Watching Brief - Amanda Platell hates the snobbish left-wing press
Published 25 November 2002
The Guardian, in the condescending fashion of the intellectual left, said the tabloids had got their way over Myra Hindley. In fact, their 27 million readers got their way
I was talking to a leading left-wing politician the other day who boasted that he never read the tabloids. "I despise them," he said. "I didn't come into politics to give people what they want. I came into politics to give them what they need."
On no subject is this attitude more clearly demonstrated than in the broadsheets' treatment of the death of Myra Hindley.
The Daily Telegraph struggled with the argument between "the beliefs of the majority" and "modern principles of justice" which, by her death, she solved if not resolved. The Independent on Sunday claimed that successive home secretaries had refused to release her "for all the wrong reasons" and that they "belonged to governments that were fearful of the media".
But the Guardian was naked in its contempt for what it believed to be the real forces of evil - the tabloids. It argued that Hindley should have been freed and that "her overlong imprisonment demeaned our society".
What this editorial outburst did betray was the contempt the intellectual left has for the majority of people in this country. Meanwhile the non-intellectual, Labour-supporting Daily Mirror and Express were both damning of Hindley. The Mirror's front-page headline of "Gone but not forgiven" reflected its leader: "A succession of home secretaries refused to consider her for parole and rightly so. The public would never have accepted that she should be freed."
Clearly the Mirror does not think that her sentence demeaned society, but what does it say about the Guardian that it does? Like my politician, it thinks it knows what is best for the plebs.
The Guardian began its leader with: "The tabloids have got their way." Well, actually, isn't it the tabloid readers - all 27 million of them - that got their way? Every poll has shown that an overwhelming majority wanted to keep Hindley imprisoned. So when the Crown Prosecution Service decided to charge Hindley with two further murders, was that just part of the tabloid conspiracy, too?
The attempt to separate the people who produce these papers from their readers and to demonise them is also nonsense. No successful editor operates independently of or against the beliefs of his readers. It wasn't a plot dreamt up by Paul Dacre, David Yelland and Piers Morgan to pervert the course of justice. It's what their readers wanted.
Hatred of Myra Hindley had become an integral part of the British psyche and, whether you agreed with it or not, you must surely acknowledge the genuinely held belief of the majority of the country. Isn't that what we call democracy? And as we witness the loss to the broadsheet market of half a million AB readers over the past five years, amid accusations of dumbing down, could it possibly be that these papers are just not reflecting the real breadth of public opinion? If being dumb means believing that life should have meant life for Myra Hindley, then perhaps some of the broadsheets are too smart for their own good.
As ever, women are divided over the sexual allure of the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr. Across the country, they are listening to Start the Week, imagining him in his Rocky Horror Show fishnet tights, enthusiastically displayed on the BBC's Children in Need programme.
Let's face it, dressing up in women's clothing is high-risk for any bloke. Only a man confident of his own sexuality can get away with it. Dustin Hoffman, Mel Gibson and Tony Curtis all did. Rock Hudson did not. I found the sight of Jeremy Vine, Michael Buerk, Jeremy Bowen and Marr, all desperately uncomfortable in drag, rather endearing. Most of the C-list celebs on the show were there to flog a new book or an album or just themselves. The sight of these men in their miniskirts and false eyelashes, with nothing to promote and so much to lose, was beguiling.
And, with legs that went on for ever and one flick of an eyelash, Vine demolished Jeremy Paxman as the BBC's thinking woman's crumpet for ever.
The appointment of Kevin Marsh, former editor of The World at One, as editor of the Today programme is a clear signal from BBC bosses that they will not be bullied by the new Labour spin machine. Under Marsh, The World at One was reviled by Downing Street, as he proved immune to Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's well-documented methods of persuasion. Accusations that he has been guilty of pro-Tory bias are about as convincing as those laid by the same people at the door of the former editor Rod Liddle, who left the chair having written a Guardian column condemning the Countryside March.
Sadly for the Conservative Party, a journalist's desire to question the Blair government does not make him pro-Tory.
But, oh, what a deliciously malicious smear.
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