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27 December 2012updated 12 Oct 2023 11:09am

2012 in review: The New Statesman on… the media

From Leveson to the scandals at the BBC, no-one in the media has escaped this year unscathed.

By Alex Hern

Welcome to the fourth instalment of the New Statesman‘s 12 Days of Blog-mas. (Christmas Eve’s round up, of our best writing on religion, is here.)

At the beginning of the year, it looked like it would unfold much like the one before. Phone hacking, and the fallout from it, were still very much in the headlines, and the Leveson inquiry looked like it would keep the focus on the tabloid press. But by December, it appeared that last year’s hunted were this year’s hunters, as the BBC came under fire for a series of journalistic failings. Here are a selection of our best pieces – click the headlines to open them in a new window.

Alan Rusbridger: the quiet evangelist

Alan Rusbridger can claim to be the Guardian’s greatest editor. But Peter Wilby asked whether he will also be its last, in this in-depth examination of the paper and the man.

“It’s better journalism,” Rusbridger says, “if, as well as Michael Billington [the Guardian’s theatre critic], you can harness the views and judgements of 800 other people in the audience at the same time. Is the same true of science, foreign, investigative reporting? The answer, I think, is always yes.
Mutuality, he suggests, could be the model for journalism’s future. “If you build a complete paywall around your content, you’re saying you’re not interested in that sort of journalism . . . When you’ve been to a digital conference in New York, you come away thinking that newspapers are lucky to be in this game at all.”

BBC Television Centre: the fairness was what made the magic

The sell-off of TV Centre was confirmed this year, and the majority of staff have already left for different offices. Alan White looks back at the continued attraction the building had for generations of viewers.

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As a child growing up in the sticks, I remember the opening credits of Wogan’s chat show, “Live from Shepherd’s Bush”; the opening picture of TVC, perhaps illuminated by searchlights, as if The Shepherd’s Bush was a huge donut-shaped slab, there simply to accommodate Terry and his immaculately-coiffured hair. I remember the mischievous insurgent Kenny Everett attempting to scale the side of Terry’s fortress, though I can’t remember the context for this sketch. I remember all those intriguing little occasions when the shroud would be ripped away – Children In Need skits where the cameras would pan out of the studio and follow our stars down the corridors. And I remember, of course, the Blue Peter garden.

O Mother, where art thou?

Mother Jones, a small bimonthly American news magazine, shows that public-service journalism can survive even in the 21st century USA. You may not have heard of it, but you’ll have heard the fall-out from one of its scoops, when Mitt Romney was secretly recorded telling reporters that 47 per cent of the country was “dependent” on Obama. Helen Lewis looks at what other publications can learn from its model.

So what is Mother Jones? Founded in 1976 and named after a trade unionist and opponent of child labour, it is a bimonthly title dedicated to unfashionable causes and undercover investigations. In March this year, its reporter Mac McClelland wrote “I was a warehouse wage slave”, about an online-shipping company that sounded suspiciously like Amazon (it was not identified in her piece). The conditions experienced by the temporary workers were brutal: 12-hour stretches running around a cold, cavernous warehouse, with every trip meticulously timed through a hand-held scanner; lunch breaks of “29 minutes and 59 seconds”; limited access to the overcrowded toilets and constant reminders that “there’s 16 other people who want your job”.

The silence of Jimmy Savile’s lambs

As news of Savile’s crimes surfaced, the writer and former England rugby international Brian Moore wrote that he wasn’t at all surprised the DJ’s victims didn’t speak up earlier. He argued that as long as victims live in fear of not being listened to, they won’t talk.

I and many of Savile’s victims did not tell because we did not think we would be believed. What we victims need is not just an immediate person being sympathetic and taking a statement. We need to know that a proper investigation will be made if we make a complaint; to know that the Crown Prosecution Service will be robust and that every effort will be made to secure a conviction. So harrowing is the telling of our stories that we have to have utmost faith that as much as possible will be done to rectify the wrong and to help us bear the extra stress of an investigation and trial.

A sense of perspective on the BBC

In the midst of the crisis at the BBC, following the Savile revelations and false accusations of Lord McAlpine, Joan Bakewell wrote to defend the corporation as a flawed, human institution, like any other.

The BBC now needs a large dose of courage that enables it to look boldly on its structural failings and put some hefty remedies in place. It has a decades-long history of fine programmes that have made legends of its stars, educated the public, spawned heaps of imitators and won a unique reputation throughout the broadcasting world. It now needs to be left alone to regret, to mourn and to repair itself.

Leader: Leveson, the press and transparency

Before the Leveson inquiry reported, the press was largely united in supporting a stronger system of regulation – but one put together internally, without the interference of government. How strange, then, that after Lord Leveson made his pronouncements, many of that same group attended a private meeting with the Prime Minister to decide on a united response. We smelled a rat.

The explicit purpose of the discussions is to give newspapers an opportunity to devise some new form of self-regulation that will come close enough to what Lord Justice Leveson proposes without requiring a bill in parliament. Another way of describing the same goal is that the editors (and/or their paymasters) have been invited to come up with something lenient enough for their own satisfaction, yet that looks sufficiently rigorous to give Mr Cameron political cover to say that the spirit of Leveson is preserved. In other words, it has all the makings of the kind of cosy establishment stitch-up that has allowed journalistic malpractice to flourish for so long.

 

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Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
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