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Nick Clegg's rise could lock Murdoch and the media elite out of UK politics
David Yelland The Guardian 19 April 2010
DATELINE: 20/4/10
At the Sun, we deliberately ignored the Lib Dems. The cosy pro-Cameron press may now be left floundering
I doubt if Rupert Murdoch watched the election debate last week. His focus is very firmly on the United States, especially his resurgent Wall Street Journal. But if he did, there would have been one man totally unknown to him. One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of his family, his editors or his advisers. That man is Nick Clegg.
Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election – or held the balance of power – it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.
I can say this with some authority because in my five years editing the Sun I did not once meet a Lib Dem leader, even though I met Tony Blair, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith on countless occasions. (Full disclosure: I have since met Nick Clegg.)
I remember in my first year asking if we staffed the Liberal Democrat conference. I was interested because as a student I'd been a founder member of the SDP. I was told we did not. We did not send a single reporter for fear of encouraging them.
So while we sent a team of five, plus assorted senior staff, to both the Tory and Labour conferences, we sent nobody to the Lib Dems. And while successive News International chiefs have held parties at both those conferences, they have never to my knowledge even attended a Lib Dem conference.
It gets even worse. While it would be wrong to say the Lib Dems were banned from Murdoch's papers (indeed, the Times has a good record in this area), I would say from personal experience that they are often banned – except where the news is critical. They are the invisible party, purposely edged off the paper's pages and ignored. But it is worse than that, because it is not just the Murdoch press that is guilty of this. The fact is that much of the print press in this country is entirely partisan and always has been. All proprietors and editors are part of the "great game". The trick is to ally yourself with the winner and win influence or at least the ear of the prime minister.
The consequence of this has been that the middle party has been ignored, simply because it was assumed it would never win power. After all, why court a powerless party?
So, as the pendulum swings from red to blue and back to red, the newspapers, or many of them, swing with it – sometimes ahead of the game and sometimes behind.
Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other. Indeed, it is difficult not to think that the lunatics have stopped writing about the asylum and have actually taken it over.
We now live in an era when very serious men and women stay out of politics because our national discourse is conducted by populists with no interest in politics whatsoever. What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it.
Just imagine the scene in many of our national newspaper newsrooms on the morning a Lib-Lab vote has kept the Tories out of office. "Who knows Clegg?" they would say.
There would be a resounding silence.
"Who can put in a call to Gordon?" another would cry.
You would hear a pin drop on the editorial floor.
The fact is these papers, and others, decided months ago that Cameron was going to win. They are now invested in his victory in the most undemocratic fashion. They have gone after the prime minister in a deeply personal way and until last week they were certain he was in their sights.
I hold no brief for Nick Clegg. But now, thanks to him – an ingenue with no media links whatsoever – things look very different, because now the powerless have a voice as well as the powerful.
All of us who care about democracy must celebrate this over the coming weeks – even if Cameron wins in the end, at least some fault lines will have been exposed.
David Yelland was editor of the Sun from 1998 to 2003. www.davidyelland.com
Last modified: Monday, April 26, 2010
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This from the Liberal Conspiracy web site: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/04/22/did-paul-dacre-and-james-murdoch-meet-to-discuss-nick-clegg/
Did Dacre meet Murdoch to discuss Cleggmania?
by Sunny H
22 April 2010 at 3:02 pm
It’s now open knowledge in Fleet Street that this morning (22 April) James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, nee Wade, burst into the Independent editor Simon Kelner’s office.
Michael White wrote about it here this morning:
What seems to have upset them are ads that the Indy has been running along the lines of “Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election – you will.” Brooks apparently rang Simon Kelner, the editor-in-chief and now chief executive of the Indy to complain that dog does not eat dog in Fleet Street.
That means that editors and owners do not attack each other in person – not their politics, their finances or their private lives. Remember the running battle, later patched up, between the Daily Mail and the once-mighty Daily Express over the former’s habit of referring (correctly) to Express owner Richard Desmond as a pornographer? That sort of thing.
You’d think it was pretty outrageous that the Murdochs can’t even stand being pointed as big influencers in this election.
But here’s the question not many seem to be asking: how did they get into the building?
The Independent and the Daily Mail share the same building. Perhaps Murdoch and Brooks didn’t barge in straight to see Kellner at all. Perhaps they were already in the building.
Here is Channel 4’s Gary Gibbons:
You can very easily get into the Indy’s offices if you are already paying a visit to the Daily Mail offices that share the block. I haven’t managed to stand up that there was a meeting between Paul Dacre and the Murdoch delegation yesterday but it would be intriguing and very unusual if there was.
Unusual, but surprising? Probably not. The right-wing press are not only pissed off that their prize is slipping, but they are very, very angry.
Did Paul Dacre meet with News International executives to talk about strategy? It’s a very real possibility isn’t it…?
Update - related piece by Michael Wolff
Later in the afternoon, in a coming-apart-at-the-seams scenario, Rebekah Wade/Brooks and Murdoch’s son, James—who will both face the wrath of Murdoch senior if they don’t produce a winner—stormed over to the Independent, breached its security systems, barged into the offices of the Independent’s editor-in-chief and top executive, Simon Kelner, and commenced, in Brit-speak, a giant row. Their point was that newspaper publishers don’t slag off other newspaper publishers in polite Britain, but also the point was to remind Kelner that he wasn’t just slagging off another publisher, he was slagging off the Murdochs, damn it. Indeed, the high point of the screaming match was Wade/Brooks, in a fit of apoplexy and high drama, neck muscles straining, saying to Kelner: “And I invited you to Blenheim in the first place!” Blenheim being the Murdoch family retreat and the highest social destination for all Murdoch loyalists and ambitious Brits in the media.
This is one way for empires to end.
Ouch!
Posted by: Barry White national organiser CPBF: 24 Apr, 2010 18:28:58This has been a good week for media reformers and a bad one for The Sun and the Murdochs.
It kicked off with David Yelland, former editor of The Sun, who was told that as soon as he took up his post to regard the Lib Dems as the 'invisible party'. His revelations in Monday's Guardian are welcome, but only confirms what many of us have been saying for years - which is why media ownership matters.
As we know most of the partisan press is illiberal and reflects a very narrow range of political opinion - nothing much to the left of new Labour or to the right of David Cameron (unless its the Daily Mail and Express on race/immigration or sexual orintation).
Then yesterday Channel Four News reported the 'break in' at The Independent by Murdoch junior, James and his faithful side-kick Ms Wade - who went to 'duff -up' newly appointed editor in chief Simon Kelner yesterday afternoon for 'impugning the family name'. Clearly M and W think that The Sun should decide who wins the election, not the voters.
Then, today, Andrew Grice reported in The Independent that The Sun had failed to publish a YouGov poll showing that voters fear a Lib Dem government less than a Conservative or Labour one. The Sun just supressed the findings, after all it wants to make the party 'invisible' again.
Johann Hari hit the nail on the head in today's Indy where he writes: The British media is overwhelmingly owned by right-wing billionaires who order their newspapers to build up the politicians who serve their interests and marginalise or rubbish the politicians who serve the public interest.'
The behaviour of most of the right-wing press towrads Clegg just proves the point. Who says the media itself should not be an election issue, then?
Posted by: Barry White National Organiser CPBF: 23 Apr, 2010 16:46:39
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World Press Freedom Day
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The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
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DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
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Previous stories
Journalism Ethics
The return of buggingate
Leaking in the public interest
Judge puts reporting ban on Alfie Patten 'dad at 13' story
Privacy and the Press
Painful lessons (but 60,000 smackers won't even make NoW wince)
The future of spin: Conservatives would perpetuate New Labour control freakery
Enoch Powell: how the 'Rivers of Blood Speech' was spun in advance
What lies behind the front page apology
Media intrusion: sharing the blame
Ken's Islam study
War spin fall-out 'will be traumatic'
Sound Advice
The History of Spin
Can we trust the broadcasting media?
US journalist freed after record-breaking jail term
Media regulation - battle lines drawn?
New enquiry into press self-regulation
Independent journalist facing jail
Jail for journalists
Landmark Lords Libel Ruling
MEPs campaign to protect sources
It Ain't Half Homophobic, Mum: DeGrading the BBC
European Parliament initiative on protecting sources
'Conversation with a child trafficker'
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The Moral Mirror
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