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The Sun holds the flame aloft
Published 10 April 2008
Most papers were disgusted by the Olympic flame's visit to London. Murdoch's Sun, however, judged the day a triumph. Now why would it think that?
The Daily Mail is not a paper to endorse protest lightly. Generally, it regards the protesting mindset as whingeing and irresponsible and it holds in contempt the lifestyles of what it thinks of as the protesting classes (jobless wasters, ungrateful students, leftist agitators). Break the law or cause the police any bother and you are normally guaranteed a monstering by the leader writers.
Not so, however, the protesters who disrupted the Olympic flame's little "journey of harmony" through London. For them the Mail raised two hearty cheers.
The visit of the torch, the paper declared, "was an exercise in self-promotion by a China that is brutalising Tibet, is complicit in the tragedy of Darfur and systematically abuses human rights. So the protesters - even if some undeniably went too far - had every right to make their feelings known."
When I read that I thought of a remark last month by Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, in defence of the award of this year's games to Beijing. "We believe that China will change," he said, "by opening the country to the scrutiny of the world through the 25,000 media who will attend." What must Rogge make of the media scrutiny applied to the events in London?
The Mail stood out - let us give it credit - for the forthrightness of its view. But even in conservative papers which weren't sure what to say, the pictures did the protesters' work for them - a Tibetan in a police armlock, the lonely spectacle of Sir Steve Redgrave at Wembley, Konnie Huq wrestling to cling on to the flame.
As for the policing, if, in some dystopian movie of the 1970s, a Ken Loach or a Lindsay Anderson had foreseen a squad of blue-clad Chinese enforcers jogging down the streets of London in step with British police in green jackets, goggles and bike helmets, he would have been mocked as a hysterical nutcase. But here they were on our front pages in 2008, in all their scowling glory, encircling the bemused flame-carriers to the point where they became invisible.
"The heavy-handedness of the policing would have looked more at home on the streets of Beijing than in Britain," remarked the Mirror. It was "a day of mayhem", declared the Daily Telegraph, and a "public relations disaster" for China, according to the Financial Times.
What of the Murdoch papers? Rupert Murdoch has a long record as a man prepared to sacrifice decent journalism in the cause of brown-nosing the Chinese government: what did his papers have to say about the protest?
The Times offered a full and frank report of the day, and though there was no editorial on the subject we got a commentary by Simon Barnes reminding Beijing that "you don't get the Olympic Games on your own terms".
The Sun, however, was something different. Alone among the papers it followed the theme: "Olympic torch defies protesters in London". The coverage was in what you might call conventional riot mode, of the kind deployed for anti-globalisation or anti-road demonstrations. Events were described mainly from the perspective of the celebrity torch carriers, who had braved abuse and jostling from a violent mob, and of the police, remaining calm under pressure and nobly keeping the show on the road.
The Sun's editorial, under the headline "Freedom wins", will have been read with approval by both Jacques Rogge and the Chinese leadership. The day, it declared, had been a triumph for democracy. Peaceful protesters had had their say (though they were mistaken to think this was an appropriate way to air complaints about China), and violent ones had been frustrated.
"The flame is not a symbol of China. It's an Olympic symbol. It represents peace, friendship and unity. Which makes it all the more poignant that the protesters could not extinguish it."
No doubt, the next time they visit Beijing on business, the Murdochs will bring that newspaper cutting with them to impress their hosts.
Goodbye Reuters
We pass a sad landmark this month as Reuters news agency finally ceases to be British, indeed it really ceases to exist as a distinct entity, though you will continue to see the brand name.
After a century and a half of reporting the world to the world through a headquarters in London, it was bought last year by the Thomson Corporation, of Canada, and (historic guarantees of eternal independence having been conveniently set to one side) the last of the formalities are now being completed.
The new entity is called Thomson-Reuters and we should probably expect a steady leeching of jobs from its London reporting operation. Still, I expect the shareholders are happy, and what else matters?
Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University
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