Sorry!

POLITICS AND THE MEDIA
Nicholas Jones, former BBC political correspondent, argues that the herd
mentality of journalism is feeding
the empty rhetoric of apology

Part I

A scapegoat?

If you bought a newspaper, listened to the radio, watched television or went online over the May bank holiday weekend you could not have missed reports about the dire predicament of Gordon Brown. The prime minister was being assailed from all sides and the narrative was clear: Brown is finished; he's certain to get a kicking in the European and local elections next month; and under his premiership, Labour have got no chance of winning the next general election. All the speculation was about who might succeed him as Labour leader. The template for the story-line was pretty rigid and what we saw was a classic illustration of the herd mentality of the British news media. The journalists were all on the same track, asking the same questions, writing the same headlines. And it was the newspapers which made much of the running.
     The Observer had commissioned an article from Hazel Blears with her 'You Tube if You Want To' jibe at the prime minister. The Mail on Sunday gorged itself on the anguished recriminations of the former home secretary, Charles Clarke. The press coverage fed through to radio and television, which kept the story going with bruising follow-up interviews with some of Brown's cabinet colleagues who were asked repeatedly whether they had any intention of mounting a challenge to the leadership.
     What is so different about the level of our coverage – when compared say with the rest of Europe or America – is that it is so all-embracing. The circulation and readership of newspapers in the UK far exceeds that in the United States or our immediate neighbours across the English channel. Our newspapers are highly-politicised – they mount popular campaigns which create news in themselves. They do not just report what is happening, but drive the agenda forward, often manufacturing their own storylines. It is their headlines and comment pieces which feed through into radio and television, fuelling debate on phone-ins and in online discussion, often influencing our everyday culture in all sorts of ways.
     Our governments and public services – not forgetting our politicians – are held to account by perhaps some of the best and arguably some of the worst journalism in the world. It is the intensity of that spotlight which explains why Britain's public relations industry – or our public affairs industry as it likes to be called – is one of the strongest and most innovative in the world. Democratically-elected governments here in the UK have had to learn the hard way how to defend themselves, how to counter attack in the face of a media offensive.
     This explains why the culture of spin has become so deeply ingrained in the fabric of Westminster and Whitehall. What we are seeing now with the development of the internet, through websites and the blogosphere, is a speeding up of that process of accountability. A politician or public servant who becomes a target of a media fire-fight is even more vulnerable than before if they cannot find a way out, execute a swift U-turn or perhaps say 'Sorry'. More often than not that one word 'Sorry' becomes a be all and end all for journalists. The media want to know 'Who is to blame?' and once they have a potential victim in their sights, a public apology is then demanded. And believe me, once the narrative gets going, once the hunt begins and once the herd mentality clicks in, the chances of survival are not very good.
     What is needed in a crisis like that is a clear-headed media strategist and the advice of a spin doctor or publicist such as Alastair Campbell or Max Clifford, who understand the mindset of the British journalists and know how, in a crisis, the news agenda can be manipulated. Take the example of the disgraced Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive, Fred the Shred – one of the 'Scumbag Millionaires' as the Sun put it so succinctly. The four 'shamed bank bosses' did say 'sorry' but their 'grovelling apologies' were nowhere near enough for the media. And the hue and cry against Sir Fred Goodwin is not over yet. The Sun has an online petition criticising him, part of a campaign to persuade him to hand back his 'bread'. 'Jail him – Scumbag Millionaire' said the placards outside his home (The Times). And a London picture agency says that a photo spread of Sir Fred enjoying his ill-gotten gains could command as much as £30,000 from one of the tabloids.
     The fact that he has become a publicly-reviled scapegoat has to some degree taken the heat off the government. And that does raise an important question about the role of journalists. Instead of serving the public interest in scrutinising the financial controls which are now being hurriedly put in place, the reality is that much of the media prefers the quick fix of witch hunt. The case of Baby Peter – who died after being tortured and abused – is a textbook example of how a newspaper like the Sun can exact retribution but fail in what we all agree is perhaps the far more important objective of supporting and encouraging social workers whose job it is to protect vulnerable children.
     Last year the Sun launched a petition calling for the dismissal of the social workers who had failed to protect Baby Peter. The principal target was Sharon Shoesmith, the head of children's services in the London borough of Haringey. When over a million people had signed the petition, it needed six of the paper's journalists to carry the sacks of petition forms to the prime minister's office (Sun). Within days the government had intervened and three of the care workers were suspended. The following week, when the total of signed petition forms had reached 1.4 million, Sharon Shoesmith was dismissed without compensation and without the £1.5 million pension she might have expected. There was no realistic alternative for the government, for any government: the Sun had effectively dictated the outcome. 'AT LAST' was the bold headline on the Sun's 'Baby P Victory' issue. And last month there was the news that the four social workers under Sharon Shoesmith have also been sacked without compensation (Sun). Not surprisingly the organisation for social workers has complained that the Sun's campaign of vilification has done immense damage to the wellbeing of those whose job it is to protect vulnerable children. The demand that the director and her staff should be sacked without compensation became a common story line across the news media, picked up on phone-ins. Once that herd mentality clicks in there is often no hiding place.
     The prime minister was damaged by weeks of criticism for failing to say 'sorry' for the failure of the financial controls which he himself had introduced as chancellor of the exchequer. The closest he got to apologising was to declare that he took 'full responsibility' for his role in the banking failures which led to the recession and the credit crunch. He says he wished he had done more in the late 1990s to mount a popular campaign to demand better regulation of the world's financial markets. Unfortunately we journalists sometimes become addicted to the idea that obtaining an apology is some kind of victory – that somehow we have served the public good by forcing public figures to apologise. That was certainly the sentiment which greeted the media's success in finally forcing Brown publicly to say sorry' six days after his disgraced media strategist Damian McBride was exposed as having been engaged in an attempt to smear leading Conservatives.
     The commentariat had all stepped up the pressure: 'Why can't he say sorry?' demanded Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. When the apology finally came, the Daily Mirror's headline summed it up: 'Hold on to your hat...Gordon's said Sorry' over Smeargate. But again was it the journalists – this time the lobby correspondents – who should have been in the dock explaining why they had so willingly been taking McBride's spin? McBride was after all known in the lobby as McPoison and why was it that it was a blogger – Guido Fawkes – and not a political journalist who finally had the guts to expose what was going on? What we as journalists should be asking ourselves is whether, when we slavishly follow a narrative that demands an apology, we are delivering anything more than a cosmetic.

To be continued on Thursday