Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1780
- 1798)
WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2008
Sir Simon Jenkins
Q1780 Chairman:
And you would have no reservations?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I would probably
have reservations ad hominem in the particular case but my ideology
is plurality. So as long as the regulatory regime—which
we have not discussed—ensures multiplicity of titles and
a multiplicity of ownership then I am not terribly queasy about
who owns these papers.
Q1781 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Would you think a Russian oligarch would be a suitable owner of
The Times and Sunday Times?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I think it
would be dreadful but you might have said that of a Canadian magnate.
Q1782 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Would you? You do not distinguish?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I am sure there
might be a Russian oligarch who would be terrific, I do not know.
To take Rupert Murdoch's ownership of the Wall Street Journal,
he does not want to own the Wall Street Journal to wreck
it; he wants to own the Wall Street Journal because it
adds glory to his name, and he will do well for it, I think. The
assumption that there is a good proprietor and a bad proprietor
is a distinction I do not see.
Q1783 Lord King of Bridgwater:
With great respect, they live under a rule of law and there are
differences. You could see a situation with a Russian oligarch
who might have a very different hinterland from which he came
and you think that would not matter?
Sir Simon Jenkins: It would all
matter. I remember when we were trying to sell the Evening
Standard there were about half a dozen serious bidders for
the Evening Standard, which was losing a fortune; and indeed
we went through which were suitable and which were not suitable
and there were some that were very unsuitable for precisely the
reason you are suggesting. No, I would not be happy with it but
money is money and it needs money to run these newspapers.
Q1784 Chairman:
To try and summarise it, you are obviously putting a market case
but it is sometimes the case in the media that we do not have
reciprocal arrangements; in other words, an American company can
come and buy ITV tomorrow but there is no way we could go to the
United States and do that. Does that fit in to your market philosophy?
Sir Simon Jenkins: Television
is more oligarchistic than newspapers. I am not terribly worried
by that, to be perfectly honest. When Al Jazeera opened up in
London an English language service it is extremely regimented;
it is under the thumb of its regime and I do not regard its journalistic
standards very highly. I am just glad it is there because it is
another channel.
Q1785 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
You talked about the proprietor's influence on the nature of content
but not on the quality of content and you worked at The Sunday
Times in the glory days of investigative journalism. Do you
think in the modern world that there are proprietors who are still
willing to invest in quality investigative journalism?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I do not think
that proprietors invest in it in that way; I do think we are over
obsessed with proprietors. There are managements that are worried
about money, yes, and one reflection of that is the size of the
editorial staff. One reason why most investigative journalism
tends to take place in Sunday newspapers is there is nothing else
to do for six days a week, but that is just in the nature of the
beast of a Sunday newspaper. I think there is, if anything, more
investigative journalism now than there used to be then; I think
journalists are far more sceptical—you might say cynical.
I do not think that Ken Livingstone at the moment regards the
press as lacking in scrutinising zeal. More newspapers do that
sort of journalism than used to; The Times never used to
do it, The Telegraph never used to do it, but now they
are all out looking for scoops. I have to say that I think journalism
today is infinitely better than it has ever been since I became
a journalist. I am rather naively optimistic about this profession
at the moment, but the future is a different matter.
Q1786 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Among the many things you do I see that you have a blog with the
Huffington Post, as it is called. How different do you
find that as a journalistic experience from writing a column,
both from the actual nature of it itself and also the relationship
with the editor?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I do not do
it very much but there is also a blog on the Guardian and
we are all asked to contribute to these things. The difference
between sitting at home and fashioning what you like to think
is a cultured essay, laying down your pen, going round to the
pub, having a drink and telling the guy standing next to you what
you really think of it, it is the difference between writing and
a barroom chat, which is why I cannot take it terribly seriously
because the people who answer you back are the sort of people
you would get answered back to in a barroom chat. At the same
time Huffington Post is a closed group of people talking
to each other and it is quite stimulating on occasions not to
have everything in the 1200 word format, but a response in 200
words, a response in 400 words, and it is a conversation that
goes backwards and forwards. That is new and that is stimulating
and it is a good thing. I just think it would be a pity—I
obviously would say this, would I not—if the old fashioned
column went out business, which some people think it will.
Q1787 Chairman:
You said that as long as the regulatory regime ensures plurality
of ownership things will be okay. Do you think that the present
regulatory regime does enough to ensure plurality or are there
changes you have in mind?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I was a member
of the Competition Committee press sub-committee, whatever it
was called then, and we had this rule of thumb of 30% of any market
and then we would spend hours arguing about what was the market.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating; it has more or less
worked. I think you have a reasonable spread of proprietorship
and a reasonable spread of opinion in the newspapers. Someone
on the far left or the far right might not agree with that, but
that is what I feel. There were interesting moments in press history
when we wobbled. There was a moment, I can remember, when I think
the Daily Mirror was up for sale—I just cannot remember
the date—and had the Daily Mirror not gone to Maxwell
there was a chance that every single newspaper in Britain would
have been right wing, would have been Conservative supporting.
I think at that point you would have triggered intervention from
government. What form it would have taken I am not sure, but it
might have been a Swedish style, it might have subsidised a paper
of the left, I do not know. Before the war that is exactly what
would have happened; someone would have gone to a tycoon and said,
"We will make you a viscount if you back a newspaper".
So there are ways of doing it. The regulatory regime which exists
at the moment works so I would be reluctant to change it. I think
the rules that they apply, the size of market that they permit
and the cross-media ownership that they allow more or less works.
Q1788 Chairman:
Do you have any reservations about the Secretary of State at the
end of the day being the man who takes the decision?
Sir Simon Jenkins: I agree with
Roy on that; I think it would be better if you had a freestanding
Competition Commissioner—I may say I would apply this to
many other industries than the press—and that the Minister
should not be involved and that it would help the Minister not
to be involved as well. It is something that needs constantly
watching and certainly if two of the groups now running newspapers
maybe went to Russian oligarchs or to Dubai fundamentalists I
think I would be worried and I would start asking questions about
whether they should be entitled to own them.
Q1789 Bishop of Manchester:
I want to address what I feel is a very important issue, which
is about standards and integrity and keeping the faith of the
readers. I say it is a very important issue not only because I
believe that myself but I understand from what I have read from
you that that is very much your own view. I would like to quote
something that you said, not least so that it can be on the record
of this meeting. This is what you wrote: "I think all newspapers
are under intense pressure from sophisticated public relations
to cut ethical corners." Indeed, having said that you then
went on to underline it further, and I quote again: "No question
about it, all papers are." That does seem to me to be a very
serious issue and I wonder if you could expand your views on that
and perhaps also give us a picture of how things have altered
over, say, the last 20 years and where you feel we are now and
where we ought to be?
Sir Simon Jenkins: It is one of
the problems that Roy had too—I cannot remember writing
that; I must have had a bad week! It is undoubtedly true. I think
that the amount of attention devoted by commerce in every sense
and politics in every sense to suborning newspapers is out of
all proportion to what it used to be. This is a huge industry
now devoted to this particular task and it is to the credit of
newspapers that they think it is worth their while, I may say.
But they clearly do, and the pressure on newspapers and the pressure
on those people writing newspapers from that particular prism
between reality and the press is very considerable. At the same
time I do not think that journalists are unaware of it; I think
that good journalists resist it, bad journalists capitulate to
it. What I would not have said is that the end product is more
craven than it used to be. I noticed occasionally when I was at
The Times I used to take down early copies of The Times
about which one was constantly being browbeaten by irate readers
or politicians. The Chairman may remember, they were insufferably
blasé; they were dictated to by government; frankly, it
was completely dull, great screeds of Hansard—it may have
been all right for you—and great screeds of court report
and that was two-thirds of the newspaper and the editorials never
came to a conclusion. I find newspapers today incomparably livelier,
more pointed and more sceptical about what they are being told
by the PR industry. So I am not denying the fact of that industry
and the pressure it puts these people under but I do think—and
I do not want to sound complacent—but journalists are trained
to be sceptical.
Q1790 Bishop of Manchester:
But I detect from what you say—and obviously you will correct
me if I have this wrong—that whilst you were assuring us
earlier on that our concerns about the influence of proprietors
was probably overstated, from what you have written and from what
you have just been saying it would seem that there is an ogre
in the background in this public relations industry which, were
it to get out of control, would really have a serious effect on
the standards and integrity of newspapers and what journalists
were expected to provide.
Sir Simon Jenkins: I hate your
use of the words "out of control"; I do not know what
sort of control you suppose it ought to be under. I am against
control. Where I totally take your point—but I am putting
it in a wider context—is that every newspaper is bombarded
with pressure; everything in the newspapers, as I think Lord King
said, wants to be propaganda to somebody. There is no shortage
of material; you come into the office in the morning and there
is a blank format in front of you, it is War and Peace
you have to write by that evening—the number of words—and
it has to be written in one day and there are five wars and peaces
clamouring to get in. So the exercise of editing, which goes on
in the head of the journalist and in the editorial process itself
is the exercise of squeezing that into the available amount of
space. The fact that the pressures are intense—and I think
the pressures are probably greater than they used to be, I take
that point—is in the nature of public life. All public life
is people trying to persuade people of things and the job of the
newspapers is to try and sift the truth from falsity and to minimise
the amount of falsity that ends up in the paper.
Q1791 Lord Maxton:
Is it not more likely as to what they think is interesting for
their readers and not its truth or policy?
Sir Simon Jenkins: You have the
reader's mind in view when you write but I do not think many journalists
are consciously trying to tell a lie to the readers, I really
do not. They are under pressure of time, which is one of the great
pressures; they are under pressure of the available material.
The Web has immeasurably increased the ease with which they can
access alternative material so there is less excuse for getting
things wrong now than used to be the case. But the idea of what
is in the public interest, which is always where we get back to,
is a chimera; the public is interested in things that the public
is interested in.
Q1792 Lord Maxton:
There is a difference between the interests of the public and
public interest; they are not necessarily the same thing.
Sir Simon Jenkins: When I was
on the Calcutt Committee we banned the phrase because it was irresolvable.
Q1793 Chairman:
What happened to that committee?
Sir Simon Jenkins: That was the
committee on privacy. What happened to it? It got binned.
Bishop of Manchester: You did say that
there was no question about journalists ever being pressed to
cut ethical corners and I would just like to have one example
of what you have put down in your own words as a very serious
situation?
Q1794 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Could I come in on that because it might actually help to focus?
I am going back a few years where I attended a conference where
a number of journalists were in the audience and very critical
about maybe the slipping standards of what editors expected from
their journalists. So as an example of this one of the examples
given was that editors were no longer as hard on their journalists
to actually know that what they were writing was fact as opposed
to floating an idea which was not in fact verifiable.
Sir Simon Jenkins: I think we
are in danger of seeing the profession as being too monolithic.
A story in a Sunday tabloid about a starlet and a footballer is
probably going to be made up and it is being made up in such a
way to appeal to the interest of the reader—the prurience
of the reader. I think most people shrug their shoulders and say,
"That is Sunday journalism for you."
Q1795 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
A more serious newspaper.
Sir Simon Jenkins: More serious
newspapers, I agree with what other people have said. If someone
says to you, "You have that really wrong" then you are
upset; you did not mean to get it wrong. I probably get one or
two things wrong every week and we have a great corrections column
in the Guardian, which is a source of great amusement to
people. You are not proud to get something wrong. When I say cutting
ethical corners cutting an ethical corner could mean not double
checking something because you are right up against the clock,
or it could mean—and this is something where I am answering
your question quite specifically—you absolutely know that
if you mention a product or a service in a column or in an article
in the newspaper it either vastly benefits or vastly dis-benefits
that particular service. An example of a general point, as a particular,
you do know in the back of your mind that that is real money to
someone, and that is why someone puts you under pressure to make
that mention. You will see that people quite often mention books—I
quite often mention books. Is it the book of a friend? I am not
quite sure; it might be. Why did I mention that book? Because
I was sent a free copy. Is that cutting an ethical corner? Up
to a point. Vast amounts of money are spent on public industry
trying to get books on the BBC programmes. The way that the BBC
chooses books for its programmes is a source of mystery to all
of us; all one knows is that it is worth thousands and thousands
of pounds to be on the Andrew Marr show or one of these shows,
and therefore it is worth thousands and thousands of pounds to
get on it. Ethical corners are being cut; they are in the nature
of the business, I am afraid.
Q1796 Lord Inglewood:
A small question, really to go back to where we have been before
and thinking about ownership of the newspapers. Can you see a
time when one of these sovereign wealth funds from China or some
such buy a newspaper in a country like ours, to get over its point
of view?
Sir Simon Jenkins: The sovereign
wealth funds tend to be chasing money rather than glory but the
owner of the fund might be chasing glory.
Q1797 Lord Inglewood:
That is the point.
Sir Simon Jenkins: The Sheikh
of Qatar or somewhere, in exactly the same way—and I can
only use the parallel again and again—that he wants a string
of racehorses he wants a newspaper. That is a different sort of
want. But the juices that flow when the subject is mentioned are
the same; it is a desire for glamour, glory.
Q1798 Lord Inglewood:
That is obviously right but the impact on this country of owning
racehorses or a football club might be very different from owning
a newspaper.
Sir Simon Jenkins: Yes, it might,
if you had anything approaching monopolistic control of opinion;
but as long as there is no danger of that then I am inclined to
say all is fair in love and war and newspapers. The one thing
I would say, which we have not discussed, but just as a coda one
of the defences against that sort of what one might call buccaneering
newspaper ownership is the way in which the profession itself
regulates itself. Mention was made earlier of the Press Complaints
Commission and the way in which the press regulates itself. I
think one of the defences that journalism has and journalists
have against proprietorial interference or unethical practices
or whatever it may be, is a far more rigorous structure of self-regulation—not
statutory but self-regulation—and I do not think you are
getting it at the moment at all.
Chairman: I am very tempted to go down
that road and we come back to you on exactly that point because
it is obviously turning out to be an interesting part of our investigation.
I would like to thank you very much for coming. I am going to
ignore entirely your implied criticism of The Times of
the 1960s when I was there, and the dullness of that particular
newspaper! We also had a corrections column as well at the time,
I should say! Sir Simon, quite seriously, thank you very much
for coming; we are very grateful for the time. As I say, I think
there a number of points which we may want to come back to you
on.
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