Who needs the press when you can chat with Richard and Judy?
Published 05 February 1999
Media
The spin of the week award goes to my pal Alastair Campbell. He managed to get acres of space in the Sunday papers by claiming he had come up with a new media strategy. This, Patrick Wintour faithfully reported in the Observer, was a strategy that would bypass national newspapers and their obsession with trivia, travel expenses and soap opera. Fine, but it was not exactly news. Alastair and the rest of the government have been pursuing the populist media for some time - Tony Blair's appearance with Richard and Judy, for instance, was not the first time the PM has been on the couple's show. Having bypassed the newspapers and their trawling through trivia, Tony talked about all-important matters such as his swimwear and losing his temper with his kids. Still, you could see what Alastair's new strategy was based on: it makes sense for Tony to go on programmes people actually watch and listen to, rather than speak through hacks who, as often as not, are not in tune with the people. When I was last in Washington I met Jo Lochart, President Clinton's press spokesman. The president was about to be impeached, but Jo wasn't flapping: he pointed out that the media might have become obsessed with the Monica soap opera but the American people were not. Let's hope that political reporting in Britain does not go the way of America. I fear it will.
The shadow chancellor spent last Friday briefing journalists about a helicopter flight that Gordon Brown took in Mauritius 18 months ago. That says a lot about the Tories and the Sunday papers that reported it. I rang Gordon about it - he could not even remember the trip. I asked his economics adviser, Ed Balls, about it and he reminded me that the chopper belonged to the president of Mauritius (we were there for the Commonwealth finance ministers' meeting). He had sent it to pick Gordon up for a meeting. I suppose that, even though the British taxpayer would not be footing the bill, Gordon could have said, "No, I can't fly in a helicopter, I'll have to walk. Otherwise the Tories may tell the Mail on Sunday and accuse me of wasting money."
For some time now the Sunday papers have been printing total crap, as Alastair would put it, or complete bollocks, as I would. The worst culprit is the Sunday Times. A few weeks ago it "exclusively" revealed that Hobsbawm-Macaulay, the PR firm, had a contract to promote this magazine. "Row over Geoffrey Robinson funding of Gordon Brown" was the alleged story. This story was so "exclusive" that every national newspaper has been receiving a press release from HMC every week for the past two years promoting articles in the New Statesman. The Sunday Times was trying to claim HMC had a contract not with the magazine, but with Geoffrey Robinson, its owner: he was therefore funding Sarah, and thus Gordon. What sexist claptrap . . .
They were back at it this week: "Brown caught up in Camelot row". Apparently Sarah's company has a contract with a company connected to Camelot, which runs the National Lottery. The journalist insinuated that this could affect the government's decision on who should run the lottery. Who actually dreams up this nonsense?
What is it about air travel that so excites the papers at the moment? None of the hacks can believe that it's fun flying round the world to these international meetings, as they often go on the trips with ministers. The economics correspondents didn't exactly enjoy Gordon's hectic schedule - one trip involved going to Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia in three days. We went on Concorde, too - but somehow that trip to Denver for the world leaders' summit did not result in headlines about wasting taxpayers' money. Could that be because the Sun, Mail, Telegraph, Times, Express and Mirror were with us on Concorde, too?
On the Today programme, Jim Naughtie's first question to Jack Cunningham on the public sector pay awards was not "Aren't the awards too small?" or "Aren't the awards too big?" it was "Aren't expectations too high?" I have no doubt that the government spin machine would have wanted the expectations to be low so that on the day of the announcement the awards would have been welcomed for being bigger than expected. The difficulty with that strategy is that too many people would have known in advance what the awards would be and, tongues wagging as they do, a leak would have been inevitable. The Sun predicted an 11 per cent rise in nurses' pay two week ago - how much better it would have looked if the Sun had predicted 5 per cent for nurses two weeks ago and "Shock! Big rise for nurses" on the day. Cynical, I know, but Jim Naughtie got it right.
The biggest story of the week was not a political one but a football one. "Hoddle must go, say ministers" was the splash in the Observer - with me, inside, agreeing. Some people were arguing that the career of the England football manager should depend only on the results and that what he says about anything else in life is irrelevant. The problem is that the media don't think that, and neither do the fans. I only hope that Glenn Hoddle's successor takes advice from his spin-doctor and keeps the press on his side - or at least some of it.
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