An old story only became a big deal after Harriet Harman agreed to be interviewed about it on Newsnight
Open the Daily Express in 2009 or the Guardian in 2010. Sample the Telegraph in 2012 or the Indy in 2013. Thumb through Ann Widdecombe's autobiography plus, of course, sundry back copies of Private Eye. Yes, the "news" about the Paedophile Information Exchange and the National Council for Civil Liberties (H Harman, J Dromey and P Hewitt, residual proprietors) has been around for years. So what, as the Mirror's ace blogger, Fleet Street Fox, pungently inquires "has turned it into an epic example of how to completely mishandle a scandal"? Here's that damned plurality debate again.
The Mail could grow puce with rage on its front page day after day, demanding that Harriet and her husband say "sorry" for somehow permitting distant approval of the PIE decades ago; but, while Harriet stayed shtoom, the story didn't get much traction. It was just the Mail going on in full Miliband-dad mode. Then the wall of silence cracked. Harman decided she must issue a statement and follow it up with a Newsnight interview. At which point, predictably, BBC political correspondents and Today presenters finally became engaged, and the walls came tumbling down.
When Westminster looks into media plurality, the market shares of Murdoch or Rothermere bulk large. It is assumed that, in Rupert's case, for instance, owning more than 30% of the national press makes him an arch mover and shaker. The BBC, with its lowering dominance in broadcast and online, is put on a side shelf and forgotten, an 85% weekly audience reach deemed oddly irrelevant. It's a fair and balanced public service. It doesn't shout or smear. No fulminations allowed.
Yet observe the soft power that goes with this blameless positioning. For once the corporation decides – either ceremonially or piecemeal – that the PIE of long ago is a story with legs, then all's unfair in perverted love and war. Columnists and editorialists across the press can take sides. Investigative reporters can leaf through musty NCCL minute books. Paedophile witnesses are discovered and wheeled forth. This – for as long as it lasts, which isn't very long because Big Media boredom will eventually move it on – is a crisis that, at the very least, leaves Labour's PR machine looking a few screws short of election readiness. The "mistake" Harriet never admitted seems rather bigger as, late in the day, she bangs on about it defiantly, while Patricia Hewitt returns from abroad and says simply: "I got it wrong on PIE and apologise for doing so."
And plurality? It isn't the size of the BBC that matters in this regard. More, the seal of quasi-official respectability that BBC coverage bestows. For newspaper stories – like, contrapuntally, Panorama TV investigations that never make it into print – need the endorsement of another medium for maximum impact. See how the Guardian's exposure of NSA and GCHQ surveillance practices has had to struggle for clear salience in Britain (as opposed to in the US and across Europe) because the corporation has only occasionally followed through at full throttle. See how, in America now, Glenn Greenwald's new website, The Intercept, breaks more Snowden stuff without quite achieving the impact that enthusiastic press and broadcasting support is able to offer.
The BBC provides a kind of litmus test for concerned Britain. It tells us when a story is taking off. It condemns many of the valid print tales that break each morning to obscurity by simply not having the time to report them. (Just sit there with your paper this morning and note what doesn't get a sniff on the 9am news.)
Should Harman have said "sorry" earlier, before the BBC got involved? Of course: maybe Hewitt should have sent her the script. Is the BBC infallibly right in its judgments? Inevitably not. But scandal-handlers must always beware: the Express in 2009, the Guardian in 2010 and all the rest did not make a story "old" when they ran it – just one that couldn't make a cautious Portland Place leap to attention.
■ Who's "independent, resilient and experienced" enough to run the new standards organisation being set up, post-Leveson, by the press itself? Everyone wants a fresh start: no more Tory peers, university professors or retired diplomats. This is a quasi-judicial role, so here (perhaps) comes the judge.
Does anyone, though, remember the supposedly discredited Press Council that preceded the similarly characterised Press Complaints Commission? That was a legal eagle nest. Call my lords Pearce, Devlin, Shawcross et al… but beware letting bewigged history repeat itself too easily. Ipso's boss will need to be fleet of foot and good on TV, able to make waves as well as sonorous judgments. Independent by nature, then, as well as by job description. Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 hours ago.
Open the Daily Express in 2009 or the Guardian in 2010. Sample the Telegraph in 2012 or the Indy in 2013. Thumb through Ann Widdecombe's autobiography plus, of course, sundry back copies of Private Eye. Yes, the "news" about the Paedophile Information Exchange and the National Council for Civil Liberties (H Harman, J Dromey and P Hewitt, residual proprietors) has been around for years. So what, as the Mirror's ace blogger, Fleet Street Fox, pungently inquires "has turned it into an epic example of how to completely mishandle a scandal"? Here's that damned plurality debate again.
The Mail could grow puce with rage on its front page day after day, demanding that Harriet and her husband say "sorry" for somehow permitting distant approval of the PIE decades ago; but, while Harriet stayed shtoom, the story didn't get much traction. It was just the Mail going on in full Miliband-dad mode. Then the wall of silence cracked. Harman decided she must issue a statement and follow it up with a Newsnight interview. At which point, predictably, BBC political correspondents and Today presenters finally became engaged, and the walls came tumbling down.
When Westminster looks into media plurality, the market shares of Murdoch or Rothermere bulk large. It is assumed that, in Rupert's case, for instance, owning more than 30% of the national press makes him an arch mover and shaker. The BBC, with its lowering dominance in broadcast and online, is put on a side shelf and forgotten, an 85% weekly audience reach deemed oddly irrelevant. It's a fair and balanced public service. It doesn't shout or smear. No fulminations allowed.
Yet observe the soft power that goes with this blameless positioning. For once the corporation decides – either ceremonially or piecemeal – that the PIE of long ago is a story with legs, then all's unfair in perverted love and war. Columnists and editorialists across the press can take sides. Investigative reporters can leaf through musty NCCL minute books. Paedophile witnesses are discovered and wheeled forth. This – for as long as it lasts, which isn't very long because Big Media boredom will eventually move it on – is a crisis that, at the very least, leaves Labour's PR machine looking a few screws short of election readiness. The "mistake" Harriet never admitted seems rather bigger as, late in the day, she bangs on about it defiantly, while Patricia Hewitt returns from abroad and says simply: "I got it wrong on PIE and apologise for doing so."
And plurality? It isn't the size of the BBC that matters in this regard. More, the seal of quasi-official respectability that BBC coverage bestows. For newspaper stories – like, contrapuntally, Panorama TV investigations that never make it into print – need the endorsement of another medium for maximum impact. See how the Guardian's exposure of NSA and GCHQ surveillance practices has had to struggle for clear salience in Britain (as opposed to in the US and across Europe) because the corporation has only occasionally followed through at full throttle. See how, in America now, Glenn Greenwald's new website, The Intercept, breaks more Snowden stuff without quite achieving the impact that enthusiastic press and broadcasting support is able to offer.
The BBC provides a kind of litmus test for concerned Britain. It tells us when a story is taking off. It condemns many of the valid print tales that break each morning to obscurity by simply not having the time to report them. (Just sit there with your paper this morning and note what doesn't get a sniff on the 9am news.)
Should Harman have said "sorry" earlier, before the BBC got involved? Of course: maybe Hewitt should have sent her the script. Is the BBC infallibly right in its judgments? Inevitably not. But scandal-handlers must always beware: the Express in 2009, the Guardian in 2010 and all the rest did not make a story "old" when they ran it – just one that couldn't make a cautious Portland Place leap to attention.
■ Who's "independent, resilient and experienced" enough to run the new standards organisation being set up, post-Leveson, by the press itself? Everyone wants a fresh start: no more Tory peers, university professors or retired diplomats. This is a quasi-judicial role, so here (perhaps) comes the judge.
Does anyone, though, remember the supposedly discredited Press Council that preceded the similarly characterised Press Complaints Commission? That was a legal eagle nest. Call my lords Pearce, Devlin, Shawcross et al… but beware letting bewigged history repeat itself too easily. Ipso's boss will need to be fleet of foot and good on TV, able to make waves as well as sonorous judgments. Independent by nature, then, as well as by job description. Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 hours ago.