FLOPS, WRITS AND `CENSORSHIP'
The media: Paul Johnson
looks back at the last year and forward into 1989
THE past year has been a rich and varied One for the British media, with many pluses and some minuses. Thanks to the continuing effects of the Wapping Revolu- tion, newspapers are now making big profits, with News International leading the field but most groups doing well too. The nationals expanded throughout the year, adding new sections, supplements and magazines to the point where the drive for more sales became self-defeating as multi-paper readers were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of column-inches. The two prize products of the new era, the Independent and Today, continued to flourish. The first put on sales steadily and successfully launched a Saturday maga- zine. Perhaps more important, during the recent egg crisis it managed, for the first time, to establish a strong editorial identity and viewpoint, its leaders on the subject making those in the other qualities look feeble. Today increased circulation faster than any other national and the latest National Readership Survey indicates it has done so well that (as Campaign put it) 'it has lifted the fortunes of the entire mid-market sector'. But it still loses a lot of money.
Indeed, though it is now easier to fi- nance and launch newspaper ventures, the year demonstrated that they are still a high-risk form of business. A gallant but underpublicised effort to re-establish a Lancashire quality, the North West Times, on the lines of the old Manchester Guar- dian, failed after a few weeks. Eddie Shah's second attempt to become a nation- al newspaper publisher, this time with a Paper called the Post, lasted a little longer but then collapsed in acrimony. Those left without jobs were not impressed by Shah's statement that he had never cared much about newspapers anyway and that televi- sion was his real interest. Both these newspapers failed primarily, I think, be- cause they simply could not generate the news coverage, especially on television, which was so marked a feature of the independent launch. Not enough people knew about them. These disasters, coming on top of the News on Sunday calamity, help to explain the continuing difficulty experienced by the would-be publishers of the Sunday Correspondent in raising their launch capital. At the time I write they had not succeeded in doing so and the whole project must now be regarded as vulner- able. Paradoxically, one factor in scaring off investors may have been a carefully calculated announcement by the Indepen- dent that it was not now planning to produce a Sunday edition, thus indicating to the City that the shrewd operators who run the paper had concluded there was no room for a fourth Sunday quality, let alone a fifth.
Tabloid journalism, at any rate at the lower end of the market, continued to probe new depths of ignominy beneath its previously explored layers of slime. The Press Council slapped wrists, to no effect, and under its new chairman, the 'progres- sive' lawyer Louis Blom-Cooper, is unlike- ly to do any better. So the case for a law to protect privacy mounted and more and more MPs became persuaded one is neces- sary. Ironically the public, in its capacity as readers, bought more and more downmar- ket tabloids, but in its capacity as jurors punished them with increasing severity by awarding crushing sums in libel damages. Except for the Observer's victory over Michael Meacher MP, a foolish man who is now suing his solicitor, it was a disastrous year for newspapers in the courts. Koo Stark received £300,000 from one news- paper for years of inaccurate persecution and she is busy collecting from others. Fearing the vengeance of juries, newspap- ers ran for cover with many huge out-of- court settlements, culminating in the £1 million handed over to Elton John by the Sun at the last minute before the case came to court. The judge was incensed by the behaviour of both parties and complained bitterly about it. But if they had treated his court with contempt, why did he not send both singer and editor to the cells to cool their heels for a few days, until they purged their offence with a grovelling apology?
The events of the past year suggest, indeed, that training in the law may soon become an indispensable part of an editor's qualifications. After many years of hesita- tion, the Government has at last produced a new Official Secrets Act. The old Act was comprehensive and catch-all but so unpopular that it was becoming increasing- ly difficult to persuade juries to convict, at any rate under the notorious Section Two. The new legislation is a great improvement and there is little doubt that it will enable the state to conduct successful prosecutions if serious breaches of national security occur in the media. It has aroused a wholly predictable chorus of opposition from the various media vested interests, including unions and professional bodies. But such complaints have been half-hearted and ineffectual. The same can be said for the media objections to the Government's long overdue ban on terrorists appearing on television. There is no doubt the ban has strong public backing, and even among journalists there are few, apart from cer- tain activists of the NUJ and the television current affairs programmes, who seriously believe we should allow the IRA the right to use our duopoly broadcasting system to justify mass-murder and recruit gunmen.
However, the ban on the IRA has been incorporated into the campaign being mounted by various 'concerned' writers to persuade the electorate that Britain is becoming an oppressive country where freedom of speech is under threat. This was another feature of the year, not without its comic aspects. It is a character- istic of these campaigners that, when their work is criticised, they instantly reply: `Thought police'.To them, criticism of any kind is a form of censorship. Many of them earn between £100,000 and £300,000 a year (in some cases considerably more) and have generous access not only to the media's commercial sector, in the shape of newspapers and magazines, but especially to the broadcasting duopoly and other parts of the public culture sector, which is dominated by their political allies and friends. So it is not easy to see precisely in what way they are being inhibited from expressing their views. But, rich and over- indulged, they need a cause, and for want of a genuine one this will have to do. One manifestation of the campaign is a journal impudently called Samizdat, an insult to those writers behind the Iron Curtain who suffer from real-life censorship and persecution. I baptise the new breed of protester with the collective name of Mel- vyn Mortimer. We shall be hearing a lot from this character in 1989 when the Government's new plans to reform and democratise broadcasting pass from the White Paper to the legislative stage — the event which will dominate media politics during the coming year.
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