Blog

The media scrum at the Olympic Torch ceremony yesterday was extraordinary, by all means, but I did feel that ITV News went too far at one point. People who saw the bulletin will have seen their camera operator knocked to the ground and - said the report - kicked by the police.

Call me old-fashioned but if you deliberately obstruct someone under pressure there may well be the odd fall involved. It's simple common sense, I'd have thought. The serious bit is the suggestion that he was kicked when he was down.

That's what we call an assault. And in the UK, an assault is against the law. The problem is that I can't find any trace of a complaint having been made on the ITN site.

So it starts to look less like a serious assault and more like a bit of engineered sensationalism. I'll look forward to being proven completely wrong about this.

Elsewhere the agency has been named; since I don't know the person who named them and I have no evidence either way I can't repeat it because it would be hearsay and I could libel someone very seriously indeed by suggesting they'd behave in such a way.

But if you happen to know who it is, and you have any PR budget, I'd suggest avoiding using him at all costs. The man appears to be some sort of nut and as a professional communicator his approach is, ahem, interesting.

I'm not usually one for political correctness but there's a case for saying they went too far. The set-up was simple - they decided that, instead of hiring a car, they'd buy one and try to sell it on at the end of their holiday.

Eventually they got some beaten-up old motors, with Jeremy Clarkson at one stage offering a fat car salesman a hamburger. It was done with style and in spite of yourself you couldn't help laughing.

Then they daubed slogans on the side - "Hillary for President", something derogatory about country and western music (derogatory comments about c&w are always justified of course) and a pro-homosexuality comment. Understandably they had some hoots from other motorists in the deep south.

Then they stopped for petrol and the garage owner said she was going to 'get the boys'. A chase ensued with some hints that there was violence involved. Later on they reached New Orleans and found it was still a wreck; they offered to give their cars away and one woman from a mission - we were told, after the cameras were switched off - claimed they'd misrepresented the years of one of the vehicles they were offering for nothing, and tried to take $20K off them to stop her suing.

With this and an artificially-fattened Stig, there was a lot of anti-Americanism in there/ It was certainly entertaining but I was left with a bit of an uncomfortable feeling. I could, I'm sure, make a good documentary about how perverted the British are if I were to film exclusively in licenced sex shops and pick up cards left in phone boxes (if there are any around these days). It might even be a laugh, but you could still be excused for wondering why I was doing it. I could walk into a gay bar with anti-gay slogans on my tee-shirt and provoke a fight for another article ot film if I wanted to. I'm reasonably certain you could achieve the result you wanted if you provided the right provocation.

I'd still query the motivation for doing any of those things and I'd query why they chose to pick a fight on Top Gear as well. It's repeated on Wednesday, 8.00pm, BBC2 - I'd be interested to hear what other people think.

There's an interesting post from BBC London radio presenter Jo Good on her blog in which she talks about critics. Critics, she believes, can be incredibly rude about people.

Well, I've been on both sides of that particular fence. About ten years ago I had a short story published in a BBC Doctor Who book and it was deemed good enough for actor Colin Baker to read it as an audiobook. "I would rather do anything than listen to this again," said the regular chappie in Doctor Who Magazine. And of course as a journalist I've said when I think a book or a performance is poor.

The thing is, the subjects of these criticisms - whether it's me as a writer or Jo Good as an actress - present ourselves as natural targets. We've put our heads over the parapets, nobody forced us, and if someone wants to take potshots that sort of goes with the territory and there's no use complaining. Of course the best critics go for the work rather than for the person - if someone says 'The Chuckle Brothers gave a below-par performance in East Grinstead last night' that might not be pleasant for them but it's more reasonable than 'The Chuckle Brothers are creeps', which may or may not be true but which is neither constructive nor useful for the reader.

Even so, moaning about critics is starting to become legitimate, and this is partly because of the spread of blogs. It's one thing if I write an article about someone which criticises their work; this will have been through a commissioning editor, a sub, a magazine or newspaper editor and will be deemed to stand up and be acceptable somehow to a number of people. And there will be a letters page or some way in which the subject can address the points raised if they want to.

Blogs are different. People can remove comments or just not allow them. Or people can get personal in the comments they add - Jo Good's own blog has a comments section in which people are quite unpleasant about her style on radio (which I rather enjoy but that's by the by). The're moderated but they definitely veer towards personal comments rather than objective criticism of what she does in public.

And that remains the central weakness of the blogging model for the moment. Professional writers can bleat all we want about quality of online writing but bad writing tends simply to go away; the lack of redress is likely to end up as the most lasting issue.

I find myself uncomfortable with the jailing of David Irving, former holocaust denier.

For anyone who doesn't know, he was imprisoned for three years yesterday in Austria - here's the story from today's Guardian. His crime was to deny that the holocaust happened and to allege that Hitler actually protected jews. He did this in two speeches. 17 years ago. They were widely reported so this becomes a media issue - without the profile I doubt that he would have seen this action taken against him.

Now, let's get something straight first: I do not accept his beliefs, and he has acknowledged that he was factually wrong. My problem is that someone can be jailed for speaking about an historical event, and for having done so 17 years ago. This isn't like members of the BNP being tried and retried for incitement to racial hatred now, it's someone presenting a view - by all means a skewed one - of history. And it's someone being imprisoned even though they've effectively recanted and acknowledged that a lot of what they said was baloney.

I hold no brief for David Irving, I find him repellant. But I'm not at all sure that locking him up is useful. His sympathisers will hold him up as a martyr and his critics will look vindictive. And anyone wanting to say anything contentious or revisionist about history is going to pause before saying it in public in case the media gets hold of it and it becomes a similar cause celebre.

I really can't see anything constructive coming out of this.

Of course nobody should doubt that there is racism in the media. There is racism throughout society and the idea that it stops at the media's doorstep is crazy.

But the Soham murders don't demonstrate it at all, which is the example for which Sir Ian Blair has had to apologise. The reason that case caused such outrage is simple - there were children involved, and we don't like it when people kill our kids. Would there have been any difference if they'd been black? I think not. Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor and the black boy known only as Adam who was found dismembered in the Thames were covered massively.

There are several problems with race in the press. Mostly they stem from underrepresentation in my view; there are no non-white editors of the Nationals and when I go to press conferences I can see that reflected in the people attending. But to link the difficulty with Soham, particularly when you're actually being asked about police investigations and not about media at all, is frankly cheap.

Among the many things said about Charles Kennedy over the last 24 hours is that he lied repeatedly about his drinking. He said it wasn't the case that he overindulged, he said he didn't have a problem. And yesterday he conceded that he did indeed have a problem and added that it was sufficiently serious for him to have sought professional help.
So yes, he lied, there's no doubt about it. I do wonder, though, whether the commentators leaping on this untruth are being entirely fair.
I've had some advice about drinking lately. I was taking in around 19-20 units of alcohol per week, a couple of glasses of wine with an evening meal on most days, and if you check with the British Medical Association they'll tell you that's fine - which in most cases it is. But I've had high blood pressure so the doctor informs me that 5-6 units per week would be a much better idea for me, along with avoidance of salty foods (and boy, could I write a lot about hidden salt...)
I've made the change with no difficulty so I gather that I didn't and don't have a drink problem. Even so, I'm aware of feeling slightly awkward while writing about it. So, if someone who has no addiction and no responsibility outside his own house feels odd writing about drinking, how's a party leader who is as far as we can tell a recovering alcoholic supposed to feel about coming out in front of the media?
It must have been a nightmare. Of course he had to be pushed into it. Of course he tried to deal with it in private before admitting it in front of everyone, and of course it was right that he was somewhat outed because a party leader's fitness is genuinely in the public interest.
Nevertheless, I think we can allow him a few fibs about it while he tried to deal with it himself. Whatever the implications for his career and his party, this is one area of his personal life over which I suggest a politician or anyone has every right to draw the shutters.

One of the less noticed elements of the London bombs was the arrival of 'Citizen journalism'. For the first time I can remember, broadcasters including Sky and the BBC were actively asking people to take pictures on their phones and e-mail them in.
It's a logical extension of what was common practice before. How many times did the broadcasters use 'amateur film' of some major event at which they didn't have a camera crew? Quite a lot, is the answer.
But this is different. This is asking, soliciting the viewers to send stuff in. Now, that's fine in what you might call 'harmless' situations - the protest meeting, the gathering for whatever other reason. The risks are pretty minimal if it all stays peaceful. What, though, about situations like bombs? Whilst watching the BBC and others say 'please send us your pics' I didn't hear them say 'and we'll indemnify you in case of injury'. Nor did I hear them issue guidelines about not doctoring photos to liven them up - again, that's one thing for clarity, but how long will it be before someone jazzes up one of these 'citizen' pictures and maybe adds something to the scene, falsifying what happened? Is the contributor expected to indemnify the broadcaster in case some sort of visual libel is committed?
The idea of getting people sending pictures in, as long as they're understood to be amateurs and everyone accepts the quality implications, sounds reasonable enough at first. But the possible ramifications are vast, and will need careful thinking through and a policy statement from everyone who's likely to use them.

Granted, Ken Livingstone has been provoked enough by the Evening Standard. Support him in the last Mayoral election they may well have done, but they've goaded him and prodded him alongside the sister paper, the Daily Mail, before and since.
Nevertheless, he's a seasoned politician and ought to be able to handle questioning - no matter where it happens - politely and without recourse to anything that could be perceived as antisemitic. (No, I'm not Jewish, for the record, and yes, I'm aware that concentration camps aren't exclusive to Nazi history - but he'd also mentioned German prisoners of war, so we all know what connotations to read into his statements).
He should at least apologise for that. I'm quite happy for him to continue and find an alternative, entirely personal but neutral in terms of faith and race, insult for the journalist in question. He appears reluctant to do so.
Odd for someone supposed to represent the whole of London, and regrettable from someone who on most other issues and occasions has my support.

Now this is an odd one. Representatives of the Hindu community have complained to the producers of Coronation Street about a scene in which a deranged woman wields a Hindu icon as a weapon (see story here).
Hindu leaders, it seems, want an apology. I'm not so sure it's appropriate. Have the producers of, say, The Exorcist, apologised to Christian communities? Have the producers of any number of 1970s comedies apologised to Jewish or black communities? And more to the point, if the woman in the scenario was as ill as that, was the scene gratuitous or unlikely? Personally I think not.
I'm all for not offending people when you're broadcasting, but if you're going to present events in a drama that will and should include bad things happening.
On the other side of soaps, I saw in the press yesterday that Christopher Parker - Spencer Moon in EastEnders - has quit, partly because of press tittle-tattle about his sexual orientation (which he denies anyway). It's a rotten shame, he was a good actor. I wish him well for his future and hope he doesn't get too jaundiced about the public and above all the press - the people who publish this tripe don't speak for us all.

Sorry to have been a bit quiet lately - had a few issues to sort out.
So, The Guardian is threatening to switch its alliegance from Labour to the Lib Dems for the next election. And although it came out in an interview I think we can say 'threatening' because editor Alan Rusbridger is not a naive man and he knows the weight of his words.
It's interesting to note how important the support of one newspaper or the other can be in a political campaign. The Guardian is, ironically, not one of those with a lot of influence in my view. I love the paper but I think we're all aware that its readership is likely to be liberal with a small 'l' already, and quite independent enough to make its own mind up whatever the paper said.
Where The Guardian has made a mistake, in my view, was not this week in the UK election issue but last week when it urged readers to write to residents of Clark County about their incoming President.
Much has been written about this already. My own view is that something needed to be done, but this probably wasn't it. The American people need to understand (and most of them probably do) that their President becomes a de facto Western World President immediately he's elected. If he declares war on Iraq, to use the obvious example, the rest of the world doesn't sit back and watch - it makes a decision as to whether or not it should join in. American voters need to be aware that they are responsible not merely for electing the custodian of their country but of the world.
But an initially light-hearted campaign targeting voters at their home addresses? Not sure how that squares with the Graun's usual libertarian values, and equally not comfortable with the data protection implications (of course it'll be perfectly legal, nobody in the press is that stupid). The backlash seems to have abated somewhat, but my bet is that The Guardian will live to regret this little adventure.

Interesting to see in today's Press Gazette that Leslie Grantham has failed to persuade the Press Complaints Commission that his webcam antics had led to him seeking medical help. He didn't mind the initial reports - actually that may not be true but he didn't attempt to take action. His problem was with the fact that they'd reported that he was seeking help.
The PCC said the matter was laid bare (sorry) by the initial report, over which he wasn't taking action, so it was fair game. I'd agree with that - but am puzzled that he was OK with the entirely negative reports whereas once they confirmed that this might be a more serious issue and that he was taking sensible action, which puts him in a much better light to my mind, he started complaining.
Personally I wish him all the best - but still hope to see a bit less of stars' private foibles exposed in the future when they don't affect their ability to do their jobs.

Dear BBC
I would like to do a documentary to publicise any book I may have coming out in the future. If it's OK with you, I'll put forward exactly the same point of view in the documentary that I do in the book, and I'll do loads of interviews stating the same thing over and over in case people don't get the hint.
I'm not a former DG and my name isn't Greg, but if I ever do get another book published the publicity wouldn't half be useful.
Thanks
Guy

People who read this column regularly (hi Mum) will be expecting a broadside on the Government, Iraq and how Gilligan was right and Hutton was an idiot today. Unfortunately I can't think of anything to say that hasn't been said elsewhere or which isn't completely obvious.
Instead I'd like to draw your attention to the BBC documentary on the BNP this evening. It reveals - wait for it - that the BNP is racist. This wouldn't have been worth saying, except when Jon Gaunt of BBC London was talking about it on his estimable phone-in this morning a large amount of people mailed, texted or called in defense of said organisation. They claimed the BBC had a liberal agenda.
Well, maybe it has - but is preaching tolerance such a bad thing? Anyone who doubts that bigotry is rife elsewhere in the media really ought to read this piece - with thanks to PJ White on the Fleet Street forum for pointing it out in the first place.
P. S. Yesterday the Mail printed about 30 bits of job ads from The Guardian, claiming they were proof that the Civil Service is wasting loads of money. In fact the vast majority of them were in local authority and nothing to do with the Civil Service. This has been a public service announcement.

My pet dislike, the Daily Mail, seems to be plumbing new depths today. On Saturday one Rachel Royce, estranged wife of journalist Rod Liddle (much hated by the Mail for his part in the events that led to the Hutton drivel), laid into him in print about his affair with a younger woman. And she's back today -from the intro I gather the Mail has been proactively encouraging her to sling some more mud.
Marital breakdowns aren't pretty. I find it strange that a paper that portrays itself as such a bastion of the people should want to profit from them. But hey, it's the Mail, why am I surprised..?

Now it may just be me, but I'm not actually all that interested in whether Lord Coe has fathered an aborted child out of wedlock. That's beside the point. The important question is whether it's in the public interest that he did so.
Personally I can't see why it should be, but the Sunday Mirror clearly disagreed. The judge's view was that Coe's ex-girlfriend Vanessa Lander had the right to expression and the papers had the right to publish.
It all seems rather distateful, though, when the 'right to expression' has to be coaxed out by a reported five figure sum. Not so much a right, more a bid to make some fast bucks.

It's always interesting to get the other side of a piece in a paper if you thought it was particularly slanted. I often get this feeling with my pet bugbear, the Daily Mail, as regular readers will know - to the extent that I quite wrongly criticised them when they said Michael Parkinson was leaving the BBC while he was still denying it.
But they do seem to go for the jugular more than a little when it comes to stuff like, oh, let's say Asylum seekers. Or enlarged Europe. They will tell you we're about to be flooded, there will be mass immigration and we won't be able to cope, et cetera. They have interviewed people intending to come to the UK and sponge off our benefits, so it must be true.
Or must it? Here's a link (click here) to a piece about a family the Mail profiled in late April. It would be naive to suggest the newer piece is any less slanted than the original, particularly coming as it does from a State agency. But it's worth reading, and points to several factual inaccuracies in the rather alarmist piece the Mail actually ran.

So, Naomi Campbell has ushured in a privacy rule by the back door. A judge overturned an appeal court's verdict that it was in the public interest to have pics of her coming out of a rehab clinic plastered all over the Mirror. This will set a precedent without an actual law being passed, hence the 'back door' nature of the thing.
It's presumably just me, but it seems there's been a lot of bleating about this one - papers are having their rights infringed, we mustn't be gagged et cetera. But is there actually anything wrong with Campbell's initial assertion - that if she has a medical problem then she should have it without a paparazzi camera craning down her throat? I think not - and if self-regulation actually worked among certain elements of the press then back-door legislation like this wouldn't actually happen in the first place.

Yes, I know this is amounting to something of an obsession. But yesterday I half-joked that I was dreading today's papers to see what new excesses were happening and whoopee, on the Today programme, a story about pictures of dead US soldiers sparking a controversy in America. I note this purely as a matter of record.
Speaking of taste, anyone see Express owner Richard Desmond's outburst against the would-be buyers of the Telegraph? He's an experienced businessman and you can only but wonder what objective he honestly thinks will be served by such a statement. I doubt it has won him many friends.

I take it back. The pictures of Gloria Hunniford yesterday were obviously the height of decorum - the public use of the pictures of Princess Diana which have caused such an uproar, taken as she was dying in her car, have to be the peak of crass insensitivity. Unfortunately they seem to have occasioned a whole set of nationalistic criticisms of American TV in the press. It's OK, the commentators seem to be saying, it's happening over there. The UK press, by implication, is better.
Except of course the story is splashed all over the place over here, so the hacks get to bask in its glory without sullying their hands by publishing the picture. Instead they content themselves with a 'standard' picture of the Princess and a pic of the car after the crash. And of course it's all over the front pages, so let's not kid ourselves that the British press isn't rubbing the Royals' noses in it just as much as the Americans.
I'm half dreading whatever new excesses tomorrow's press will bring.

I was hoping not to be writing about this again so soon, but here we are. A couple of times I've raised the issue of taste and restraint when, say, there's a tragedy - one of my rants was about a picture of a dead woman with her breast exposed after the Madrid bombings, and a more clear-cut (in my view) piece came after journalist Carol Barnes lost her daughter, She was of course followed to Australia by photographers, who clearly thought it essential that they took pics of her grieving, for publication.
And here we are again. Very recently TV presenter Caron Keating died at an appallingly young age. That much is fact and people will want to know, fair enough. But were the pictures published today of her mother, Gloria Hunniford, at the funeral really any more than an attempt to feed voyeurism? I doubt it.
Someone in the public eye dying is of course newsworthy. That person having a funeral of some sort shortly afterwards isn't news, it's blindingly obvious. I hope the press will leave the family alone for a fair while after this

It must be just me. I was about to write a piece deriding the tabloids for their total fascination with all things Beckham. Ooh look, he might have had an affair. Ooh, look, another one.
I mean, so what? Is this what we journalists work and strive for, printing idle tattle about a bloke and woman whose marriage is nothing to do with us?
Then I see in the Press Gazette that the News of the World put on 100,000 in sales as a result. As I say, it must be just me.

Now here's an interesting quandary. Should I, as an independent journalist, be allowed to be a member of a political party? OK, let's drop 'allowed' in a free country and ask simply whether it's a good idea. My sole value is my independence - would you trust. say, a known Liberal or Conservative to commentate on the current UK Government?
This issue is sharpened up somewhat by the NUJ's pushing through of the right to affiliate to a political party. In the UK this is likely to mean donations to Labour, at least in the short term.
You may or may not support the idea of a political levy in general. The difficulty I have with the NUJ's idea is twofold. First, I'm not comfortable with the idea of a national press that's avowedly aligned with a particular party - it gives the others too much scope to complain.
Second, though, it does rather throw up the difficulty of union membership and involvement in it. I am an NUJ member. I don't have much spare time as a freelance journalist and a father of a three-year-old. So I don't get to, for example, the meetings at which it is decided that my union is going to support a party for which I may or may not vote, now or in the future.
So actually it's not much use my complaining because if I wanted to change things I should have been there, presumably. Likewise I'm not going to get there when they decide to whom this political fund should be awarded. And neither will the vast majority. That's actually how unions normally work - there's this handful of activists and the rest are fairly passive.
But on this occasion, since it's a question of the UK Press' national body declaring a bias in favour of one party or t'other, I think it's worth taking a stand. Awkward sod though I may be for becoming involved only when I want to stop something, I shall be voting against.

There’s a lovely piece in Private Eye this week about the expenses and expectations charged by certain members of my profession. Cars, expensive lunches, they want the lot.
Anyway, on a different subject entirely I’m on the way to Venice for a briefing from a computer company called Ariba. They’re hoping to get into The Guardian or thereabouts through my good offices; I’m hoping to sell a story because if I don’t then this will be two dead days on which I’ve earned nothing.
The funny thing is that when I approached The Guardian about this in the first place they were, maybe understandably, a bit wary. Is there a story, they wanted to know, other than ‘Ariba takes journalist on jolly nice trip’? The answer is yes there is, although I have to concede they could have told me about it in the UK just as easily. If it gets in at all then it’ll come with a note that the journalist’s hospitality was paid for by someone with vested interests. I draw your attention to this purely because the presence of a ‘jolly’ in this case has diminished rather than enhanced the chances of coverage in the target press.
I wonder how long the PR industry will take to twig…

There’s a lovely piece in Private Eye this week about the expenses and expectations charged by certain members of my profession. Cars, expensive lunches, they want the lot.
Anyway, on a different subject entirely I’m on the way to Venice for a briefing from a computer company called Ariba. They’re hoping to get into The Guardian or thereabouts through my good offices; I’m hoping to sell a story because if I don’t then this will be two dead days on which I’ve earned nothing.
The funny thing is that when I approached The Guardian about this in the first place they were, maybe understandably, a bit wary. Is there a story, they wanted to know, other than ‘Ariba takes journalist on jolly nice trip’? The answer is yes there is, although I have to concede they could have told me about it in the UK just as easily. If it gets in at all then it’ll come with a note that the journalist’s hospitality was paid for by someone with vested interests. I draw your attention to this purely because the presence of a ‘jolly’ in this case has diminished rather than enhanced the chances of coverage in the target press.
I wonder how long the PR industry will take to twig…