There’s a difference between fake news and dodgy news. Fake news is simply made up (originally by teenagers in a Macedonian village). And the more outrageous it is, the more clicks register on social media’s money-making scale. But dodgy news? Well, let’s look at last week’s BBC revelatory saga featuring Paul Dacre, fearsome editor of the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, proprietor of said sheet, and former PM David Cameron.
Newsnight “understood” that Cameron had lobbied Rothermere to get Dacre sacked because of his tub-thumping, gut-wrenching views on Brexit. Perhaps Dave did. But there’s no source cited for such an “understanding”. Cameron says he’d never prescribe who should edit a paper. Rothermere is in “neither confirm nor deny” mode. Dacre is full of “pride and joy” over his lordship’s sacred policy of leaving his editors free to edit.
None of them give the least clue who might have leaked this yarn – or benefited from doing so. The Mail, on mornings after, uttered one oblique sentence on the matter. There are no texts of what was said, no timelines, no testable certainties . Just a moderately enjoyable mush of entertainment.
It’s not – contextually – surprising that prime ministers should bellyache to press tycoons. You can’t believe that a succession of them didn’t throw the occasional buttered scone at Rupert Murdoch on his many teatime visits to Number 10. Nor is it a revelation that Downing Street tries to lean on editors or, alternatively, shower them and their bosses with titles (if not state visits). Harold Wilson was a master of such oleaginous arts. Mrs T fawned on her little Tory circle of Fleet Street chums.
If Cameron – who, for heaven’s sake, used to be a media PR – thought he could persuade Rothermere of Remain to push Dacre off the pier, he was incredibly stupid (and no student of the way Jonathan runs his papers: as laid back as Rupert is full throttle). But there is another, grittier, side to all this.
Transparency is a two-way street. Sources have to be identified as clearly as possible in that cause (even by the BBC). If Dacre perceived, 11 months ago, that Cameron was out to get him, the Mail should have investigated and printed that story. Readers deserved to know. In the same way, readers needed to register and see explained any extra edge of fury in Mail coverage of Cameron’s Brexit campaign. There’s a business case for privacy, of course – but not for hiding the pressures that define the news. Your audience needs to be shown the wheels within wheels. If it’s a story it must be told.
In short, then and now, the freedom of the press that Dacre holds dear umbilically includes the necessary freedom to come clean about backstairs approaches from on high that, automatically, raise questions about news that’s fit to trust. If Lord Justice Leveson ever returns to active service he might, perhaps, argue for even more transparent logs and minutes of any media meetings at the top of the tree, including those between Numbers 10 and 11 and BBC directors general or chairs.
Would tightening up here be just one more galumphing layer of bureaucratic sanitation? Perhaps. But news doesn’t belong to the news makers and news vendors. It belongs to all of us.
