Examination of Witnesses (Questions 450
- 459)
WEDNESDAY 10 OCTOBER 2007
Mr Richard Wallace
Q450 Chairman: Mr
Wallace, thank you very much for coming, particularly today, as
you have got the Pride of Britain Awards, have you not?
Mr Wallace: We had it last night and it is televised
tonight, so you should all tune in to ITV at 9 o'clock, a very
worthwhile programme.
Q451 Chairman:
Absolutely, I have seen it before and it is very good. I think
you know what we are doing, and that is to inquire into media
ownership and the news and what the impact of concentration of
media ownership is on the balance of opinion as seen actually
in the news itself. We also want to know what is actually happening
and how news has changed and how news gathering has changed. It
is at this point a fairly wide brief. Obviously therefore one
of the points we are looking at is ownership and the effect that
that has on editorial content. I imagine you as Editor do not
have too much difficulty deciding what party to advise your readers
to vote for when it comes to an election?
Mr Wallace: Absolutely not, we are proudly supportive
of the Labour Party and have been since 1945 directly so, no,
that is a given, as it were.
Q452 Chairman:
And you have never advised your readers to vote Conservative since
the War?
Mr Wallace: No, the readers have not asked me
to advise them to vote Conservative. Seriously, a very large rump
of our core readership is very much supportive of the Labour Party.
Q453 Chairman:
Is there a disadvantage in circulation terms in that you are seen
as a party paper?
Mr Wallace: I do not think so. I think the whole
nature of party politics has changed in the last 10 years or so
in the sense that ideology appears to be moving to the back burner,
as it were, and politics has become very much about issues. The
last Prime Minister carved out a little centre island which everybody
is now shoulder-charging each other to get upon, and that has
also identified a new type of voter almost, who is about issues
rather than party politics, which creates a difficulty for me
because I have to obviously play to the hard core Labour Party-supporting
membership which is traditional working class, and at the same
time there is a new type of Middle England which again is formerly
working class and lower middle class which is not about politics
and about ideologies per se but which is about issues, and so
the whole issue of which party they are going to support does
not really concern them other than which particular individual
and their policies do they support. This is a sea change that
we are undergoing now, so it makes it difficult for us to navigate
our way through because our core base—the traditional, industrial
working class—is dying out. It is a fact of life that the
country has changed very rapidly, certainly in the last 20 or
so years. I would guess there might be an effect on our circulation
as a result of that. We are navigating through those waters right
now so it is difficult for me to predict otherwise.
Q454 Chairman:
Obviously I understand what you are saying about elections, but
how do other issues get decided? Is that a matter strictly and
only for you as the Editor? If you wanted it to become a Euro
sceptic paper, or something of that kind, would you be able to
take that decision or would you have to consult with the Chief
Executive of the whole Group?
Mr Wallace: There is very much a delineation
between the business end and the editorial end. Making big decisions
like that comes round from what you are hearing from the readers.
One of the things that I have tried to do in the last few years
is to stress to my team that we need to reflect in the paper their
concerns, their interests, et cetera. Europe is a great example.
Frankly, nobody really cares about Europe, certainly our readers
do not, it is not a huge issue on their radar; what is on their
radar is crime, health, education, it is all the things that affect
them directly. They do not believe in their hearts that they are
about to be ruled by Brussels so therefore they do not care about
that particular issue and it is not on their radar, so my job
is to reflect what their concerns are and what they are thinking
and also what they find interesting and what they find amusing.
To that end crime is a huge issue and we will bang on to the Government,
whoever is in government, until there is a perception that things
are changing, so very much I am governed by what the readers are
thinking.
Q455 Chairman:
And there would be no question of going soft on the Government
because you are a Labour-supporting newspaper?
Mr Wallace: Certainly we gave the last Prime
Minister more stick than probably most because we felt, and because
certainly our readership felt, that the decision to go to war
in Iraq was incorrect, and that was a very strong position that
we took and, frankly, the Government was not amused by that position
and did actually say, "Aren't you meant to be on our side?"
and it is like, "Yes, but there are times when friends disagree."
Q456 Chairman:
And who took that decision? Was that strictly a decision taken
by the Editor at the time in consultation with his editorial colleagues
or was there any wider consideration of it inside the corporate
body?
Mr Wallace: I was on the staff at the time but
I was based in the US. From what knowledge I have, it was very
much an editorial decision, and the business end of it does not
really come into it at all.
Q457 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
May I ask one question, Mr Wallace, to follow up on this question
of the way that you are led by your readership. Is there any sense
in which you regard yourself or your newspaper as a leader of
opinion or an opinion former?
Mr Wallace: In a sense, yes, because we provide
so many different services. It is a complicated relationship that
we have with our audience or with our customer, or whatever you
wish to call them; the reader. I remember once I was talking to
a group of our readers and one of them said to me, "I bought
your paper today," and I said, "Thank you very much.
Why did you buy it?" and he said, "Because I wanted
to know what to think." I forget what the issue was, it was
some burning issue of the day, and part of our remit, certainly
when there are people in this very building banging on about something
in particular, our job is to explain whether that is a good thing
or a bad thing and translate almost. "If the Government says
`Here's an extra billion pounds for hospitals,' does that mean
that Aunty Margaret is going to get her knee op sooner or later?
Somebody needs to help me here," and that is part of our
role. That is one of the aspects of the service that we provide.
In a sense we do lead, when we say, "Do you know what, folks,
this is a bit of a bad idea." One of the advantages of the
technological age we live in is that now they can react immediately
and email me directly. We have forums on our website and what
have you so we know very quickly.
Q458 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Just to put it very simplistically, if you said, "Do you
know what, folks, this is a bit of a bad idea and all the blogs
and emails came back saying, "Actually we think you are wrong;
it is not a bad idea at all," would you change your view?
Mr Wallace: Yes, absolutely.
Q459 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
So it would not be the paper's view any more that it was a bad
idea?
Mr Wallace: To be honest, it would depend on
the individual circumstances. I would imagine if we were to ask
all our readers if they wanted to bring back hanging then I think
we would probably get a majority on that, and I probably would
be not inclined to change our view on that.
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