A Spectator's Notebook
I AM INCREASINGLY puzzled over the • protocol, or absence of it, which dictates ministerial relations with the press, and with broadcasting. If the editor of the Spectator, or any other journal, wishes to obtain for his readers a statement on, say, what the Ministry of Circumlocution plans to do in the next six months, it is no use his writing to the Ministry to ask .e. for an article on that subject; the Minister is not permitted to write for the press (except poetry and romantic novels), save dur- ing General Election campaigns. An editor may, however, obtain the Minister's consent for an interview (though usually only provided that the account of it is vetted by the Minister). Interviews of this kind, though, can be, and often are, articles in disguise. TV interviews, too, are often no more than ministerial apologia, barely disguised as answers to a reporter's questions—the questions having obviously been supplied in advance by the Minister. And as Ministers are in the strong position of being able to refuse `interviews' to anybody who does not accept their terms, they can avoid the kind of questions that they ought to be asked—not a very satisfactory situation.
* • *
Previous page
