Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1760
- 1779)
WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2008
Sir Simon Jenkins
Q1760 Chairman:
Just let me stay on this theme for a moment. I noticed that in
some of the papers I was reading you wrote inside the Guardian—you
really have written for everybody, have you not—for which
you are now a columnist, a column which was critical of the Guardian
and there were not repercussions on that? That was regarded as
fair play?
Sir Simon Jenkins: There were
repercussions; we are all human. I would like to say that I thought
what they were doing was wrong.
Q1761 Chairman:
Tell us what that was.
Sir Simon Jenkins: It is a fairly
straightforward case of can you buy editorial in a newspaper?
I am afraid on that occasion you could by for x thousands of pounds
an editorial section of the Guardian, undeclared. When
I was at The Times and the Standard and The Economist,
the only papers I have actually written for, there were very,
very strict rules about editorial, about special supplements,
about all this sort of thing—there were not at the Guardian.
I told the editor that I intended to write about this; he looked
extremely green but said I was entitled to write whatever I liked
in my column and he carried it, and I thought that was greatly
to his credit.
Q1762 Chairman:
Apart from the quality of the editor, the judgment of the editor,
is there anything which in the structure of the Guardian
submits that, allows that independence even when you are criticising
your own paper?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I think there
is. Having worked for tooth and claw capitalists and the Guardian,
which is the other end of the spectrum, there is a difference.
Undoubtedly at the Guardian there is a sense that editorial
integrity is almost sacred. I have to say I think it is a bit
of a joke because if the Guardian editor decided he was
going to be a Tory I do not think he would be there very long,
but that is my joke. I do think that there is a sense in which
the Guardian ought to be slightly cleaner than clean than
the other papers, which is why I was so shocked.
Q1763 Chairman:
Had you sought to do the same on The Times would that column
ever have appeared?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I think it
is doubtful. It was a commercially damaging column and it arose
because I was approached by people who had been denied access
to this supplement, who objected very strongly to the content
of the supplement, and I think it really was a rare instance and
greatly to the credit of the Guardian that they carried
the piece.
Q1764 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Conflicts of interests generally. We have discussed in the two
previous sessions that when it comes to reporting stories that
are directly relevant to an owner's business interests that neither
of them really are very good at avoiding critical stories. It
is expected; do you think that this (a) is so, and (b) that it
is possible to do this in a way which is acceptable?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I do not quite
see the question. If you are saying do we have an ethical problem
here about newspapers covering their own owner's business affairs
...
Q1765 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
You made the point earlier, fair enough, that they would not do
it and you have diversity. Sorry, I probably did not put it very
well, but what one is really on about here is you have a proprietor—obviously
talking about Murdoch particularly, but no doubt there are other
examples—who is leaning on the editor not to carry stories
about something which is affecting his or her business interests.
Is there any way of getting out of that, given the fact that the
owner owns and the editor and owner have to get on to stay together?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I have to say,
if I were a tycoon and I decided to spend a large sum of my money
losing it on a newspaper—and almost all newspapers lose
money—and I was then told, "By the way, this paper
is nothing to do with you, you cannot express your views through
it at all," I would think what am I subsidising the blasted
journalists for; there must be some fun in this game? Conrad Black,
who I think actually took this all very much to heart, up to a
point he allowed complete freedom but he allowed freedom in the
context of a vigorous conversation with his editors, and that
vigorous conversation clearly is not altogether one-sided. The
number of occasions when push comes to shove on this are so few
that I just do not regard it as one of the great issues of press
freedom. There is clearly a problem with the private ownership
of newspapers, that the newspapers privately owned are now operating
under a tradition of editorial independence, which in itself is
wholly new—it was a post-war invention, this concept—and
they expect in some way or another to have editors as heroes who
are going to castigate their own owners to show how macho they
are. It is important that you have, I believe, a concept of editorial
independence, which enshrines a separate concept of editorial
integrity, and that these two concepts together in some sense
protect press freedom, but they are operating, for better or for
worse—and I believe much for better in Britain—under
a capitalist system and there are going to be some no-go areas
within that, one of which is going to be the editor's freedom,
if you like, to intrude on his proprietor or his owner or his
company, whatever it may be. To that my answer is, as I said at
the very beginning, seven groups and ten titles. I think that
is the best you are going to get. If they were owned by government
it would be much worse.
Q1766 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Do you think the danger is that there might be less than seven
owners, as it were?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I heard what
Roy said earlier and all I can say is that I joined this profession
about 40 years ago and there were nine titles and seven groups;
there are today ten titles and seven groups. I do not think you
have such continuity of structure of any industry in Britain.
The profit and loss account has changed, the character of the
titles has changed, I may say infinitely for the better, but in
terms of what might be called the cataclysm scenario, which I
have listened to since I was a boy, for newspapers just has not
happened yet.
Q1767 Lord Maxton:
Yet.
Sir Simon Jenkins: I put "yet"
in a bracket.
Q1768 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Can I just broaden this question of who determines the content,
as it were, to the question of the influence of the readership?
We have heard a number of editors telling with great pride how
much attention they pay to the opinions of their readers and the
various ways in which they solicit their opinions. You have said
that you were a bit sceptical about the possibility that people
will have their minds changed by reading a newspaper because you
imagine, I think, that people read the newspaper that is best
going to reflect their own opinion. Within that what is driving
as between proprietors, editors and readership the content of
newspapers, as you see it?
Sir Simon Jenkins: It is a question
to which there can only be a somewhat diffuse answer. Start with
the owner. Why did he want to buy the paper in the first place;
why did he want to own it? It may be his family owned it; it may
be that his company was bored and wanted to liven things up a
bit, which was Trafalgar House; it may be that he is a foreigner
and he wants to establish a stake in Britain—it happened
to The Observer twice. The reasons why the owner
wants the paper—which is the beginning of the answer to
your question—are going to be so diffuse as to make a simple
answer not easy. I wrote a book once called The Market for
Glory because I decided that the thing that most people want
from a newspaper is glory, and until you appreciated that it was
not for money, it was for glory—it is like buying a racehorse
or a trophy wife or something—this is not serious business.
If it was serious business you would not go into the newspapers.
Once you come down below that level the editor selected to run
the newspaper is going to be tugged two ways; he is going to be
tugged the way of that proprietor, most of whom are of very longstanding,
and he is going to be tugged the way of the tradition of the paper,
into which is built the views of the readers. There is no point
in becoming editor of the Daily Telegraph and running it
for the Barclay family if you are a left wing supporter of a paper
like The Sun—it is just a stupid thing to do. So
the tradition of a newspaper is a very, very important constraint
on an editor—do not upset your readers. The readers in this
context are self-selecting for the newspaper; you buy The Telegraph
because you like The Telegraph, you are a Telegraph
sort of person—it badges you what paper you carry on the
tube. You want your friends to know that you read the Guardian
or The Times or The Telegraph or whatever. All these
things are going to be influences on the editor in deciding everything
from the party he supports at a general election to what he puts
on page three. I do not think there is a simple answer to this.
Q1769 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
But there is a great deal of concentration at least in terms of
what is said on the interactivity now with newspapers and the
fact that they consult their readers, some editors imply that
they are led by their readership. If you think about how that
influences public policy, let us say, then clearly what politicians
feel about newspapers must be partly influenced by how much they
think a newspaper reflects the opinion of their electorate. If
that is the case where does the proprietor, where does the ownership
issue sit in the question of the influence that newspapers and
other media have on public policy?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I would have
said it is 5% to 10% of the answer to your question; in other
words, it is relatively unimportant. Nothing pleases the owner
more than that circulation should be going up. If you want to
get the circulation to go up, I would have said, you do listen
to your readers up to a point. So a successful newspaper as perceived
within the industry is a paper whose circulation is going up—simple
as that. It does not matter if you are losing a fortune because
provided the circulation is going up the proprietor tends to be
happy because his glory—this is my thesis—is invested
in the popularity of the newspaper. Where I think you ask a more
difficult question is how successful are most editors in genuinely
reflecting the opinions of their readers, such that their editorials
are worth reading by politicians? In other words, when a politician
says, "I must do this because the Daily Mail says
so" is it because the Daily Mail says so, is it because
the editor of the Daily Mail says so, or is it really because
the readers say so? Did the readers really say so or are they
just reading the Daily Mail for the health column? What
I say is that these are questions that tax editors all the time
and if they knew the answer they would probably be more successful
editors. I think that no editor ignores what is perceived to be
the traditional readership of that paper or what he or she would
like to think is the new readership of that newspaper.
Q1770 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Therefore would you say that politicians' preoccupation, which
I think does exist, with who owns newspapers in terms of therefore
who they should be getting at to get their views out or worrying
about in terms of what should be influencing them, is that overstated?
Is that something which belongs to another era or is it still
a relevant factor in the way that politics is done?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I think it
is massively overstated—massively overstated. Undoubtedly
if your spin doctor tells you that the only two papers that matter
are The Sun and the Daily Mail it would be
a somewhat cavalier party leader or politician who said, "I
do not give a damn about the Sun and the Daily Mail,
despite what you have just told me." In the first place the
proprietor is not necessarily the person who is going to do you
the global warming leader—it is much more likely to be one
of the leader writers. This relationship between the proprietor
and the editorial opinion of the newspaper is honestly much more
I would say distant than it appears to seem to outsiders.
Q1771 Chairman:
Do we as politicians—ex-politicians some of us—take
the influence of newspapers far too seriously?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I do not know.
I have known politicians who regard newspapers as God Almighty
and I think they are slightly ludicrous figures, frankly; they
are supposed to be leaders, they are elected leaders and they
should be leading and not following the press. Naming no names
they tend to come to grief through doing so. I have admired politicians
who thumb their nose at newspapers and have said, "It is
wrapping fish tomorrow morning" because in one sense that
is true. At the same time I think that serious newspapers at least—in
fact all newspapers—are a part of the political debate and
it would be odd for a politician not to regard serious comment
in a reasonably serious newspaper as a part of that debate.
Q1772 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Just picking up the point you made that what editors really care
about is circulation and seeing circulation of the paper go up,
and where they have a close link with their proprietor is the
marketing budget and the funds they are prepared to put in. When
one sees quite remarkable increases in circulation coming in from
a DVD of some particular event or celebrity involved what about
that because we have talked entirely about the content of the
newspaper being the sold factor?
Sir Simon Jenkins: Where reverting
to the conversation about proprietors is relevant is precisely
in the area that you are talking about. If, for the sake of argument,
you wanted a new supplement the management has to give it to you,
it is going to cost money, the company is going to have to find
the money. That is a much more serious constraint on editing than
what goes into the editorial column, it really is—it is
a daily constraint. It used to be the sort of problems editors
had—when I was at the Standard it was all
the trade unions, there was not an hour of the day when you did
not have a trade union problem. After Wapping that stopped, there
was not an hour of the day you did not have a management problem.
But that is in the nature of the business. Where I think there
is much in what you say is that running a newspaper is a management
job and you rely on managers, you rely on the holding company
being forthcoming with money; almost all newspapers do not make
money so every conversation is touched by that and it is very
difficult when you are losing money to go and ask the company
for £10 million for a marketing campaign, which you know
will increase the circulation and make you look good but costs
them money.
Q1773 Lord King of Bridgwater:
We have talked about the new media or new outlets and saying this
is going to be big money, and we talked a bit earlier about Murdoch
coming in and whether he was the owner bigger and I think the
question of Harry Evans putting together some consortium. Actually
The Times would not have survived, would it, with Harry
Evans because what actually Murdoch did was the reason that The
Times was being destroyed, as other newspapers were, was the
catastrophic situation of the print unions and actually Murdoch
having big enough pockets to actually take them on. You will remember
those events. That could only have been done by an extremely rich
proprietor and nearly bust him in the process. Do you see that
challenge now coming in the new media areas where it is going
to take very big pockets to take various newspapers and other
groups into the new media?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I do not think
any of us really knows the answer to where this dear industry
of mine is going to be in ten years' time. I tend to fall back
rather pathetically on the fact that I have heard its doom being
written so many times since I was in short trousers that I think
it will see me out. But that is no comfort for younger journalists.
I do think it will see me out, but that is me. There is no doubt,
going back to your premise, that what happened in the 1980s was
utterly seismic; an industry was taken by the scruff of its neck
and shaken up no end, as a result of which, I repeat, we have
ten daily newspapers and New York has three, or whatever, and
New York is unionised and London is not. That, to my mind, was
a wholly beneficial good and probably I would not be here today
if it was not for what Murdoch did in Wapping. I am just an unequivocal
fan of that operation and everyone involved in it.
Q1774 Lord King of Bridgwater:
And a lot of other newspapers too.
Sir Simon Jenkins: And a lot of
newspapers too, and Andreas Whittam Smith would be the first to
admit that he would not have launched the Independent without
it. The benefits of that were first channelled into corporate
profits, then they were channelled into price cutting, and that
era in a sense is now over and we are all losing money again,
or most of us. The question is how do we respond in the same terms
to the new media? The new media are completely different and I
think there—and I do not totally agree with Roy on this—that
there simply will be a niche market for the daily newspaper. Those
people who do not want to spend their entire morning on a screen
or do not have a screen or do not have a screen with them on the
train, or whatever it might be, the character of those papers,
which has been phenomenally constant over 40 years, while at the
same time all of them have updated themselves. Compare the London
papers with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,
which look like 1890s papers. We innovate all the time because
we are in such competition, and because we are in such competition
we have to keep abreast of what the niche wants. The niche now
appears to want a newspaper with lots of supplements and magazines
that they can keep lying around the house. It may well be that
the market niche does not want a Saturday and a Sunday paper—and
I have views on that. I find it hard to believe that people will
not want newspapers. They may want fewer of them; they may have
to pay much more for them.
Q1775 Chairman:
Or the opposite—there may be many more free newspapers,
and I think Roy Greenslade was saying that.
Sir Simon Jenkins: I think there
may. Free newspapers tend to be a product of a desperate search
for profit rather than for glory. These are mostly glory products
and I think that there will always be someone terribly proud—for
30 years there was always someone terribly proud to be the owner
of the Observer, people queued up every time the Observer
was for sale to buy the Observer. Nobody ever wanted to
make money out of it. I do not see why that should end.
Q1776 Chairman:
You do not think that people will queue up to become owner of
the Metro?
Sir Simon Jenkins: No, and that
is an important distinction, I think; or of a website.
Q1777 Lord Inglewood:
You have more or less touched on the point I was going to ask,
which is, to put it the way you put it, do you think that there
is going to be a good supply of glory boys in the future or do
you think that the way media is evolving we may find that the
kind of conglomerate, corporate ownership which does not necessarily
have an obvious, prominent person as its figurehead may become
proprietor of what we are calling newspapers?
Sir Simon Jenkins: Logic suggests
that that would be the case but history does not.
Q1778 Lord Inglewood:
That is why I asked the question.
Sir Simon Jenkins: History suggests
that there is a supply of people who are searching for glory and
indeed if anything the increased mobility of money, the increased
globalisation of high finance, the increased attraction of living
in London all tell in favour of people wanting to lose money on
London newspapers.
Q1779 Lord Maxton:
So if Murdoch, as we have heard, is bored with Britain and decides
he no longer wants to sustain the losses on The Times and
The Sunday Times, who would buy it?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I do not know
but I bet you anything there would be a dozen people who would
buy the times—it would be a Russian, an Arab or a Persian,
Indian or Chinese.
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