The political takeover over journalism
You can look from journalist to politician, and back to journalist again, and not be sure which is which.
A strange little story developed over the course of the week. Paul Waugh, the i's chief political commentator, is standing in the Labour selection process in Rochdale. He's a long time inky-fingered hack, who always seemed to fit intuitively into the press landscape. "After a quarter of a century sitting in the House of Commons Press Gallery," he said, "I feel it's time to cease being a spectator and start being a player." We’ll come back to that quote, because it’s quite frustrating.
Quick disclaimer: I work at the same newspaper as Waugh, but we've only met a couple of times. My greater experience of him is from afar. When I first worked in the lobby in parliament, I remember hearing two reporters talk about some development or other in the loo. One asked where he'd heard it. The other said it was from Waugh. "Oh," the first one said. "Then it must be true." I remember thinking that was probably the strongest accolade any journalist could ask for.
Waugh's move feels like it's part of a broader trend. Things are becoming increasingly blurred. It feels as if you can look from journalism to politics, and then back at journalism again, and not be entirely sure which is which.
Last week, Lee Anderson gave an interview - I'm using that word for old time's sake - to GB News, in which he ludicrously suggested that he could not vote against the Rwanda bill because it would involve him walking into a lobby with Labour MPs. The main takeaway was that he had neither bravery nor comprehension, but there was something else quite striking about it. It was a decidedly convivial, informal, friendly conversation.
"You know I've got my reservations, Chopper," he said, as if he were down the pub. 'Chopper' is Christopher Hope, former chief political correspondent at the Telegraph, now political editor at GB News. "You seem quite crestfallen, Lee," he said. "I am," Anderson replied. "I'm gutted mate, to be honest with you." Incredibly chummy. But then it would be. Alongside being an MP, Anderson is himself a presenter on GB News, being paid £100,000 a year for eight hours a week, according to his register of members interests.
This was not an interview between a journalist and a politician. It was a conversation between colleagues. What were they, at that moment? Could either of them really be said to be journalists or politicians? No. They were operating in the grey zone, as both at the same time. Other politicians working for GB News include Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey, Philip Davies, Nigel Farage and Reform UK leader Richard Tice, whose partner Isabel Oakeshott works on Talk TV - a nice little media matrix there for ensuring Reform party coverage.
This week, the talk has all been about Conservative Britain Alliance, a group no-one had ever heard of before, with no web presence or registration as a company or charity. All we know is that it has suddenly popped up to buy polls which are then put on the front page of the Telegraph with the clear aim of unseating Rishi Sunak. Lord Frost - previously Boris Johnson's Brexit negotiator, but now a peer and a columnist - has his own column in the newspaper whenever one comes out, to guide the reader's interpretation. What is he at that moment? A journalist? A politician? Both. But these roles are not operating simultaneously - one is a tool for the other. He is conducting politics through journalism.
This same level of mercuriality operates at the top of politics. James Forsyth, former political editor of the Spectator, is Sunak's political secretary. No doubt when Sunak is defeated at the election he will be welcomed back to whichever outlet he cares to write for. James Slack was home affairs editor of the Daily Mail - he wrote the "Enemies of the People" headline during the Brexit wars - before being appointed prime minister's spokesperson under Theresa May, then director of communication under Boris Johnson, and then went back into journalism as deputy editor of the Sun. He was replaced by Jack Doyle, another Mail home affairs editor. But before he left, they held a leaving party for him during lockdown. The Sun's ensuing coverage of Partygate was very subdued, which of course it would have been, because it was being edited by someone embroiled in the story.
In the background are the godfathers of this manner of conducting politics - figures like Michael Gove and Johnson himself - as comfortable in journalism as they are government. Johnson moved between both roles with ease. Indeed, he governed as he wrote, without concentration or focus, throwing out useful fictions, swapping patronising wordplay for thought, bundling together half-realised daydreams and quickly forgetting about them afterwards. Now out of power, he bangs out 30-minute efforts in the Mail for £1 million and then briefs most of the good stuff to the Telegraph. He has typified this era of the journalist-politician, in which the two professions have become hopelessly mangled together.
We shouldn’t be sentimental. Politics and journalism have always been entwined. In the early days, they weren't really meaningfully distinct at all. The embryonic form of the newspaper - the paper bullet pamphlets of the 17th Century - were designed by political actors to accomplish political goals. Until the early 19th Century, news was basically funded by politics, with parties providing funding and the readership of newspapers. It wasn't until the turn of the century that the press barons like Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere took over, replacing political funding with advertising revenue. And those press barons were themselves political actors, as figures like Rupert Murdoch are now.
Nor are these examples all the same. There are three types here. The first go from one to the other - typically journalism to politics. This can take place in a prominent way, like Waugh, or a less prominent one. Plenty of more obscure lobby reporters move into a government communication department, for instance. And that's perfectly acceptable. People are entitled to change careers. In a way, Waugh’s move is charmingly old-fashioned. He has stopped writing for the newspaper while he tries to become an MP.
The second goes from one to another and then back again, like James Slack. Personally, that's where I draw the line. You can go into the politics space, but you can't come back and expect people to take you seriously. That door is closed now.
The third, and most dangerous, is when people operate as both journalist and politician simultaneously, as we’re seeing on GB News and the Telegraph. This is where things get really dangerous.
At the heart of all it is a confusion about what journalism should be. On the one hand you have Waugh's comment that journalism involves being a spectator, not a player. On the other, you have the behaviour of Frost, who uses journalism as a kind of political activity - plainly a player, not a spectator.
They seem like diametrically opposed views of what journalism is. In fact, neither of them is correct.
Journalism has never been a spectator sport. There would be no point to reporting something if it did not raise the possibility of political change. There would be no meaning to it. The journalist is providing citizens with the tools they need to evaluate the government. They are equipping them with the knowledge to understand the world around them. If that sounds harmless, it isn’t. It is, for the powerful, the most dangerous thing in the world. There’s a reason tyrants always shut down the press before they do anything else. But to fulfil this role journalism must have values. it must intend to change the world. It must recognise that this is part of its mission.
But neither is journalism just another method for conducting politics. It’s not a communication department. Why? Because among its values is honesty. It must be grounded in truth. It has to be based on an objective appraisal of the world. If it isn't, it’s not journalism. It’s propaganda.
We mislead ourselves if we think journalism is just about spectating, without any political content. And we mislead the public if we think that journalism can be conducted as politics, without any journalistic content, and bereft of journalistic values.
Something rather treacherous is happening here. Journalism is the most privileged, dangerous, gloriously dishonourable profession in the world, the profession which can change history, which can hold power to account. But in an era of politician-journalism, it is starting to lose its contours, to become hazy and ill-defined.
The thing which should undermine power is in fact being deployed in support of it. The starting place for improving that situation is to have a better grasp of what journalism is. And what it is not.
"The journalist is providing citizens with the tools they need to evaluate the government."
This sums up where the BBC (and others) have lost their way. It is fundamentally dishonest to pretend that politics is a simple matter of he said/she said with only two sides, both of which are equal.
It has really become so obvious when discussing policies like Rwanda, where nobody seems willing to address the vital part of any debate - the rights and wrongs of the policy. Not from a practical sense but from a moral sense. When journalism and, by extension, politics stop caring about morality, we find ourselves in a very dangerous place.
I unfortunately think the future of journalism is things like this Substack. Individual journalists who make enough of a name for themselves they can fund their own output, untied to the whims of a larger entity.
AI Reading of this article:
https://askwhocastsai.substack.com/p/the-political-takeover-over-journalism