Bloggers didn't drive the Prescott story. They may have stirred it up a bit, but newspaper journalists broke it
Are internet bloggers responsible for John Prescott's latest travails?
The bloggers themselves - notably Iain Dale, a former Tory parliamentary candidate, and Paul Staines, who writes a blog under the pseudonym "Guido Fawkes" - have spread the idea that they are. This shows they are smart business people, ably marketing their work.
The Fawkes site has so much advertising - for knickers, T-shirts, jewellery, and so on - that it is apt to crash my computer. I doubt Staines is yet making much money, but we must remember that, if the internet is light on revenue, it is also light on costs.
But the bloggers' claim to be setting the agenda doesn't quite stand up. The main Prescott story concerns his stay last year at the Colorado ranch of the US billionaire Philip Anschutz, whose company owns the Dome and wants to build a casino there. The visit was first reported by the Guardian's David Hencke on the paper's weekly political podcast on 29 June. Hencke presented it as "rather juicy gossip". He didn't mention the casino connection and seemed exercised mainly that Prescott had stayed with a stinking rich Republican.
The story had been delayed for a week and toned down to satisfy nervous Guardian lawyers. The Guardian news desk, I am told, declined to print the story. Since its relaunch last year, the Guardian has tried to position itself at the top of the market, and to report proper, substantiated news, rather than tittle-tattle of questionable importance. It wants, like the Times of old, to be a paper of reliable record.
Perhaps appropriately, it was the new-style Times which, two days after Hencke's podcast, used classic newspaper techniques to give what journalists call "legs" to a story that isn't quite a story. It quoted opposition MPs demanding that Prescott "clarify" things. The Deputy Prime Minister's stay at the ranch "could conflict with . . . the ministerial code". The code, which ministers breach even if they "appear to" place themselves under an obligation, is the perfect catch-all for journalists writing about politicians who keep dodgy company.
I do not criticise either paper for its coverage. They are different newspapers, using different criteria to decide what constitutes news. They have different resources available to fight libel cases. My point is that the bloggers missed the Hencke podcast and simply highlighted the Times story. Fawkes first quoted it on Sunday 2 July, long after prehistoric print readers could have digested it several times over, in the Sundays as well as in Saturday's Times. So much for the dizzying speed of the internet.
Fawkes's main preoccupation was whether Prescott went to Colorado with his wife Pauline or with his then diary secretary Tracey Temple, for a dirty weekend. In fact, he went with neither. But Fawkes has been hinting for months at other Prescott affairs, including one with a much-promoted Labour MP. On 3 July, he named her. He adduced no evidence whatever.
If Fawkes did any agenda-setting, it was mainly thanks to John Humphrys, who repeatedly questioned Prescott on Radio 4's Today programme about further alleged affairs. Prescott didn't issue a straight denial but muttered indignantly about "the internet or something". Since then, both Mail papers have featured the MP in carefully written news stories, the import of which would be clear to the stupidest reader.
So the bloggers have not driven the story at all. The Colorado ranch story was produced by mainstream newspaper journalists. Without corroboration from a mainstream paper, the sex allegations will soon dribble away. Despite claims that a ministerial driver might spill the beans about fumblings in the back of the limo, this seems unlikely. The bloggers have stirred things up a little, but they still depend on traditional papers to break news and give it substance.
Paper mates
Even the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six never had as good a press as the NatWest Three, the former bankers threatened with extradition to America (they were due to be flown out the day after we went to press), accused of Enron-related fraud. They have had, for example, two front-page splashes in the Daily Telegraph, sympathetic interviews in the Sunday Times and Guardian, four tear-jerking pages in the Mail on Sunday, TV news items featuring photogenic children and, most extraordinarily, a full-page open letter in the Telegraph, signed by 39 important folk, including the chairman and chief executive of the Telegraph Group.
Under a 2003 act, the US can demand their extradition without presenting evidence against them. The legislation is a disgrace. The NS said so when it revealed the details in June 2003. Nobody showed the slightest interest. Since then, according to the Home Office, 13 people have been "surrendered" to the US under the terms of the act. I do not recall reading about them. But perhaps they weren't middle-class white men.
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