The Hindu : Blair and the media

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 18, 2002

Opinion

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Blair and the media

By Hasan Suroor

The culture of "spin"... is at the heart of the perpetual Blair-media tension... Nothing that comes out of Downing Street is taken at face value any more.

AT SOME point, all liberal democracies come into conflict with the very idea of freedom that defines them because sooner or later Governments discover that their own interests and aims could be threatened by rights and freedoms of other groups in civil society. The one area Governments find particularly hard to handle is their relationship with the media. More so, when the press is combative and starts to fancy itself as a substitute for a weak Opposition. Faced with relentless media assaults not on just policy issues but on individuals and their private lives, the Governments begin to suspect its motives and, when push comes to shove, even question the democratic legitimacy of an "unelected" fourth estate.

The argument, one is hearing in Britain as the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, fights almost daily battles with an aggressive and intrusive media, is that surely there are limits beyond which a Government with a popular mandate to govern cannot allow itself to be "bullied" by journalists who, for all their admirable zeal to clean up society, in the end represent no one but private — and in many cases politically partisan — interests.

But the argument has not been easy to translate into action, as the Government discovered to its exasperation and embarrassment recently. In a test case, Downing Street reported three Tory publications to the Press Complaints Commission over allegations that Mr. Blair's office put pressure on a Palace official to get a more prominent role for him at the Queen Mother's funeral in April. But, within weeks, it was forced to drop the case. The circumstances are too complicated to be retailed here, but the fact is that its first major attempt to "discipline" the press failed miserably. Maybe, it picked on the wrong issue, handled it badly but as one Labour supporter said: "It proves that you should never ever take on the press."

But let's go back to where the roots of the Blair-media confrontation lie — in Downing Street and the Prime Minister's communications director, Alistair Campbell, whose job, to put it crudely, is to "manipulate" news in favour of his boss and the Government. Outside of what is known as the Westminster "village", which mainly comprises politicians, civil servants, journalists and an assortment of wheeler-dealers, few will have heard of Mr. Campbell, a former tabloid journalist but now the most high-profile presence in "No 10" after the Prime Minister. Mr. Blair is said to be "psychologically dependent" on him, even senior Ministers are careful not to cross his path and it is common belief that without him Downing Street would come to a grinding halt. It is not for nothing that he has been nicknamed the "de facto Deputy Prime Minister". But it is his aggressive approach to news management which has made him notoriously famous, given a dubious new meaning to the word "spin", alienated journalists and done more to damage the Government's image than any single policy or action.

The culture of "spin" which "Ali C", as he is known in gossip columns, has spawned is at the heart of the perpetual Blair-media tension. Even Mr. Blair's allies acknowledge that the Government is obsessed with "image" and there is so much stress on presentation — on looking "good" — that even its genuine claims are greeted with deep scepticism. Nothing that comes out of Downing Street is taken at face value any more.

The Government blames this on a "cynical" press which, according to the Labour Party chairman, Charles Clarke, is set to bring "democratic politics into disrepute" by constantly talking about "sleaze" and "spin". Critics, on the other hand, accuse New Labour of "paranoia" and "intolerance" despite the Blair Government's strong position, especially after a second landslide election victory barely a year ago. "This is a still robust regime in full command of its majority, dominant in the polls. What's happening?" a pro-Labour commentator asked amid a fresh media-Government row last week.

Another view is that historically the Governments which have steamroller majorities in Parliament that tend to be arrogant, particularly towards the media which they see as a pretender to the Opposition "throne". On the other hand, weaker regimes — coalitions or minority Governments — are likely to court the media more assiduously purely as a survival tactic. In a sense, the Blair Government is acting to a type in its confrontational attitude towards the press; and vice-versa.

In recent weeks, the tension has reached breaking point and for the first time since Labour came to power five years ago there is alarm in official circles over the damage a hostile press can do to a Government whose credibility is already very low. And it should know, having itself effectively used the media to perform the last rites of John Major's unlamented Tory regime in 1997. However, the tactics which worked so well in Opposition have started to boomerang when what people are looking for are not smart sound bites from a Government-in-waiting but delivery on its promises now that it is in power. But the Government finds it hard to accept that there is genuine widespread disillusionment with its performance, and instead it has convinced itself that there is a media conspiracy to damage it. Bruising memories of the damage inflicted on successive Labour leaderships by a hostile Tory press in the past are still strong, and the party is determined not to allow history to repeat itself. But is it going about it the right way?

The British media is even more cruel and unsparing than its American counterpart, and attempts to tame it make it more ferocious. Despite the differing political affiliations of their newspapers, British journalists run as a pack and once they get their teeth into something, which is likely to acquire "legs" and walk on to the front page day after day, there is no stopping the pack. In the past 18 months at least three Ministers — Peter Mandelson, Keith Vaz and Stephen Byers — have lost their jobs because of media pressure, and an impression has been created that every large corporate donation to the Labour Party is either a bribe for a favour already done or an advance deposit for future favours. Acres of newsprint and TV footage have gone into proving a "lie" or a "cover-up".

The coverage of the funeral row with newspapers and 24-hour TV news channels retailing inanities about who said what to whom and when — the idea being to show that Mr. Blair is capable of even exploiting a solemn occasion such as a funeral to get himself into the limelight — shows the extent to which relations have deteriorated. The situation has gone beyond skirmishes and a full-scale war is raging. A senior Minister has admitted that the "essence of the problem is that we brought into Government the campaigning habits that had served us well in previous years", that is when in Opposition. The Government's sympathisers are urging it to rid itself of its obsession with image, be more "straight" with the people, get on with business and "leave trivia to us", as The Observer said. And, most important, don't forget what happened to previous administrations which tried to take on the press.

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