Guardian Journalist Praises The Guardian - And The BBC

Nick Davies, a quick bit of Wiki-ing reveals, is a 57 year-old Oxford-educated, Mirror-trained, former Guardian and now a freelance journalist who contributes to the Observer. He wrote a book a few years ago much loved by some of his peers in the professional media called Flat Earth News that basically rubbished 76% of journalism in the United Kingdom and beyond (he was that precise) . I'm not going to plug it. I thought its basic premise was weak (pretending that the underlying purpose of journalism, particularly newspaper journalism, is some sort of crusade for originality and not merely to sell news, recycled or otherwise, is ridiculous and naive). I also thought it was boring and did not finish it.

Anyway, the upshot of his interview this morning on Radio 4 was, simply, that having gratefully been given the chance to plug once more his dated tome, he merely repeated his feeble assertion (now equally dated) that only the Guardian and the BBC do real news. There was no alternative view in the interview, just some American fembot from the Washington Post giving almost exactly the same views, but in 'Murcan. I nearly blew my horn in disgust (see how mad I was?). Aside from the fact that the BBC hasn't broken an original story in, I would say, oh 26 years ( that would have been the Ethiopian famine in 1984), its journalist standards are non-existent. It does not so much report news, vastly over-resourced and over-staffed thanks to its generous taxpayer-funded budget though it is, as filter it through a BBC lens, which itself can be broadly deconstructed into three primary layers: obsessive Political Correctness, social statism and left wing political orthodoxy. There are other layers, such as climate change orthodoxy, but while they are just as significant in how they form the BBC's editorial stance and its recruitment policy, they are secondary ones. And woe betide anyone who does not toe the BBC line, and who has slipped through the recruitment sieve. They will not be working there for long (pack your bags Andrew Gilligan and Jeff Randall. You're fired!). The Guardian is sort of the newsprint arm of the BBC. The less said about it, the better. I'm surprised it doesn't think it's entitled to state funding, just like its TV sister, the Beeb. Perhaps it does!

There are one or two other things to say about the Graun, actually. Compare and contrast, for instance: in 2009, with the expenses scandal, the Daily Telegraph broke the biggest story of the decade bar none. All its many stories - and there were dozens - were sourced from completely original material - the most original you can get as a matter of fact: raw data. The Telegraph's expert, highly professional coverage then rocked parliament to its very foundations, and rightly so, and very nearly brought down a government. It has led to six prosecutions so far, and rising, and the retirement of scores of MPs. This story, which drove the entire news cycle for nearly two months - and still is to a certain degree over a year later - has to all intents and purposes changed the political face and historical direction of the United Kingdom, perhaps forever. It could well have saved parliament from permanent and long-term decline and forced a new government to ring the changes and call time on the last rotten government's (whom the BBC and the Guardian supported) institutional corruption, venality and dishonesty. What the Telegraph achieved there was not just a spectacular piece of classic scoop journalism a la Watergate, complete with their own Deep Throat, they did this country a service on a scale that will not be repeated for a long, long time. I wonder what kind of a dent that put in Nick Davies' bravely unverifiable "statistics".

And now, by comparison, let's ask what the Guardian did in 2009 to further the cause of investigative journalism which, one assumes, is not driven by any political agenda. Ah yes, it tried to get Andy Coulson fired from his new job because of something he wasn't responsible for (a court said) in his old one, glossed over the Damian Green arrest, virtually ignored the other big scandal of last year (Climategate) - or tried to spin it away - and spun around like a headless chicken editorially as it tried to work which loser to back. The BBC did much the same thing, though in its case it's unnecessary to come out and actually back someone or misreport stories it doesn't like. Oh no. It can be far more cunning than that with its spin. Its editors can simply cover what they feel like covering, invite whatever guests they like on talk shows to gloss over distasteful 'badthink' news, ignore political stories that might place the Tories in a favourable light and emphasise ones that might not, and do the reverse for their buddies in the Labour party. They can manipulate public opinion by generating it (do you know how easy it is to splice together four punters in the street saying they agree with something and leave out the four dozen who said they didn't?) and they can be openly hostile or dismissive of anything or any one they don't like (like the Israelis). Simply put, they test the limits of what they think can get away with all the time, everywhere. And believe me, they can get away with a hell of a lot.

I've hardly scratched the surface. But now, I hope, you can at least see why I thought Nick Davies' nonsensical comment on the BBC, about the BBC and the Guardian and journalism generally, was worth a mention. Whatever his journalistic credentials - and he is well-regarded by his colleagues from across the spectrum of the MSM apparently - he is not very honest and he's not at all right.

Still, though, I suppose we can let him off. He was only trying to sell his book, after all.

Right Target, Wrong Ammo

If you want to take out a troublesome enemy tank, in this case an obsolete knockoff Russian T62 (also known as the Liberal Mk1 Main Battlebus), you don't use a bunch of tracer bullets. However accurate the rounds might be, and however many you loose, not only are they simply going to bounce off the turret of the lumbering, sputtering war machine (in this case the 360 degree swivelling Nick Clegg), they will give away your position too. The newspapers that profess a bluish bent have done just that with their suspiciously timed, well-aimed but poorly armed, poorly co-ordinated full frontal assault. Over the top, chaps!

No, what you need to do, tactically, is to bide your time, choose the correct ordnance and then open fire with the radar-guided, state of the art heavy guns. A battery of that nature would be (would have been/will be?) decisive; the fireworks delightful and the result, devastating. So Iain Dale and John Ward are dead right in their assessment, that the attack was ill-conceived, will backfire and the Tories should have nothing to do with it.

Having said that, I recognise the possibility that a charge of hypocrisy might be coming my way. Well, so what? It would be unfounded. What I deposit here is personal opinion. And I stand by my opinion that nothing has happened to alter my long-held view that Nick Clegg is a two-faced, overhyped, establishment lightweight that no one in their right mind should ever consider as prime ministerial material. He's benefited from the anti-politics thang, for sure, and the TV media's desire for a Close Run Thing (hung parliaments mean higher ratings), but that's it. On policy he's nowhere. At least with Labour you just have universally bad ideas, most of which have been discredited already after thirteen lost years, and involve, if we were to have to suffer five more lost years of them, plunging an increasingly authoritarian UK into social and economic oblivion.

With Clegg's Libdums, you get either conflicting policies, badly thought-out policies, unfundable policies or policies (and these are the really interesting ones) that will lead us to being kicked off the UN Security Council, subsumed by a federal EU and relegated to third rate power status (see Simon Hughes). I'm not entirely certain anyone in this country is quite ready for any of that particular brand of 'change', or ever will be.

But it's up to the Tories, and the pisspoor papers (if they can get their heads out of their collective fundaments) to make people see that.

PS:
One online rag really does provide a case in point:

Nick Clegg dossier reveals his Martian roots

DAS BUNKER, Whopping, Tuesday (MSBBC) — Your Super Soaraway SUN has found the blueprint for Nick Clegg’s top-secret TV debate strategy in the back of a CAB, revealing he is a MARTIAN INVADER.

It reveals the Lib Dem leader STOLE DNA from David Cameron to DUPLICATE his style and cover Britain in a ROBOT ARMY OF CLEGGS, with BlackBerrys to be installed in all citizens.

“It’s very SLOPPY to just leave it in my CAB in a locked and alarmed SUITCASE,” said the cab driver, Andy Coulson,” and I thought people should know. That’s why I SOLD it to The Sun.”

Clegg DISGRACED himself in the television debate last Thursday, winning a mere 37% in BIASED COMMUNIST POLLS, while TORY SUPERSTAR Dave “Dave” Cameron topped the charts with a SURGE to 31% — despite foolish commentators claiming Clegg was less terrible than GORDON BROWN attempting to SMILE or the picture of DAVE CAMERON someone had PHOTOSHOPPED onto the screen.

“I used my PSYCHIC POWERS to talk to ADOLF HITLER after the debate and he would DEFINITELY vote Lib Dem now,” reveals luscious, pouting MYSTIC MEG in her political opinion column on Page 3 today.

The Tories have responded by DISTANCING themselves from the Liberal Democrats’ WASHED-UP, SOCIALIST POLICIES and put out new posters blaming the recession on the people responsible: POLISH ASYLUM TERRORISTS on THE DOLE.

“The Conservative Home web forum got out MS Paint and came up with some great stuff,” said Tory webmaster Andy Coulson. “Though they thought we should distance ourselves from those WISHY-WASHY, NUT-CUTLET-EATING LIBERALS at the Daily Mail, who are SOFT ON VOLCANOES and soft on the CAUSES of volcanoes.”

An article in the Völkischer Beobachter on Sunday by Andy Coulson REVEALED Clegg’s SPANISH wife, RUSSIAN grandfather and MARTIAN allegiance, and how he would definitely fail a proper Tory BRITISHNESS test.

“Fuck,” said Rupert Murdoch, speaking to his editors about the ACTUAL poll numbers.

I mean, shocking scaremongering!

+Update+

This is what Clegg really said (just in the spirit of accuracy, you understand - no smearist I):

“Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche.”

“All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.”

“A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place.”

Hmm. The change we need.

I Am A Parasite

According to an article in the Guardian yesterday, some Yank judge is saying that because I write a blog which uses material from MSM newspaper websites, including the odd link through to articles , I am little more than a parasite.

"The bloggers are parasitical on the conventional media," Posner wrote. "They copy the news and opinion generated by the conventional media, often at considerable expense, without picking up any of the tab. The degree of parasitism is striking in the case of those blogs that provide their readers with links to newspaper articles. The links enable the audience to read the articles without buying the newspaper."

I'm not sure this charming American's comments make any sense whatsoever. In what way do link throughs "cost" newspapers? Surely papers benefit from the extra traffic. How is quoting from articles written in newspapers "parasitical", exactly? I would have thought journalists would find it fairly flattering in the main, especially if the blog referring to them is nice about their scribbles. The dots in this guys reasoning are certainly not joined-up.

Newspapers are collapsing across the United States, with some venerable publications having already gone to the wall (such as the wonderful Rocky Mountain News - which was very sad). More are bound to follow. But this has mainly been caused by the recession in America, not by bloggers. There is evidence that the same thing's happening in this country. And what do we get? The same, nonsensical attack on what for most of the thousands of people who blog about UK politics and current affairs is just a pretty harmless hobby, and a wonderful outlet in many cases for deep, pent-up fury at the way our useless politicians have sold us down the river. However, unlike the MSM, we don't do deference. And our comment is genuinely free. If you don't like my opinions, for instance, you are welcome to say so and then go away. As for sourcing, well, this is a personal diary not a newspaper. I mean, duh!

The Fawkeses and Dales of this world are the exceptions that prove the rule, but if newspapers think they can pretend those two, who as far as I can discern almost always present original material that they've researched themselves (you know, like journalists do), are the cause of their dwindling sales, they need to think again. Newspapers' own business models and professional practices are what're broken. People didn't much like the "dead tree" product any more once the internet came along offering a speedier, more efficient and free news source, so the papers had to react. Why else would all of them have spent such vast fortunes building flashy websites and relaunching themselves in brand spanking new office complexes? To look modern and hip, to compete with television for a following, to generate more advertising revenue and to increase the profile of their respective products. Oh, and to keep lazy journalists more thoroughly occupied.

But newspapers were too slow to react, too set in their ways, too prejudiced and too blinkered to even begin to appreciate how the internet might force them to change the way they generate news. And they still haven't got it. "Competition" from "parasitical" bloggers is a stupid myth dreamt-up by somebody or other with some kind of axe to grind or some sort of vested interest. But that's the point: it's just a myth. You can (sort-of) understand the economic argument for enforcing intellectual copyright laws for music downloads: people buy a record to listen to it over and over again. Why, so the argument goes, shouldn't the same thing apply to downloads? Fair point. But newspaper articles? For Pete's sake, who wants to read a newspaper report, or even an editorial piece, over and over again? Exactly. It's nonsense. People will just go elsewhere for their online news.

On the issue of banning linking without permission, however, I have one suggestion for the lumberjack press: if you don't want the linking, get rid of your website. And a word of advice to them: try in future not to let some preening American judge call a significant section of your readership "parasites" on your behalf. Apart from being rubbish, it doesn't actually go down too well.

No hard feelings, though. I rather like the idea of being some sort of parasite, in fact. I think I'll be a tapeworm.

Cameron and Clegg Must Step Up

As the expenses row escalates and public confidence in our Parliament of Magpies plummets, the question is: what will be the effect and what can we do?

In answer to the first question, I'll offer this. As with any breach of the covenant of trust between the public (who invest it) and their elected representatives (who enjoy it) that lies at the heart of any democracy - and that is exactly what this is, a breach of that democratic covenant - the effect of it will be far-reaching and unprecedented. This will bypass party politics and descend to constituency level.

If the abuse of expenses is as widespread as it appears to be, the result will be that, come any general election, the parties will become less and less relevant as the conduct of the individual sitting member comes under the electron microscope scrutiny of the voting public in their constituency. If the sitting MP is 'dirty' in the eyes of his or her constituents (forget the bent 'rules') he or she can expect to receive the order of the boot in short order. Who benefits? Naturally the challengers will gain in some way, especially if they are new candidates. Probably, you will see seats switching hands on the strength of this issue alone.

But if there is also a wider perception that one of the main parties has been even more rapatious than the others, in some sort of emergent consensus of who is the least awful of the three, then it is possible that this will also influence the voters' decisions at constituency level - but only in terms of who they decide should replace the rotten, sitting MP. In other words, it is possible that if, say, the population decides that the Tories, while greedy, have been less contemptuously acquisitive than the Labour Party, then they will benefit from this enormously in the polls, and, of course, vice versa. The Tories will be praying this will be the outcome, but I think they're pissing in the wind if they really believe that this perception will develop, though. Likewise for Labour - only doubly so because they are 'the government' so it will inevitably go harder on them, and rightly so.

The real danger here is that voters will find themselves alienated from all three major parties. I say 'danger' not because it's undesirable to smash the party cartel which, it must now be clear to all except, well, MPs - far from it - but because this will not happen thanks to there being 300 local, anti-sleaze, independent new members of parliament after the next election, but thanks to the votes being split all over the country. The only ones that can benefit from split votes are extremists. My father said it yesterday: we are bloody lucky there isn't an Adolf Hitler waiting on the sidelines ala 1932, because that's how vulnerable these useless, money-grabbing, grubby little people have left the country.

We've got to stop the extremists from benefiting from the craven behaviour of morally bankrupt Ministers, MPs and, to an extent, other 'top public servants'.

The second question follows on from that: what can we do. Well, I like Old Holborn's idea, that we, the citizens, start making official complaints about rather than to MPs.

You too have the right to report a corrupt minister to the police. You are simply a citizen doing your duty. They are legally obliged to log the call and investigate.

What are we all waiting for? Seriously.

I totally agree. And if that helps to hasten the demise of Brown's hopeless regime, so much the better.

But it also stretches beyond these terrible ministers of greed. It's all MPs who should be placed firmly in the firing line, and by the only people to whom they are genuinely accountable: the people who put them in Parliament in the first place - their constituents. I think we should demand a chapter and verse explanation from each and every one of them about each and every claim they have made since the last parliament. Any expense that is not justifiable in the eyes of their constituents should be repaid immediately. Their penalty should then be left up to those same voters who will choose whether they get to keep their jobs or not. People like Hillary Benn will come out of such a process with reputations enhanced, we should remember. (I'd like to know, incidentally, what he and Ed Millipede feel about the behaviour of their colleagues - and why they didn't feel they could behave the same way. That would be interesting to hear).

Party leaderships should order this mass confessional - and lead by example. They cannot dodge this issue, as Brown, Cameron and Clegg appear to have sought to do thus far. If they continue to go down the 'police investigation of the leak' and the 'suing the Telegraph' routes, they will look increasingly high-handed, out of touch and, above all, anti-public. Fair warning to them now: they will reap a very violent whirlwind. They - and only they - will be completely culpable if (when), for instance, the first ever BNP [socialist-nationalist] MP is sent to parliament.

So action is most definitely required. And there is an opportunity here for David Cameron to show if really does have what it takes to clean up the system and form a new kind of genuinely open, clean government. In order to demonstrate to the people that he has moral authority as well as the backing of his party, he must decide to take the following course of action: any of his front bench caught if not exactly fiddling then certainly 'playing' the system in ways unbecoming of a future government minister, he must simply fire them - en masse if need be - withdraw the whip, as he did with Conway, and then send them back to their constituencies to face the music. That would be painful - but pain is what's required here.

If he does that, he could demand that Brown and Clegg follow suit. For Clegg that would be no big deal, frankly. But for Brown, whether he agrees to it or not, it means the end of his government. A general election will be triggered. During that election, Cameron and Clegg will at least have a case to make before a sceptical and seriously embittered electorate. In turn, this at least could ensure that extremists do not make the progress that the alternative - a moral vaccuum at the heart of British politics - will guarantee.

Will Cameron and Clegg have the guts to make the running?

Fat chance.

Times Ditches Labour, Brown

It's certainly worth having a look at this Leader in the Sunday Times. There's more to it than merely the stinging, relentless criticism of Labour and Brown. Up till now it had been a rumour supported by the a series of anti-government stories, but this is the article that signals that the all-important Murdoch endorsement has definitely expired.

For me, these parts in this regard are particularly, if obliquely, significant:

The new top rate will not raise enough money to compensate for the message that it sends to ambitious and hard-working people: “the more you make, the more we take”. Forget the exodus of the rich to Switzerland, America and Monaco, important though it may be. Many of the rich reluctantly accept they should pay more tax, but only if they feel the state is using that money prudently and living within its means.

Combined with the Lawson assault in the Telegraph, this is all beginning to look terrible for Brown. But while the DT's allegiance is hard to determine, the Times has almost certainly jumped ship and is now very nearly on board the SS Cameron.

That bond has been broken, with the private sector taking almost all of the the pain of the recession. It furthermore explicitly breaks a Labour manifesto commitment that Mr Brown solemnly swore to keep four years ago.

This is devastating stuff because it sounds so personal. Someone at the Times is hopping mad and that someone is most likely its owner. One thing is certain, though, it's proof positive that Brown can now expect active campaigning for his head on a platter in at least one heavyweight paper. Murdoch is out for blood. The Times leader hammers home the point, mercilessly:

The public is beginning to see Mr Brown in a new light. The principled politician now looks unprincipled. Instead of honesty, we have had dishonesty. Instead of a moral compass, we have had an immoral and sleazy Downing Street machine. Instead of prudence, we have had an imprudence rarely seen before in British history. Commentators have begun to liken him to Richard Nixon, clever but flawed, angry and willing to use any means to stay in power.

For the people of Britain, the consequences of that imprudence will be with us for many years. It will take nearly a decade to get public borrowing to acceptable levels – if the markets allow us that long – and until the 2030s to get government debt back to the 40% “ceiling”. Whoever wins the general election, we can look forward to years of austerity and tax rises.

For 'the public' read 'this paper', and for 'this paper' read 'our boss'!

I'm convinced now that Brown can't last the year without an election because he's broken too many promises, made too many enemies and totally lost control of the news agenda.

In that election, Labour will be kicked-out.