Author: Anthony Browne
Publication: The New Statesman
Date: June 10, 2002
Introduction: Journalists boast
that they are the public's guardians against corruption. Yet their own
unregulated trade is riddled with what amounts to bribery.
''It's so unfair," the Ghanaian
photographer complained to me. "Unlike the writers, I'm not allowed into
the side room at the end. How can I make a living?" After press conferences,
most Ghanaian journalists go to a room to pick up an envelope stuffed with
cash. The organisers, who want favourable publicity, win; the journalists
win; only the Ghanaian public loses.
Such corruption of the media is
rife in many parts of the developing world. But before we get too snooty,
the truth - if you can prise it out of a journalist - is that journalism
in Britain is just as corrupt. We are just more subtle.
Print journalism is now the most
corrupt realm of public life in Britain. And because we complain about
corruption in other realms the loudest, we are also the most hypocritical.
Every other sphere - including parliament, the political parties, the civil
service, police, local government, regulators and charities - has cleaned
up its act, established rules of disclosure, and disciplined those who
fall short. Even the BBC has strict rules.
In contrast, the print media, whose
aggressive stance against corruption or dishonesty in other sectors has
been the driving force for keeping standards up, have done virtually nothing
to improve their own act. Corruption is not even mentioned in the Press
Complaints Commission code of conduct.
It is axiomatic in public life that
you should not make financial or other gain from those who have dealings
with you in a professional capacity. Even if there is no corruption directly
involved - as the media keep telling the Labour Party over the Richard
Desmond affair - the appearance of corruption should be avoided.
However, journalists and their newspapers
often get huge indirect financial and other benefits from those they are
reporting on. The industry that demands the scalps of lying ministers lies
to its own readers by making up stories and quotes - not just in the tabloids
and the diary sections, but in the news sections of the broadsheets, too.
Standards in journalism are so low that what would be a disciplinary offence
anywhere else is seen as a normal perk of the job. Anything that journalists
complain about others doing, they almost certainly routinely do themselves.
But because we are all in on it and benefit from it, we keep quiet about
it with a sneaky smugness.
I am not being holier than thou
about this - I have been as guilty as any, but nor have my employers been
worse than others. And you will have to forgive me for a certain evasiveness
- I work in Fleet Street, and hope to do so for decades to come. It's just
that I would prefer to work in an industry that can claim the moral high
ground, rather than be a champion of brazen hypocrisy.
It need not be like this. American
journalism is almost piously ethical, with journalists strictly avoiding
any actual or potential conflict of interest. They cannot even accept a
free lunch because it might compromise their integrity.
Direct corruption - as in the case
of Roger Scruton, who admitted to being funded by a tobacco company to
place flattering stories - is rare in British journalism. Far more common
is the indirect corruption of free trips, tickets to sports events, and
awards.
The most corrupt of all is travel
journalism, which survives on the free holidays from those it reports on.
Only the Independent has made serious attempts to avoid this. On a recent
free holiday to Africa with my partner, a policeman (who had had to pay
for his holiday) asked how I could pretend to write objectively about a
company that was showering such a gift on me. "I would be sacked if I was
doing what you were doing," he said.
The result is that travel sections
all too often exaggerate the good points of holidays and play down the
bad ones, and rarely contain strong criticism of individual tour operators
or travel companies. Newspapers ambiguously say that a writer "travelled
with" such a company, rather than admit that the company supplied the trip
for free.
Business journalism - particularly
personal finance - is almost as corrupt. Giant corporations, financial
institutions and PR companies target millions of pounds from marketing
budgets at a few dozen business journalists, and almost anything goes.
Some journalists boast of lifestyles that are little more than perpetual
junkets - bribes - from those whose news they report.
British Airways is flying out the
cream of British business journalists to Japan for the World Cup, making
it a good time for the company to sneak out a bad business story. One of
those who accepted, Frank Kane, the business editor of the Observer, justified
his decision by saying that it was a chance to check the quality of in-flight
service on BA routes. Last time round, Mastercard and RBS Advanta sent
journalists to France to watch matches. BT takes journalists to the rugby
at Twickenham.
Whatever the event, from Ascot and
Wimbledon to the latest performance by Madonna or the ENO, the business
sections are awash with free tickets. For the more desirable events, desperate
journalists end up making obsequious phone calls to press officers with
whom they are meant to be hardnosed.
Other companies - including public
concerns such as the Post Office - buy up expensive tables at the UK Press
Gazette's awards dinner, that social highlight for newspapers, and scatter
tickets to the journalists who report on them. One business editor insists
that companies buy "our attention, not our approval". But if that is true,
why not declare openly at the end of the article that it is based on a
trip paid for by the company that is being reported on? Don't the readers
deserve to know? Companies spend millions on journalists because it is
cheaper than advertising at buffing up their public image. They know that
when they hand out the gold-dust tickets, bad stories about them are unlikely
to appear. And they expect things in return. One property group took me
to a champagne dinner performance of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet at the
Royal Albert Hall, and for weeks afterwards left messages asking me when
a self-serving story about the firm was going to appear (it didn't).
Companies also give products to
journalists. Those who write about the mobile phone industry need never
buy their own phone. One motoring correspondent boasted to me that he did
not own a car but had had to have a three-door garage built to house all
the cars he has on long-term loan from various motor companies. The cars
were the flashy models rather than the cheaper ones that his readers would
prefer him to do long-term tests on.
The only thing worse than the corruption
is the hypocrisy. The journalists and newspapers that receive these benefits
are the same ones that hounded the Lottery regulator Peter Davis out of
his job for the sin of accepting hospitality from the Lottery shareholder
GTech. They pursued the International Olympic Committee for similar acts.
Newspapers with junket-addicted travel sections and journalists lambasted
Tony Blair on learning that he took a free holiday from the Egyptian government
last winter.
Major companies also try to buy
journalists by sponsoring career-enhancing awards. Will the winner of Big
Building Society Personal Finance Award want to unveil a scandal about
the building society? Will the winner of Pharmaceutical Giant Award for
science writing want to lift the lid on the corporation's drugs? Governments,
public bodies and trade associations are also in on the game. Governments
such as those of Taiwan and Japan, which feel in need of favourable world
understanding, openly give the red-carpet treatment to journalists from
these shores.
The Japanese government paid for
me to go to Japan to write a piece about why the Japanese believe they
should be allowed to eat whales, something I agreed to do on only the clear
understanding that I would declare openly, in the article, that the trip
had been paid for by Japan. Such declarations are usually never made.
The UK government does not try to
buy up journalists, but it does try to co-opt them. One economics editor,
Ed Crooks of the Financial Times, joined the government's sustainable development
task force. When Martin Bright worked as the Observer's education correspondent,
he was offered a CV-enhancing post on an education task force but turned
it down because of the conflict of interest.
Political journalism is less corrupted
by money, but more corrupted by power. Some political journalists are politically
active, often on the quiet, so you only discover their loyalties when they
stand for parliament. Some write and spin stories they know to be untrue
because it suits their patrons.
The apogee of the political conflict
of interest is found in our two weekly political magazines, one of which
is edited by a Tory MP and the other of which is owned by a Labour MP.
Then there is not so much corruption,
but simple dishonesty. Not only the tabloids and diary sections make up
stories and quotes; so do some broadsheets. One broadsheet plumbed such
depths that BBC editors told their staff never to waste time trying to
follow up its stories. Yet these papers joined the pack in hounding Stephen
Byers to his resignation last month for doing nothing worse than they themselves
do.
While heads roll for modest levels
of corruption in every other sphere of public life, I have never known
a journalist even to get a warning. Most only have to live up to their
own personal integrity. The trouble is that we work in an industry in which
corruption has come to seem normal. Unfortunately, journalists, like doctors
before them, have simply been going unchallenged. The media forced doctors
to agree that they should do nothing behind closed doors for which they
are not prepared to stand up in public. Now, journalists should live by
the same rules that they insist others live by.
Journalists are the nation's anti-corruption
squad, but there is no one to investigate our own corruption. All the public
can rely on is our integrity and sense of fair play. They are being let
down.
(Anthony Browne is between jobs
at two national newspapers.)
