Shortly after the second world war the Newspaper Proprietors' Association persuaded the Glasgow Herald to introduce a two-year training scheme for Oxbridge graduates who wanted to become professional journalists-then, unlike now, a rare breed. It was my good fortune to be chosen as the first guinea pig. But not once throughout the whole two-year period was I allowed to write a single sentence of my own. Instead, the job consisted of sub-editing the writing of others-checking and, if necessary, correcting their facts, their spelling and their grammar. Even that description aggrandises the nature of my task. For at least the first six months it consisted of nothing more-apart from making tea for the other subs-than copying out from the Radio Times the BBC programmes, the weather reports from the Meteorological Office, the tides and lighting-up times, details about the moon, the sun and the stars and, if I was particularly unlucky, the cattle market prices, all of which duties, as an aspiring foreign correspondent, I found somewhat infra dig.
After a few months my concentration began to falter, and there would be letters from readers complaining about having been badly misled about one or other of these by no means unimportant matters. A particularly large postbag arrived after I had mixed up the time of Itma-then the favourite light programme comedy starring Tommy Handley-with that of Music While You Work, another light programme regular. Needless to say, the chief sub-editor, Andy Anderson-a splendid Glaswegian autodidact who had never disguised his scepticism about trying to turn graduates into proper journalists-had his worst suspicions confirmed. Not that this worried me unduly. In my arrogance I saw no reason why clerical proficiency should be regarded as an important condition of journalistic promise. As well expect some future virtuoso pianist to concern himself with misprints in a concert programme.
Eventually, however, this cavalier attitude to accuracy got me into trouble with my immediate superior, the late Alastair Hetherington-who went on to become a legendary editor of the Manchester Guardian. Too busy one evening, subbing next day's lead story, he had farmed out to me, as a great privilege, the birthday honours list. This meant having to check the respective ages of all the new barons and knights by looking up their dates of birth in Who's Who. Even this piece of research proved beyond me, and I got some of their ages a year out, as Hetherington furiously pointed out when I came into the office the next day. "Unless you take accuracy more seriously there is no future for you in journalism," he warned.
Time to move on, I concluded. Fortunately, before going to the Glasgow Herald, I had applied to The Times for a job and been told to try again in two years time after completing my apprenticeship in Scotland. I did; and I was lucky enough to be taken on as a junior in the foreign subs' room, where I spent another year without being allowed to write a word. But my cavalier attitude to accuracy soon got me into trouble again. One night I was asked to check the spelling of all the Arabic names of the Sudanese government, which was then the custom of The Times to give in full-something they don't bother to do nowadays, even for the British government itself. "Get advice from the professor," the chief foreign sub-editor advised. This was easier said than done. On reaching the specialist corridor on the floor above I found that there were five different professors to choose from and, without knocking on every closed door, no way to know which was the relevant one for my purpose. As it was, even after locating the Arab specialist, Rushbrook Williams, I still managed to misspell the name of the junior minister of posts, an error soon pointed out by a senior ex-official of the Sudanese civil service-with the likes of whom The Times readership was then richly endowed.
In disgrace I was called before the editor, William Casey, until then only an august and distant presence. He gave me much the same message-only more politely expressed-as I had been given by Alastair Hetherington. His way of putting it went like this: "Dear boy, The Times is a stable of hacks and a thoroughbred like you will never be at home here." Those were the good old days when even a rebuke was dressed up as a compliment. Unfortunately, as I learned later, this was his routine circumlocution to all aspirant journalists from Oxbridge who were judged to lack the necessary gravitas about matters of fact. Apparently he had used the same language to sack another such, just down, with a starred first in classics from Balliol, who had failed to notice a solipsism in the Archbishop of Canterbury's regular Easter sermon.
In those days, of course, The Times was prized all over the world as the international paper of record. So its obsessional concern with accuracy was understandable. Its readers cared desperately about these details-as if their lives depended upon them, as indeed in some cases they well might have. Legend had it that in the 19th century a war between Britain and France had nearly broken out because of a mistake in a despatch from the Paris correspondent. The Times in those days was not read for entertainment, but for essential information needed by the then governing classes to carry out their official duties. How seriously colleagues at The Times took this responsibility is well-illustrated by an exchange I had with one or two of them at about this time. Apparently the chair in the subs' room I was sitting in had a few years previously been occupied by Graham Greene, already a well-known novelist, whose time there had been given over entirely to checking the stories of others rather than writing his own. "Was that not a waste of his talents?" I had na?vely enquired, only to be told, in no uncertain terms, that the last thing a serious newspaper like The Times wanted on its staff was "a famous writer of fiction." I doubt whether today's editor would take the same view. More likely he would put a huge box on the front page announcing "Top Writer Joins The Times."
The most important qualification for being a journalist when I began, 50 years ago, was not an ability to write. That was even a disadvantage, because literary facility could so easily tempt a journalist into embroidering the tale which needed above all else to be told plainly and unvarnished. Nor was it only literary facility that aroused suspicion in those days; so also did any tendency towards intellectual sensationalism-fondness for paradox, for turning arguments on their head so as better to make a point. Intellectuals were frowned on, as well as writers, and not only by The Times. When I went to the Telegraph, then owned by Michael Berry (later Lord Hartwell), I ran into the same attitudes. Viewy young men were discouraged, particularly if their views were radical. Of course this was partly because the Telegraph, then as now, supported the Conservative cause. But another reason was that all the quality newspapers of those days, including the liberal Manchester Guardian, felt a real responsibility for not rocking the ship of state.
Recently I heard Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, say in a lecture that "the exposure of corruption in high places is at the very centre of what good journalism is about." Fifty years ago, an editor, even a radical one like CP Scott, Rusbridger's great predecessor, would have said that muck-raking was unworthy of the quality press. While any hack can expose what the powerful are doing wrong, it takes real experience and skill to discern what they are doing right. Upsetting the apple cart was easy; much more valuable was the journalist who accepted a duty to provide support, as well as constructive criticism, for the authorities. Leading articles, too, were intended to help rather than to hinder. The King's government had to be carried on; although this did not preclude criticism, it did preclude criticism which might endanger the national interest. Hence the conspiracy, agreed on by all the British newspapers of the time to conceal from the public, until the very last moment, Edward VIII's liaison with Wallis Simpson.
In those days, Britain was still a great power with a great empire, the hub of the universe, with the kind of quality newspapers that such a role required. If you want to know what they read like, look at the New York Times, which is the nearest equivalent today. Nobody would read it for pleasure. It is dull, prolix and full of details-domestic and foreign (there are unabridged G7 communiqu?s)-which no British newspaper would dream of printing. Nor does this attention to detail extend only to affairs of state. In reporting a city fire, the New York Times gives the names and ages of the firemen, as I was taught to do 50 years ago on the Glasgow Herald. (One of the reasons for the continuing high-mindedness of American quality newspapers is that they are mainly regional monopolies. In a reversal of the situation in Britain, the most aggressive, competitive, journalism in the US is often found in the electronic media, not print.)
With the end of Britain's Great Power responsibilities, even the most educated newspaper readers began to look for gossip, rather than news; for pleasure rather than business; for speculation rather than facts; and above all, for human interest stories rather than public interest stories. As the needs of the consumer have slowly changed, so have the skills required of the producer-which has suited playboy editors, such as myself, rather better, in the end, than it has suited hommes s?rieux such as Alastair Hetherington. Personally I have nothing to complain about. But what about the quality of journalism itself?
Both the tabloids and the broadsheets in Britain have become incomparably more sophisticated, lively and well-written, as well as much more adversarial, mischievous and irresponsible; this has attracted an avalanche of new recruits. The prospect of starting at once on one of the innumerable gossip columns to which newspapers are now so addicted, and of moving on swiftly to investigative reporting, scandal exposure, adversarial leaders and, in no time at all, a signed column with your photograph at the top, has them queuing up for entry. Journalism, instead of being the Cinderella of the professions, has become the most sought-after, attracting a disproportionate number of the brightest in the land. At my last reckoning I counted more Fellows of All Souls writing for newspapers than sitting on the bench, or in the House of Commons, or in the Treasury.
In theory, such an influx of the brightest should have had the effect of raising standards; so far as the quality of writing is concerned, this has indeed happened. But what about reliability of the news, accuracy of the reporting, and the balance of comment-have these improved as well? Most certainly not. The journalist as aspiring writer or intellectual, rather than as hack, has little concern with "mere" facts, as Coleridge called them, if they get in the way of a more "comprehensive" truth that he is trying to make. The journalist as writer or intellectual fancies himself as an artist-that is, someone who has a skill which enables him to improve on nature, as much in words as in paint, clay or music. There is an element of trickery in art-sublime trickery, at best; but trickery nevertheless.
Not surprisingly, the journalist as writer-intellectual is not content to report a train accident straight-so many dead and injured; so many carriages wrecked-but must fill out the picture with speculation and colour, most of which tells us more about the author-what a good writer he is-than about the train crash. This is not quite fair. In the journalism of a great writer such as Rudyard Kipling, the reader, as it happens, will learn a great deal about train crashes in general-the essential truth about train crashes-or in Hazlitt's journalism, the essential truth about boxing, or in Hemingway's, the essential truth about bull-fighting. But this is not the same as learning all the nitty-gritty boring details of a minor derailment on the 10:20am from Burnley to Accrington. It is precisely the nitty-gritty details which the newspaper hack used to be expected to obtain. But the newspaper writer-intellectual aspires instead to find the facts behind the facts; as feature writer to add a bit of colour to the facts; as columnist to explain the facts; as leader writer to say what the reader should make of the facts. In so far as today's writer-journalist is willing to deal with the facts at all, they have to be scoops-facts which he is the first to reveal. Ordinary, humdrum facts-speeches in the Houses of Commons, communiqu?s, official statements-are of little interest, except as a scaffolding on which the reporter can build a verbal structure of his own design. When did you last read a speech-unless it was a British minister or an American president confessing a sexual misadventure-reported in full? Nowadays reporters are too busy reading between the lines ever to bother with the lines themselves.
I ought to know about all this, having been one of the earliest offenders. I remember in the 1960s being despatched by the Daily Telegraph-on which most of my journalistic life was happily spent-to report on some coup in an African capital. Instead of keeping my eyes open in the bus on the way from the airport to the city centre, I had mine buried in some learned tome about the country's history, with a view to showing off my new-found knowledge in the next day's paper. As a result, unlike the reporters on the bus-few if any of whom, in those days, had a degree-I failed to notice the decapitated corpses lying by the roadside. Doubtless my learned despatch reached hidden depths about the causes of the crisis lacking in those of my tabloid rivals, but in overlooking the corpses it failed to give the readers the essential here-and-now facts that it was a reporter's duty to include.
The Daily Telegraph was not pleased. In those days it was a newspaper which had no time for opinionated reporters, or indeed for opinionated leader or feature writers who were more interested in dazzling than in informing the reader. Any "fine writing" was instantly spiked, much to the outrage of the new generation of graduate would-be columnists, such as Colin Welch and myself, who were then seeking to make a mark. Hence the amount we drank. Denied the opportunity to get high on words, we had to resort to alcohol. On the Manchester Guardian it was different. Indulged with space for literary frills, sociological theories and historical analogies, they used up their bon mots in print rather than in pubs.
My point is that in the media today truth is sacrificed to art (or at least artfulness); reporting to literature. This is not a matter of dumbing down; rather its opposite, wising up. Newspapers are far more sophisticated, far cleverer, far better written than they were before; incomparably more entertaining and readable. A column in The Times by Matthew Parris has even (deservedly) earned a place in the New Oxford Book of English Prose-the first hack ever to do so.
But therein lies the danger: the picture of the world presented by the media is both much more beautiful and much more ugly, both much more eye-catching and much more dramatic, both much more simple and much more complicated, than it really is. Instead of getting the worm's-eye-reporter's- view, we are getting the artist's view which owes more to the corruptions of style than to the virtues of truth.
No longer do we get politics reported straight; we get a columnist's impression of what happened and a sketch writer's impression of what MPs said, which, needless to say, is wittier and cleverer than what they actually said. Even wars now get this personalised coverage. We remember the names of those who report them-John Simpson, Kate Adie, Robert Fisk-far more readily than we remember the names of the generals who fought them. Every subject is now personalised. It is no longer sex we are told about but so-and-so's sex; no longer food and drink in general, but so-and-so's food and drink; and most recently, no longer cancer, but so-and-so's cancer.
John Pilger has made it his life's work to champion the cause of the oppressed. Yet whose name do we remember as a result of his lifetime of campaigning? John Pilger's own. Indeed, he has given a new verb-to pilger-to the English language. This is not to suggest that he set out consciously on an ego trip. But that is what this kind of personalised journalism is bound to become. What we remember most about the Dreyfus affair-as Richard Sennett recently pointed out in the Times Literary Supplement-is not so much the suffering of the wrongly-imprisoned French captain himself, as the eloquence of the great writer-journalist Emile Zola who sprang to his defence. There is something worrying here-the whole of human life, as much on the grand scale as on the trivial-war, politics, sex, culture, food-all reduced to what can be compressed into a column.
Just as the painter excludes from his painting any colour extraneous to his personal vision, so does the contemporary journalist-writer-intellectual filter anything uninteresting from his article. This is not out of base reasons of political bias. It is out of a kind of artistic integrity-a desire to produce as grippingly interesting a piece of writing as his word-processor can compose. If the facts are stranger than fiction, they will be included. But if they are dull, out they will go. Journalism for journalism's sake, that is the new rule, the highest imperative, under cover of which everything else can be excused and justified.
What Rupert Murdoch has done to and for journalism towards the end of this century is what Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) did to and for journalism towards the beginning of the century. But whereas Harmsworth pioneered a new journalism designed to meet the needs, aspirations and social insecurities of the first generation blessed by universal state primary and secondary education, Murdoch has done the same for the first generation blessed by mass state higher education. Thus, today's Sunday Times, with its sophisticated debunking of national institutions, is the equivalent of the much more puerile fun and games favoured, a century earlier, by Harmsworth's Tit Bits. But I fear that this second transformation will prove more damaging than the first. While Harmsworth only exploited the credulity and aspirations of the barely literate masses at the bottom of the pile, Murdoch is doing the same for the new educated elites at the top; first the young Thatcherites and now the young Labourites. Dumb they are not. If only they were.
