Watching brief - Amanda Platell applauds press campaigning
Published 02 June 2003
Exposes of NHS tourism and the government's short-sighted drugs policy, as well as the launch of a national referendum: old-fashioned campaigning journalism is back in fashion
After the 2001 election, the BBC agonised over the future of its political coverage, searching for a way of engaging those people who had turned away both from the ballot box and from the box in the corner. A solution was found - Jeremy Vine's The Politics Show replaced John Humphrys's On the Record - and the search began for a new yoof show.
For all its open-necked modernity, The Politics Show has proved itself to be a slick and hard-edged hour of strait-laced politics in a lavender setting. Yoof, however, was abandoned in favour of the wider under-45 audience and Weekend with Rod Liddle and Kate Silverton was born (given the first show, many would say stillborn). It is now halfway through a planned six-week run. I did the show last week, and can say it needs more time - and deserves it.
I have been a fan of Liddle's since my days working for William Hague, when he was the editor of the Today programme. I suspect a lot of the criticism he is now getting is born of envy. Front-of-house journalists hate seeing a backroom boy catapulting on to the little screen.
Weekend got off to a very bad start, but there is a kind of Bogart-and-Bacall chemistry between the cleverly shambolic Liddle and the cool and classy Silverton. Surely, with about £2.6bn of our money to play with, the BBC should give this ugly duckling a chance.
Whether it's the Baghdad bounce in their step or the palpable lack of an effective opposition, our newspapers have rediscovered their campaigning zeal. It was no surprise that the right-wing press would fight the new European constitution tooth and nail, but the Daily Mail campaign, culminating in the paper's own national referendum on 12 June - on whether there should be a referendum - is a classic and rare case of a paper putting its money where its mouth is.
The Guardian's series on the criminal justice system kicked off with a damning indictment of the way the government is treating, or rather failing to treat, the drug users who commit an estimated 7.5 million crimes in Britain each year. Hot on its heels was the paper's investigation into the chaos that has become the education system. Meanwhile, Harriet Sergeant's investigation into NHS tourism in the Daily Telegraph proved so irresistible the Mail ran it three days later.
The Times has had a remarkable run of education stories - from the 3,000 teachers facing the axe to the humiliating failure of Tony Blair's £800m flagship policy for lifting inner-city schools.
The Independent warmed to one of its favourite themes with its fat-cat hall of shame, a splendid piece of mischief. And even the Daily Express has been tireless in its exposure of the pensions fiasco.
We often long for the glory days of Fleet Street, but we are living them. For about the price of a large glass of Romanian Pinot Grigio in any wine bar, you still get a week's reading that's up there with the best in the world.
Commentators were quick to blame a dirty tricks campaign by those low-down Europeans for the UK's "nul points" in the Eurovision Song Contest. It was noted that the British contestants, Jemini, performed a rather lacklustre song - yet as a total absence of talent was no bar to success for other countries, one does rather fall back on the conspiracy theory.
Could anti-US/UK sentiment also be the reason that Nicole Kidman and the hotly tipped Dogville failed to take home the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival as predicted? In European eyes, Kidman is now the equivalent of the human axis of evil - born an Australian, once married to an American, and now so very close to that Brit Jude Law.
When I called Jean Morgan at Press Gazette, the journalists' trade paper, she was out. "Does she have your number?" the person on the other end of the line asked. I laughed. Jean has everyone's number.
In fact her contacts book, now that she is retiring, should be donated to the British Museum. At the Royal Commonwealth Society the other day, we said farewell, professionally, to one of the great story-getters in our business. Her career seemed all the more interesting as her stories were about us.
It still sends a shiver down my spine to get a call from Jean. Every time I was sacked, she knew before me. Every time I was promoted, she knew before I had time to call my mum. Jean Morgan, not David Montgomery, then the managing director of the Mirror Group, told me that I had lost a battle with Bridget Rowe for the editorship of the Sunday Mirror; and that Rosie Boycott, then my boss at Express Newspapers, was offering around my job as Sunday Express editor .
She never broke a confidence or elaborated a story. She just got things right. Jean demonstrated all the finest qualities of our profession - honesty, confidentiality and above all a love of the truth.
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