that I find on Harry's Place (at least, from trustworthy posters there).

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HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES

Newsreader Andrea Catherwood at the Regional Press Awards this lunchtime, reminiscing about 7/7 and her fraught journey into work. "Traffic was barely moving and my driver and I were complaining about London Transport...."

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