MEDIA STUDIES
What paper drops a distinguished correspondent
after 28 years? The Guardian, of course
STEPHEN GLOVER
Imagine if the government put out a press release like this feeble specimen just issued by the Guardian.
'Martin Walker has resigned from the Guardian to take early retirement after a career which included postings in Moscow, Washington and Brussels. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said: "Martin has had a long and distinguished career on the paper, during which he has reported with distinction from all over the world. We wish him well." Martin Walker said: "It will be a wrench to leave the Guardian after 28 years, but I have more books• to write and new challenges in store."' Convinced? Of course not. The whole thing reeks of disingenuousness. No politi- cian would be allowed to get away with it. The Guardian's most celebrated foreign correspondent — a personal friend of Pres- ident Clinton, whose biography he has writ- ten — leaves the paper in his prime and we are asked to take it all at face value. In any case, why the press release? Normal depar- tures are not marked in this way. Its very existence should arouse our suspicions.
Mr Walker (aka 'Sweetie Walker') has in effect been driven out. Some weeks ago he was accused by his paper of certain irregular- ities regarding expenses. It was suggested that Mr Walker had sublet his Guardian flat in Brussels (his most recent posting) and that an educational allowance for one of his chil- dren had been wrongly claimed. 'Sweetie' strenuously denied these charges. Lawyers were engaged by him, and no less a person- age than John Foster, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, became involved. Mr Walker's friends say that he was acquitted of every stain and blemish, but that he was nonetheless asked by Mr Rusbridger to leave Brussels for an unspecified job. This he refused to do, having been posted to Brussels from Washington a couple of years ago despite earlier promises that he would be able to stay in America. So he decided to leave the paper for which he had slaved for 28 years, taking a year's salary by way of com- pensation.
The Guardian does not wholly accept this version of events. One of the paper's repre- sentatives confirms that no irregularities were proved but tells me that Mr Walker has not been paid a year's salary. He will merely be paid for a further three months. Nor was he offered another posting. It appears to follow therefore that there was no longer any place for Mr Walker at the Guardian. That sugary press release obvi- ously conceals a considerable bust-up.
Let me here interject a historical note about expenses and foreign correspondents. Until about 20 years ago there was a conven- tion, accepted by journalists and manage- ments, that foreign correspondents would ideally bank their usually not very large salaries and live off their expenses. I do not for a moment wish to suggest that Mr Walk- er has at any stage in his life conducted his own affairs in such a way. I only observe that this was how it was often done. Those who want a fuller exposition of such practices may care to read a definitive essay on the subject in a book published this autumn (edited by myself, as it happens) written by an anonymous hand. The author brilliantly evokes a world in which one foreign corre- spondent passed off a racehorse as a family pet, and another hired at vast expense a rac- ing camel that rendered magnificent and heart-rending service to his paper. All that has changed, of course. Our mod- ern accountant-run, cost-conscious Fleet Street has put an end to such extravagances. But it is important to realise that the sort of irregularities for which Mr Walker was arraigned would not have raised a foreign editor's eyebrow 20 years ago, when the young Sweetie Walker was limbering up for his first foreign posting.
I have never met Mr Walker, though I confess I once thought of him as a slightly ridiculous figure. (He was nicknamed Sweetie, by the way, on account of his habit of addressing strangers as 'Sweetie' when young. A friend describes him at that time as a very exotic creature, wearing a flowing cardigan — not a kaftan — that came down to his knees, and sporting long, luxuriant hair.) He has unquestionably been an out- standing foreign correspondent, producing many scoops over the years and devoting himself wholeheartedly to his paper. I am sorry to see him treated in such a way. It seems to me that he has in part fallen foul of a syndrome that afflicts all foreign corre- spondents in the end — not being in the office. Long before the row over expenses he was the victim of young journalists who scarcely knew who he was, and of others who jealously conspired against him, possi- bly because they resented his connections with people such as Clinton, as well as his reputation as almost the only well-known British correspondent in America over the past 20 years.
And he has also been a victim of the new spirit of Cromwellianism that inhabits the Guardian. Perhaps it was always there. A friend of Mr Rusbridger says that the editor of the paper that had waged war against sleazy Tory MPs could not allow the smallest suspicion to stick to any member of his staff. I see the point, though readers will remem- ber that Mr Rusbridger spared another employee who had allowed £300,000 from uncertain sources to pass through her bank account so that a controversial Ghanaian friend could bring a libel suit against a rival newspaper. Mr Walker, who has loyally given his whole working life to the Guardian, doesn't seem to have done any- thing very wrong, or wrong at all. This is no way to treat such a person. The journalist Philip Hope-Wallace famously learned at his father's knee: 'Never work for a liberal employer, dear boy, they'll sack you on Christmas Eve.' That old adage seems more apt than ever.
These days, whenever an editor resigns or is sacked, newspapers pass immediate judgment on his editorship. In the assess- ments of Frank Johnson, who stepped down as editor of this magazine last week, there were two almost eerily persistent inaccuracies. One was that staff morale is, for some reason, at rock bottom. Another was that The Spectator is a bit of a dinosaur in a Blairite world.
Now I do not often go into The Spectator's offices, but during the past few days I have spoken to several members of staff, and have found secretaries practically in tears and nor- mally ruthless production types clutching their handkerchiefs. If there was low morale it was only because Frank had gone. But I can't see any cause for general depression. Apart from anything else, this magazine's circulation is at an all-time high, having risen steadily during Frank's editorship to the point where it is expected to reach 60,000 next year. This success also gives the lie to the notion that The Spectator is not striking a chord in a Blairite age.
Acopy of Tina Brown's over-hyped talk was biked up to me in Oxford by an obliging PR company. I am lost for words.
Previous page
