This week, there was no shortage of matters to discuss at our morning news conference. Staff in the Guardian’s London office assemble daily at 10am to reflect on the stories we published the previous day, talk about those we are about to publish, and participate in topical conversations. Monday started on a positive note, with news that the Guardian’s charity appeal this year raised more than £1.75m for child refugees, before the conversation turned to the news that had dominated the weekend.
We discussed the Israeli diplomat who had been caught on camera by al-Jazeera plotting to “take down” MPs regarded as hostile, and moved onto Theresa May’s appearance on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday. One journalist was of the opinion that May lacked a direct message which led to a colleague observing that the nickname Theresa Maybe might just stick.
There were some comparisons to Gordon Brown, and the difficulties of transporting a controlling approach to governance from the Treasury or the Home Office to Downing Street. A big mistake by May, it was noted, was to think that the special relationship with America is with the country as a whole rather than the actual administration in charge. Blair’s big mistake was to not realise that you shouldn’t deal with George W Bush the way you deal with a leader like Bill Clinton.
But no matter how badly May might be doing, the general consensus at conference was that she was not likely to run into trouble, due to a lack of credible opposition, with Labour consistently trailing in the polls. This topic continued to be debated throughout the week, as it transpired the party was trying to launch a version of Jeremy Corbyn that was more radical, populist and anti-establishment.
His first move was to call for a maximum wage for workers during an appearance on the Radio 4 Today programme. Later he announced plans for a proposed 20:1 pay ratio in any company that is awarded a government contract. He also deployed a series of ideas aimed at tackling inequality, such as kite marks for companies with pay ratios, executive pay signed off by committees on which workers have a majority, and a higher rate of income tax for the very rich.
But other positions were mixed and slightly confused. In conference, many journalists wondered what Corbyn’s position was on the principle of free movement of labour between the UK and the rest of the EU, and whether the new pledges came from Corbyn himself or from the Labour party. One person compared Corbyn to Bernie Sanders, who, they said, made similar points in a much more powerful and visceral way.
Midweek brought with it a dramatic turn of events, as BuzzFeed published a dossier alleging secret contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow, and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on Trump.
The dossier was drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, and several of its claims have been circulating for some time within newsrooms, including the Guardian’s. We discussed the ethics of publishing the documents, and whether the Guardian should have reported the allegations they contained without being able to independently verify them.
Should we publish material that even intelligence services cannot verify? In times where allegations of fake news are so ripe, one editor said, does a decision to publish play into the hands of anyone who wants to dismiss all negative news as lies? After the publication of the dossier by other outlets, the Guardian report focused on the fact that Senator John McCain had passed the documents to the director of the FBI.
The Trump/Russia story remained central as the week progressed. We were joined in London by a reporter from the Guardian in the US, who has been covering the US election. She expressed doubt that the revelations would make any difference to those who voted for Trump, and recalled an incident during the election campaign where she was berated by a group of Trump supporters for being part of what they saw as the corrupt media. “They trust whatever he’s doing and completely distrust the media,” she said.
The Republican party is also having to come to terms with how they contributed to this atmosphere of distrust in order to get votes, she added. They touted conspiracy theories to delegitimise the Obama presidency, so by the time they tried to stop Trump they had discredited most news organisations.
For reporters attempting to cover inaccessible and authoritarian figures like Trump, one of the biggest challenges is to ensure that significant stories don’t fall through the cracks of the breaking news cycle, which is so often concerned with the president-elect’s outrageous Twitter remarks. There is also the question of how publications might support each other when faced with a leader who is so shamelessly dismissive of the media.
How do we strike the balance between maintaining a healthy inter-media rivalry, gaining access to crucial briefings, and refusing to operate on any terms save our own?
It’ll take a few more conferences to figure that one out.
