Watching brief - Amanda Platell assesses the Media Guardian 100
Published 14 July 2003
Why was Andrew Marr only at 54 in the MediaGuardian 100 list? A twitch of his eyebrow can cast aspersions on any politician's claims - and Marr uses his eyebrows a lot
The MediaGuardian 100 satisfied our lust for lists, providing us with pleasure akin to pulling wings off flies, only these wings belong to our colleagues. But was it an adequate measure of power in the media?
Power is the ability to make or break people, and nobody does that more ably than female columnists. Yet not a single one was included. How could anyone think that Chris Evans's agent (a tenner for anyone who even knows his name) is more influential than Lynda Lee-Potter or Polly Toynbee?
I've always thought that one way to make BBC journalists more broad-minded would be to ban all copies of the Guardian from its newsrooms. Whenever I went with William Hague to do the Today programme, I was greeted by a sea of Guardians waving like anemones.
This paper's ability to set the agenda is completely disproportionate to its sales, so putting the editor, Alan Rusbridger, at number 38 in its media power list is just plain silly.
And was it broadsheet snobbery to leave out the editor of the Mail on Sunday, Peter Wright, after his paper dealt two savage blows to the government with the Black Rod and Cheriegate stories? If that's not wielding power, I don't know what is.
Putting the editor of the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore, at number 68 says more about the panel's political inclinations than it does about the influence of the largest-selling broadsheet.
And how could anyone put the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, as low as number 54? With a twitch of his eyebrow, Marr is able to cast the most dastardly aspersions on any politician's claims - and Marr uses his eyebrows a lot.
As Alastair Campbell has discovered to his cost, friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. And accumulate they have around the farce that was his performance in front of the select committee and the phoney war with the BBC.
While the jury may have been out on the select committee, it was not in the press. The only support for Campbell came from the Sun: "Ali wins it". All that the usually sympathetic Express could muster was: "It's a bore draw".
The Times concluded that voters are "inclined to think that the Prime Minister is not entirely trustworthy". The Independent said Campbell's habit of chairing "meetings on intelligence matters" was "devastating" to Blair.
The Telegraph called for his immediate resignation, while the Daily Mail branded him "liar-in-chief" and said it was Blair who should apologise to the BBC and the British people. The Daily Mirror was brutal with its front page: "Guilty of taking us into a war on false grounds".
Campbell's power over the press is ebbing away, and part of the reason is that the papers don't need him the way they did. In the early days - when he had, and exercised, the power to make or break journalists - information was that power. New Labour was the only show in town. Now the government is falling apart, information from civil servants, former cabinet members or general miscreants is far more valuable than Initiative 3,462 from Downing Street leaked to a docile journalist by Ali C.
When news came of the deaths of the conjoined twins, I couldn't help but feel this spectacle had turned into a hideous form of reality TV. From the moment Ladan and Laleh went into the operating theatre, it felt like the Big Brother cameras had rolled in behind them, with hourly updates broadcast around the world. There was too much information, too much intrusion. Surely we would all think more of the surgeons if they had chosen to perform the operation without the benefit to them of all that publicity.
If you watched the lead-in to the men's finals at Wimbledon, you could be forgiven for thinking you had accidentally switched on to an episode of Trisha. In the pre-match interviews, we learnt little of these two players except that one's friend died in a car crash and the other's father survived cancer. I don't mean to be unkind, but I'm more interested in the speed of their serves than in the medical history of their parents. In this country, we like our dossiers sexed up, not our tennis.
And can someone explain to me why, with hundreds of sports commentators on its staff, the BBC had to employ a moronic, monosyllabic Boris Becker and GMTV's Andrew Castle for one of the biggest sporting events of the year?
There was much nostalgia over the death of the 26-stone singer Barry White. One should normally be suspicious of men who furnish their homes with ankle-deep, shag-pile carpet, especially on the walls. Not so the Walrus of Lurve. The thought of having sex with him up against a comfy wall must have been preferable to almost any other position. He had the ultimate "come to bed" voice. Women just wished he wasn't in it when they got there.
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