Alan and Lionel speak to LBC broadcaster and author James O’Brien, who takes aim at Daily Mail chief Paul Dacre, news mogul Rupert Murdoch and journalist, broadcaster and editor Andrew Neil—three media figures he includes in his book about the people he thinks “broke Britain”.
O’Brien also reflects on David Cameron’s return to frontline politics and discusses his version of opinionated political broadcasting.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Alan Rusbridger:
This episode has been sponsored by purpose-led communications agency, Higginson Strategy, B Corp certified Higginson strategy creates campaigns it truly believes in. If you would like to know more, please visit www.higginsonstrategy... All one word, dot com. Hello and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine's weekly journey beyond the Clickbait to explore and explain the fascinating and contested world of media. I'm Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
And I'm Lionel Barber. On this episode, one of the leading liberal voices in UK broadcasting, James O'Brien, takes aim at Paul Dacre, Rupert Murdoch and Andrew Neil. The media figures he claims Broke Britain.
Alan Rusbridger:
And after our last episode on GB News, O'Brien talks about his version of opinionated broadcasting.
James O'Brien:
This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation, with James O'Brien.
Lionel Barber:
Three minutes after 10 is the time. A very good morning to
James O'Brien:
So, if I say for example that Suella Braverman actually wants people to attack this march on Saturday, I can see people responding to that by saying, "Damn right, and we should attack it." So, by calling it a hate march, she very deliberately creates the idea that it is something which must be resisted.
Lionel Barber:
Don't forget to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode. And Media Confidential is on X/Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
Alan Rusbridger:
So Lionel, you're back. This is a rare pleasure to have you in London for our weekly meeting. You've walked back into a political storm.
Lionel Barber:
I feel I'm the non-dom here on this podcast.
Alan Rusbridger:
We won't go to your tax affairs on this programme.
Lionel Barber:
But I was besieged with emails about David Cameron's return to the government, particularly across the Atlantic. And my explanation was, this is really the fag-end of the government. This is Rishi Sunak's last throw of the dice. He had to sack Suella Braverman, moves cleverly to the home office. He's got a gap. And David Cameron, I think I'm pretty clear, was interested in a political comeback.
The interesting thing, two questions. One is, are those private sector links, the Greensill, the money he took from Lex Greensill, now still under investigation, will that comeback to bite him? And the second is, what presence will he be on the foreign scene? He knows some of the leaders, but a lot of leaders in Europe either have gone, or see him as a bit of a failure in the run-up to Brexit.
Alan Rusbridger:
I've been having fun on Twitter off what I'm now calling off gum-gate. This was the pages in Nadine Dorries's book, which leapt off the page to me because she claims a BBC director, Robbie Gibb, Sir Robbie Gibb, tried to intervene along with some officials in Downey Street, in the appointment of the chair of Ofcom. And what interests me about this story, clearly that would be wrong. You can't have BBC directors choosing the regulator to regulate the BBC. That's completely wrong. Is that nobody is accountable these days.
So, I emailed the BBC press office. They gave me the brush-off. I've emailed Robbie Gibb, he's given me the brush-off. He hasn't bothered to reply. And so, this morning I've emailed number 10, and I expect to be given the brush-off. And it's like nobody in modern life is accountable anymore.
Lionel Barber:
Well, I know one thing about you, Alan, is that you are a terrier who whens the teeth goes into the trouser leg, you don't let go. I've seen that over many years, but I agree with you. They just think that they don't have to answer questions. This is a matter of public interest. It's an important regulator. And if there was improper interference, we should know about it.
Alan Rusbridger:
Well, I don't want to come over all Nadine Dorries about this, but there is the whiff of conspiracy about it. If we think about what we were talking about last week, why has Ofcom not done anything about GB News? Then you think, well why was the government, in the form of Boris Johnson, so keen to get Paul Dacre in to run Ofcom. Having failed to do that, then you put in the 80-year-old Lord Grade.
But then, there's this intervention at last minute by three named people, Dougie Smith, Munira Mirza, and Robbie Gibb, to novel the process. And according to Nadine Dorries, the note that she booked into the red box of the Prime Minister, was then switched. Why were they so keen to get their bloke in to run Ofcom?
Lionel Barber:
It's very interesting. I was talking to somebody, actually, I better say, who was involved in the process. Let's leave it at that. But this person made two very important points. One is, Paul Dacre completely flunked the first interview process with the appointments committee for the Ofcom chair. He didn't know anything about really what the job was. He's totally unsuitable, so he was unanimously rejected. And of course, as we know, Downing Street then rewrote the brief-
Alan Rusbridger:
To get Dacre-
Lionel Barber:
To get Dacre in. But in fact he then withdrew from the process and became, is it the technical term, god back at the Daily Mail?
Alan Rusbridger:
Yeah, it's not Watergate. But on the other hand, if you're going to have a media regulator, it has to be independent from government. And I'm beginning to suspect that it's not very independent from government, and we may come back to that in future episodes. Anyway, I'm going to write about this in my column this week, which leads me to the plug for the seasonal subscription offer for Prospect Magazine. And we're discounting the price of the annual digital subscription by an astonishing 50%. So, to take advantage of this great deal, please rush to prospectmagazine.co.uk/bf. But be quick, because the offer ends on Monday the 27th of November.
So, this week we've got James O'Brien who hosts the morning radio show on LBC between 10:00 and 13:00. He has a pretty considerable audience. I think he was telling us it was 1.4 million. He's got more than a million followers on Twitter. And he begins every show... I don't know if you listen to it-
Lionel Barber:
I do now.
Alan Rusbridger:
... with what you might call a daily rant in which he gets things off his chest, but he's written a new book, which is fascinating. How would you describe his significance in the media ecosystem in this country, Lionel?
Lionel Barber:
I think he speaks for a constituency that feels that this present government, that conservatives have obviously been in power 13 years of been a complete failure. Now, it's pretty hard edged what he says. He doesn't pull any punches, but he does his research and he ties things together. Now, I wouldn't use the word conspiracy, that's a too big word, but sometimes a lot is put in the same pot, stirred vigorously, and this worldview or a view of Britain. Now, I think where he's good is he does take the calls. He does take the criticism, and he's extremely lucid and persuasive.
Alan Rusbridger:
Anyway, we enjoyed talking to him on Monday, and I thought it was a fascinating interview.
James, welcome to Prospect Towers. You've written a book which has very recently come out called How They Broke Britain. It's got 10 chapters and the first three chapters, which is why we're here. Concern three figures, who you put in the dock for having Broken Britain, chapter one, Rupert Murdoch, chapter two, Paul Dacre, chapter three, Andrew Neal. I wondered if you could begin by giving us the potted charge sheet for each of those three.
James O'Brien:
I think Murdoch's... Actually, Murdoch and Dacre probably equally obvious, but Murdoch's interesting not just because of the editorial direction that his papers have taken and they're very deliberate and not that slow, but it's still quite incremental way in which the more tabloid sensibilities of a Kelvin McKenzie era son have come to infect other parts of his empire. There's supposedly more respectable parts of his empire, which I think we've also seen happen in America.
There's a little bit in there about Fox News just in terms of how comfortable he is with the complete subversion of the truth and how comfortable he is offering up what Kellyanne Conway called alternative facts as genuine news. Because if someone is comfortable enough doing that, albeit in another country, then I think it opens up all sorts of questions about what might have happened here in plain sight and under our collective noses without us necessarily noticing the full extent of it. I was fascinated by Harry Evans's account of how he actually got his hands on The Sunday Times, and the complicity really of Margaret Thatcher in that. And these little moments that sum him up, like claiming at Leveson that he couldn't remember going to checkers for a very friendly meeting. Shortly before Thatcher changed, the cabinet minister who would have the decision over whether or not his times and Sunday Times crucially purchase would be referred to monopolies and mergers.
She swapped out quite a tough nosed character for a much softer character. And he said at Leveson that he couldn't remember the meeting at checkers and the QC responded by saying, well, that's old. I've got your thank you letter here. It was released on cabinet papers not that long ago.
So with him, it's both the background and this cloaking himself in epic respectability and power. There's quite a lot about the Rebekah Brooks contact with Cameron, which again wouldn't have come out if it wasn't for Leveson. These astonishing text messages where she is essentially salivating at the Prospect of in her own words, doing business together. And journalism I naively believe, and the book is dedicated to my late father, where I got a lot of these naive beliefs from, or they weren't naive in his day. It was supposed to speak truth to power. It was supposed to hold power accountable.
And the idea that behind the scenes you're cozying up over country suppers and literally stating your belief that you're going to be working in tandem with each other, in complete conjunction. Not long after, as of course Andy Corson arrived at Downing Street, with all the problems that entailed. And then, we look a little at the Hillsborough episode, which I think was among the very lowest points of the British media, and as is Murdoch's modus operandi, the man responsible, Kelvin Mackenzie wasn't in any way sanctioned or punished for that, and still arguably hasn't made any proper atonement for what he did to the families of the Hillsborough dead.
Then we move on to Paul Dacre, who I probably began the book with the most animus about, because I speak to people on my radio show every day, and I speak to their children as well increasingly, and they talk to me about the impenetrable nature of their parents' convictions. And they are convictions built upon, in many ways, Paul Dacre's prejudices. So, the weaponization of immigration. And when you look back, particularly in the immediate run-up to Brexit, you can almost sense the turning up of the dial and the way that his newspaper has essentially created a bogus representation of what he would call middle England, which instead of being defined by pride or patriotism, or even a slightly rose-tinted retrospective vision of England rather than the UK.
Instead it's all about victimhood. It's all about being under siege. It's all about being under attack. It's a constant whining, victimhood, that I just find so depressing. Because when I speak to people on the radio who've been persuaded of these positions, I get a daily dose of how effective it's been.
There are a few recorded examples of him actually laying out his credo in two or three speeches that he's given because of course he'll never be properly interviewed or properly exposed to the kind of scrutiny that he's very comfortable demanding of everybody else.
And in those speeches, some remarkable moments really. Like the very casual use of Cultural Marxism before people in the conservative party really picked up on it. And you have to presume he's conscious of its antisemitic roots and the way in which it's used, to conjure up images of a secret cabal pulling the strings of power.
That's a recurring theme of the whole book. The people who really are pulling the strings of power, constantly inventing woke mobs or blobs, or tofu eating woke karate's, who they insist are actually the real or new elites is a more modern iteration, they insist are the real power brokers. When if you push them for names of people in this secret cabal, the ones they come up with generally are Carol Vorderman and Gary Lineker, who are lovely people but categorically not responsible for running the country from behind a velvet curtain.
And then Andrew Neil, which to me was a really obvious choice, from the very beginning actually as much for what he represents as for what he does. So the quote in his own autobiography is that you can only get a big job in Murdoch's Empire if you agree with him about everything, all words to that effect. And that, of course is no obstacle somehow to him then becoming a flagship interviewer for the BBC for the part of two decades. But I give the example in the book of a 25-year-old researcher who the newspapers concluded the day after his first shift on the Daily Politics, has no business working at the BBC because he's so obviously biassed. And his offence, which they dug up from his own Facebook page, was to post a picture of his dog on a Facebook group called Dogs for Jeremy Corbyn.
So I like Andrew Neil, his role in the sense that he highlights both respect to liberalisation, for want of a better word, of really rancid rhetoric, the stuff that Tacky and Rod Little and Douglas Murray come out with. We've seen a lot of it this week in particular, and Neil has cloaked them in the traditions and history of The Spectator Magazine, which is both august and honourable. And they have then migrated back into Murdoch Media where they write for both tabloid and broad sheep. But they're essentially. Well, I give plenty of examples in the book where they're offering up at the very least ethno-nationalism, and at the very worst racism and Islamophobia. But he doesn't only do that, he also of course represents the character that the right-wing media will allow to work at the BBC with other interests. He's somehow immune to the accusations that people like Emily Meatless and Louis Goodall might feel have almost hounded them out of the corporation.
So there's a double, if not a triple standard there that I find fascinating, because it portrays the BBC or elements of the BBC management, as almost having been gaslit into a position now of cowardice. Nick Robinson on the Today Programme is a former chair of the Macclesfield Young Conservatives, the Cheshire Young Conservatives, the Oxford University Conservative Association, and the Young Conservatives, the sabbatical year position, the national organisation. None of which impinges upon his ability to do a job on the Today Programme. But if a 25-year-old researcher on the Daily Politics, is going to be castigated in the express, The Mail, The Son, and The Telegraph, in some cases over more than one day for doing a shift as a fact-checker on the Daily Politics. It's frankly staggering that somebody with that student background, can hold down one of the plumber's jobs at the corporation.
Alan Rusbridger:
And I cycle into work. And I'm afraid this gives away the time that I get to work. But I get to work just in time for your rant. I have a dose of Nick Ferrari, and then it's James O'Brien. And I'm struck with how often your rant is pegged to something that's happened in the Daily Mail or in the Murdoch Press. And I'm interested by what you think the influence of the mainstream media still is, because you say that the people who come on your show are influenced, but there's also another narrative that mainstream media is losing its power, and that is with social media that's more important nowadays. What do you think the actual influence of mainstream media is?
James O'Brien:
I think it's very different from what it was previously. Obviously, many of the people I'm talking about aren't going out and buying a newspaper every morning, but they will be looking at the online offerings of course, and they'll also be looking at articles that have been shared on Facebook, and they'll be looking at columns and commentary pieces that have been shared on Facebook.
But even more than that perhaps, they're plucking words and phrases that then get used as a curious combination of both weapon and fig leaf. Fig leaf to camouflage perhaps some ignorance, about the broader issues or the reality of the situation, and weapons because they involve an invitation to turn on someone. So, hate March this week would be a wonderful example of a phrase that has been introduced to public discourse by a politician, but it has reached parts that politicians cannot reach because of media dissemination. But anything from woke to political correctness, to Londonistan, which I think at times columnist coined. So, there's a poisoning of public discourse that doesn't demand that somebody is reading every page of any newspaper every day, but it's about setting a tone or setting the background music, if you like.
And then of course, sometimes they even pick up comment pieces on the Today Programme from these newspapers that are dedicated to the destruction of the BBC. Genuinely dedicated, Dacre and Murdoch don't make any bones about that. And Nadine Dorries was dancing to their tune not that long ago, and yet the BBC is such a daft old brush that they then give oxygen and attention to comment pieces in these newspapers, usually cloaked in the language of, "Well, of course some people might say..." And then, you'll quote a Daily Mail editorial line in the heart of the BBC.
And I think it's a form of Overton window. I don't think we've noticed, any of us really, have noticed how far this course has moved from anything resembling a centre ground to right-wing talking points becoming almost the only talking points in town, to the point that I start the show with many of them as an exercise in refuting them, but I'm still responding to them.
Lionel Barber:
James, if I could pick up the cross-examination there, we'll leave Paul Dacre aside for a moment. But first of all, Murdoch and then Andrew Neil. And full disclosure, I did work for Rupert Murdoch 40 years ago. Didn't go through whopping, but certainly saw an owner who took on unions who were destroying the newspapers, and really gave a new lease of life to Fleet Street. First of all, and then I'll come to Andrew Neil in a minute. I also served under him as editor.
James O'Brien:
Of course.
Lionel Barber:
Well, Rupert Murdoch, is he not really... This is about a benign use of power or benign neglect. The Times actually did not support Brexit. Other newspapers have not taken direction, so to speak. I wonder whether you're exaggerating the Murdoch effect. And actually what we're really talking about, is a proprietor who wants to be close to Powell. That's why he was close to Tony Blair.
James O'Brien:
I do, I mentioned that. I think many people probably missed the fact that Tony Blair is godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch's children. And I talked to Tony Blair about it, about whether or not you can achieve power without having the reciprocal proximity, whether you have to reach out to Rupert Murdoch as well.
I'd reach for Fox News again as evidence of what he's prepared to do. We can argue about what he's in pursuit of, but I'd agree with you it's power and influence, and obviously money. But the Dominion case showed just how cynical they are about what is true, and just how much contempt they hold their own consumers in, and how comfortable they are completely subverting the truth. And you couldn't have done the stuff that the tabloid end of the business has done without having the broadsheet end. This is why in many ways the decline doesn't begin when he bought The Sun in I think '69, or the News of the World just before that. It begins when he got his hands on The Times, because you have to be taken seriously when you are the owner of the paper of record. And although the Daily Edition did ostensibly come out for Brexit, it wasn't exactly-
Lionel Barber:
And Remain.
James O'Brien:
I beg your pardon, came out for Remain. It wasn't exactly full throated, and it was almost disingenuous. It's as if you've put your rottweilers on one side of the argument, and then you've put your toy poodles on the other side, and claim that you've balanced it out somehow.
Lionel Barber:
Well, you should have read The Sunday Times editorial on Brexit. That was even worse in terms of a dog's breakfast. But there we are.
James O'Brien:
Yes, of course. They didn't know where they were coming or going, did they?
Lionel Barber:
But just on Andrew Neil, his position is, I'm the chair, I'm not the editor. Actually, Fraser Nelson is the editor.
James O'Brien:
I don't buy that, Lionel. I don't buy that. There's one piece of evidence in the book where he sat down for lunch with the FT, actually, your old paper. And the interviewer, would it be Janine Gibson, I think?
Lionel Barber:
It was, yeah.
James O'Brien:
It was very cleverly said, "It's the one that really matters to you as the spectator, isn't it in all of these?" And he said, "Yes it is, because that's mine. I'm in charge of that. I'm in charge of everything." So, he can claim until he is blue in the face that he's not at the very least complicit in the Nazi apologist and with Tacky or the appalling-
Lionel Barber:
Tacky's been writing for 40 years.
James O'Brien:
Yes, he has, but it's got a heck of a lot worse in the last 10.
Lionel Barber:
I can remember reading it in Germany in the 70s, but there we are. But just one last point-
James O'Brien:
In my defence, I was barely born.
Lionel Barber:
The grey hairs, you could see them, James. But just one last point on Andrew Neil. I've seen him barbecue conservative ministers.
James O'Brien:
Yes.
Lionel Barber:
He's somebody who's tough with both sides. He's not really. You describe him as hard right in the book. Is that fair?
James O'Brien:
Well, it is if you look at his own autobiography, if you look at the role that he gave to Charles Murray on The Sunday Times during his editorship there. Charles Murray's pretty close to a eugenicist. All of his stuff about an underclass and single mothers should have their children taken away from him. Neal put that on the agenda in this country, in a way that it hadn't been before. And these think tanks who make up the other middle part of the book, have achieved a degree of prominence. A ludicrous and utterly disproportionate degree of prominence in the UK media in recent years.
And I was shocked to discover that one of the earliest architects of that process was Andrew Neil. And I don't dispute the fact that he did a great job at the BBC. My problem is the fact that he was allowed to, and other people weren't. Other people still aren't, up to and including a 25-year-old fact-checker, doing his first shift on a programme that Andrew Neil was allowed to present for over a decade. And the idea that one of them has so much political baggage that he can't possibly be trusted to be impartial, that's the 25-year-old fact-checker on his first shift. Whereas the former Murdoch editor, stroke chairman of The Spectator, stroke champion of the Tufton Street Network, he hasn't got enough baggage to compromise his ability to work at the BBC. Might for the record, they both should be free to work there, and so should Nick Robinson, but so should Emily Maitlis, and so should a few other people who probably feel that it's not worth the bother anymore of having the target painted on their back by the one we haven't spoken about, Paul Dacre.
Alan Rusbridger:
Well, let's go back to Paul Dacre. The defence of Dacre and before him, David English, was that they always had the finger on the pulse of Middle England. And I suppose in his defence you could say he got Brexit right. How much that was cause and how much of that was effect, we can come back to. Something very odd happened after Brexit, which I think you picked up in your book, which was in normal circumstances, Dacre would've despised a man like Johnson. And yet, the Daily Mail turned into a Johnson fan sheet, and then a Liz Truss fan sheet, at the same time as a Paul Dacre was being promoted to be chair of Ofcom. And second, the scent of Irman was being dangled in front of him, a seat in the House of Lords. Just disentangle that period, because that was very weird. It seemed that Mail lost all its critical [inaudible 00:25:19]-
James O'Brien:
Well, it was extraordinary, and I don't know how much is chicken and how much is egg on the Middle England stuff? You see the concerns about immigration, and you know as well as I do that when you dig into them, they're at their highest in the areas where there isn't any, or where there is very little, which also played with the constituencies in which you kept generally, did very well. So, I don't know whether he's got his finger on the pulse of Middle England, or whether or not he's got his hands on the syringe filled with poison that he's injected into their bloodstream. But that's by the [inaudible 00:25:51]. I think he went mad after the Brexit victory came in, the steel of the New Iron Lady.
I think what happened was, it's a little bit like a dog that spends its whole life chasing cars, and then one day it catches a car, it runs headlong into the back of it. It's got absolutely no idea what to do. And that victory was so huge in his mind that A, the fear of having it taken away and B, the fear that it wasn't going to be the answer to all ills, that it wasn't going to be the new Jerusalem, that it wasn't going to be the promised land, I think that sent him mad. And so A, any threat to it became mortal. And B, anybody who looked briefly as if they might deliver it or make it look less ridiculous than it began to look, almost the moment that the result was in, would be lionised to the Nth degree.
So, you get the combination of front pages, which was apart from Hillsborough, the lowest point in the recent history of newspapers. You got the crush the saboteurs front page, which was an attack upon parliamentary democracy itself. You got the... What was the judge's one? You got-
Lionel Barber:
Enemies of the people.
James O'Brien:
The enemies of the people are-
Lionel Barber:
Which was appalling.
James O'Brien: Come on, this is boiled frog territory, is that we look at that and many people don't notice what it is clearly reminiscent of. Calling judges, so that's an attack upon parliamentary democracy, an attack upon an independent judiciary. Then you have our remaining universities, which is an attack upon academic freedom and academic independence. For a man who trumpets his great championing of British values, if you've taken parliamentary democracy, the independent judiciary and academic freedom off the table, there's not a lot left that you could reasonably describe as a British value. And he's riding rough shot over all of it. And then, he's putting the house on every horse in the race. Theresa May becomes the steel of the new Iron Lady. Boris Johnson, I think... I don't know, but I think that whiff of vermin that you described, might have been the [inaudible 00:27:53].
I think that he honestly, combination of vanity, status, anxiety, a lifetime of feeling oddly and adequate, despite all of this enormous success that he's enjoyed professionally, somehow he feels, as Nadine Dorries felt as well, that a seat in the House of Lords would quieten the voice in the back of his head telling him that he's not Lord High Panjandrum of all he surveys. And I can't see any other explanation for him going along with Boris Johnson, except that Johnson taking up the mantle of someone who may just somehow render Brexit less ridiculous than it clearly is.
Lionel Barber:
I think that was the low point. I think it's a very powerful passage, James, in the book. And I remember sitting with Theresa May a few days after that headline in the Daily Mail, enemies of the people, as you say, redolent of Nazi Germany. And I said to the Prime Minister, "What do you think of this?" And she said, "Well, we have some in free speech, you know." And I said, "But the judges are appalled, and this is an attempt to intimidate." And I think you really capture this in the book. I think Dacre is in a different category, by the way, than Andrew Neil personally, and I think-
James O'Brien:
Yes, I'd agree.
Lionel Barber:
I think he sought to intimidate, and politicians were intimidated. It's less the incestuous nature that you described between news international journalists, the crossover. This was actually intimidation.
James O'Brien:
Yeah, absolutely, it was intimidation of the worst kind. And some of the judges said so. I forget which one it is, he offers up, but almost moving account of how frightened they were.
Lionel Barber:
Chief Justice Thomas.
James O'Brien:
It is Thomas, isn't it? Yes. And then, the one whose sexuality was brought into the story, for no apparent reason whatsoever.
Lionel Barber:
Well, they have form on that.
James O'Brien: Yes, of course they do. And you remember your conversation with Theresa May, I can't remember calendar wise whether that would be fought before or after she brought James Slack into the heart of her communications operation, who was largely responsible for the Mail front pages for a significant period of time. So, she wasn't that uncomfortable with it.
Lionel Barber:
I suppose there is an interesting question about whether part of the problem, if you like, the original sin does not lie with Murdoch. It lies with journalists who want to become politicians, especially unscrupulous journalists like Boris Johnson.
James O'Brien:
Yeah. Well, I just think of Bill Deeds, I'm probably slightly dewy eyed or rose-tinted. Bill Deeds managed to do both, didn't he, for a while. Although he never seemed to be driven entirely by ambition. He seemed to be driven perhaps by a bit more of a sense of duty. But yeah, I've always thought of tabloid sensibilities as opposed to broadsheet sensibilities, as being about generating the most heat with the available detail, that there is some discussion or there could be some discussion about how much fact you bring to the detail. But you take the same story or the same bones of the same story, and a tabloid, a right-wing tabloid especially will seek to generate the most heat to get the biggest emotional response from the reader that they can with those bones. They're not really interested in delivering just cold, hard fact, good news.
And when journalists versed in that, and nobody did that more than Boris Johnson in Brussels, everything that he filed from Brussels was designed to get that-
Lionel Barber:
I was there.
James O'Brien:
Well, you will know as well as anybody, that serotonin hit in the readers of The Daily Telegraph. He's even explicitly said it out loud himself. And if you're in the business of delivering emotional hits to the exclusion of the facts, then if you're going to segue from journalism into politics, you are the worst imaginable candidate for that journey.
Lionel Barber:
I remember in exchange with Roger Ailes, who ran Fox News in America, and was this Svengali to Rupert Murdoch. And I think a lot of things you attribute to Murdoch, actually they really do originate with Roger Ales. He was the-
James O'Brien:
Well, David Yellen makes that point in the book actually [inaudible 00:31:57].
Lionel Barber:
But when challenged over one of the news broadcasts on Fox News, he said, "No, you're misunderstanding here. The idea is not to have our audience informed. They need to feel informed."
James O'Brien:
There it is.
Lionel Barber:
Well, Alan, that was quite something. You asked a question and you got an eight-minute answer, which was almost a rant, but obviously we wouldn't call it that. He is very fluent, isn't he? I wondered whether he was quite right in putting Dacre, Murdoch and Andrew Neil in the same basket. I would question that myself.
Alan Rusbridger:
I think they are different fish. But the interesting thing about his technique, and it was interesting reading his book is, although a lot of it seems to be over the top, actually, the book is very well researched and I asked him who his researcher was, and he said he didn't have a research. It was him. And there were lots of things there that I had half remembered or forgotten, including he dug up some piece I've completely forgotten even writing.
But actually, it's all very substantiated. It's fact-based, it's footnoted. And so, you can't accuse him of just going off piece. It's a well-researched book and well evidenced, even if I think you and I don't always agree with some of the conclusions.
Lionel Barber:
Yeah, I think he's a little loose on his labels. I wouldn't describe Andrew Neil as hard right. I wouldn't describe by any stretch of the imagination, Fraser Nelson of The Spectator as hapless. I think he's been actually a very successful influential editor. But where I think James O'Brien scores is, as you say, he's done his research and he's also not afraid to call out the media.
Alan Rusbridger:
Well, I think it's quite healthy, it's quite refreshing. And it's also why we do this show.
Lionel Barber:
More James O'Brien shortly on Media Confidential, including on the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and the Return to Politics of David Cameron.
Ellen Halliday:
I'm Ellen Halliday, and for this week's Prospect Podcast, I've been speaking with Priyamvada Gopal, who has written an in-depth article on the fate of the humanities in the context of their role in university studies.
Priyamvada Gopal:
The very fact that politicians and authoritarians feel the need to interfere with the teaching of history, of literature, of sociology, of critical race theory, of decolonization, that tells us that at some level, the humanities are threatening to people who don't want certain connections to be made, and who don't want a citizenry armed with a nuanced understanding of history.
Ellen Halliday:
So, follow and subscribe to the Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Lionel Barber: This is Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber. And on this episode we're talking to LBC presenter and author, James O'Brien, about the themes in his new book, How They Broke Britain.
Alan Rusbridger:
And next I wanted to talk to him about the newspaper he reads every day, the Daily Mail, how it's put together, and why it's important. Because it seems to me that unlike many papers in the UK and around the world, every word in the Daily Mail has to fit to the mould of the editor. And that's important as we discuss with James, because it's on the cards that the Daily Mail company might buy The Daily Telegraph.
James O'Brien:
I think the central thrust of it is, that what you have is under threat. People have designs on what you have. Now, whether those people are foreigners coming to take your job or to take your prosperity, or whether they are socialists coming to take the fruits of your capitalist labour, civil servants dedicated to diversity or national trust, executives dedicated to publishing more history. They're coming to take your jobs, they're coming to take your history, they're coming to take your heritage. They're coming to take your pride in your country, because they're going to portray your country as something which is perhaps not something you should be quite so proud of. The central thrust, I think editorially, is to tell their readers that they are under siege, that they are under attack.
Alan Rusbridger:
The unifying thrust from that comes from the top, comes from the editor.
James O'Brien:
Yes. Who I think lives it. That's the thing that makes Dacre different from the other two. It's not commercial or cynical. He's as terrified as they are.
Alan Rusbridger:
I suppose what I'm getting at is it informs the news pages, informs any commentary that they might have. It informs the leaders. It all says the same thing because it all comes from one view. Now, Dacre's response would be, "Well, I'm the most successful editor of my time," as a way of looking at it that says that that's true, that he built up The Mail to an extraordinary circulation, The Mail online, which he sometimes claims ownership of and sometimes distances hisself of, is by some measure, the most successful news website in the world, I think I'm right in saying.
And from that stable of newspapers and websites, have sprayed a number of people who are now running The Times, running The Sunday Times, running The Telegraph, and The Mail is now seeking to buy The Daily Telegraph. Can you explain whether you think that is a good idea or a bad idea?
James O'Brien:
Do I have to?
Alan Rusbridger:
And if so, why?
James O'Brien:
I honestly think that he or they want to create a world without dissent. I think that's a large part of their problem with the BBC. I think that this narrative of bogus victimhood, this narrative of constant persecution is a great line. It's a throwaway line, and you've both heard it before. But when you've spent your whole life privileged, equality can feel like oppression. And Dacre has turned that into a class A drug. People who may not even appreciate privilege and certainly reject violently any notion of white privilege, which is obviously the huge majority of his audience are very easily persuaded that they are under siege and that they're under attack. And the more you can close down the challenge to that, the more pervasive the message becomes.
So, the BBC is a huge problem for these people, because it keeps insisting on towing a line, an editorial line, that is not defined by Othering or fear or bogus victimhood. They're just getting on with largely it's a flawed institution, but the news departments at the BBC are largely getting on with the business of reporting news, not trying to create a feeling of being informed alongside a feeling of being under threat, under siege. It's a simplistic answer, I'm sure, but they can't be doing it for the money really, can they, so I think-
Alan Rusbridger:
But if you were a regulator or the government thinking, well, should we allow DMGT of the parent organisation, The Mail to own the Telegraph. Can you imagine a world in which The Telegraph, as run by DMGT, would be edited in a different way?
James O'Brien:
No. Can you?
Alan Rusbridger:
I don't believe that it could, but I'm-
James O'Brien:
No, I don't either. Why would they want to, if not just to broaden the messaging? And that's a really good example of what I was trying to explain using the analogy of camouflage and cloaks. Because The Telegraph, it's my dad's old paper. The Telegraph wouldn't have gone near some of the stuff that it publishes now 2013. In Bill Deed's day, it would not have gone near some of the stuff that Alistair Heath writes, or some of the stuff that David Frost writes, or some of the stuff that Nick Timothy writes. It just wouldn't have countenance, the absurdity of it, the intellectual vacuity of it. And I think it's unlikely to improve if the Daily Mail get their hands on it.
Alan Rusbridger:
Can we talk about opinionated news? So, you work for a radio station, which is opinionated. It's pretty opinionated. You're pretty opinionated. Nick Ferri's pretty opinionated. What's the difference between that and GB News?
James O'Brien:
Most obviously interactions with callers, as in they can hold your feet to the fire, or they can pull you up and challenge you. I would argue that I evidence all of my opinions. The book is, I hope, a good example of that. There's more footnotes in it than I was certainly intending. And my radio show works like that as well. I'll tell you where it comes from, I will give you the provenance. Not a particularly keen student of GB News, but I don't think people like Lee Anderson have got particularly deep justifications for their pronouncements, whether it's about food banks or whether it's about the suitability for high office of Boris Johnson. There's a good example, actually. So, the difference between us and GB is, I can't speak for Nick or for other presenters. I speak for some of them. We've also got Andrew Marr on the station now, of course.
So, the difference between Andrew Marr and GB News, I hope doesn't need describing or highlighting by me. But the big difference would be if reporting on someone like Boris Johnson, I will give you facts that inform my feelings and I will share my feelings with you, my opinions, but the facts are real. Whereas anybody who is offering up an analysis of Boris Johnson that is largely positive, is ignoring the obvious facts, is ignoring the known history of the man simply, for example, on the record of dishonesty, if you want to know whether someone is likely to tell you the truth tomorrow, find out whether they lied to you yesterday. And yet on some of these news stations. Not just GB News, but also the other one, the Talk TV one. I think they're leaning more towards the Roger Ailes School of Journalism than they are towards mine.
Alan Rusbridger:
I suppose another big difference between what LBC does and what GB News does, is that broadly, most of the presenters on LBC come from a journalistic background. And I can't imagine LBC ever having six, seven, eight Tory MPs presenting programmes.
James O'Brien:
No. They even had Sajid Javid doing my holiday cover last month, so they do-
Alan Rusbridger:
But they tend to draw people from different parties.
James O'Brien:
Exactly. And they try to keep it... Well, we abide by Ofcom requirements, which means that you have a diversity of opinions over the course of an offering, than you are abiding by off com requirements. This new television station doesn't do that. And people express mystification as to why. I think it's simply because Ofcom is a crango, and they take some guidance at least, or some steer from government, and you're unlikely to be getting much of a steer, certainly when Nadine Dorries was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, but when it was in the offing. But laterally, I can't see the current government having much of a problem with a propaganda arm.
Lionel Barber:
James, we've had some big news this week. Today, a reshuffle, and the comeback of David Cameron. How does that fit into your narrative about the People who Broke Britain?
James O'Brien:
Well, he gets a chapter, his is perhaps the most personal of all the chapters because for me, he is an emblem of a class system that creates people not necessarily qualified for the highest office in the land, who genuinely believe that it's their birthright. So, Cameron's attempts to get a job in the first place, get on traineeships. I don't know whether either of you ever had his CV cross your desks. And then, his attempts to get a job in the city where a certain William Hague knocked him back from the consultancy firm, McKinsey. And then he couldn't get a job here. And then, someone at the Palace, either his godfather or another equerry to the late Duke of Edinburgh, rang the conservative research department and announced that he was an extraordinary young man with no evidence for it whatsoever. But he moves in a world where-
Lionel Barber:
Vernon Bogdanor, his tutor at Oxford, gave him a very high rating.
James O'Brien:
Which is great, but there's loads of people at Oxford with very high ratings who don't get told, essentially have Buckingham Palace Panjandrums telling the conservative research department to give you a job. And so, it creates in his mind, famous question of why do you want to be prime minister? He said, "Because I think I'd be good at it," which is extraordinary when you think of all the things that a more centred politician might come up with, think of how Gordon Brown might answer that question. We'd probably be here a week on Tuesday, and he'd only have got halfway through the list. And today is a beautiful example of that. It's almost entirely symmetrical with the chapter on him in the book. It hasn't crossed his mind that having led the country into Brexit, look at the pivot point at the cenotaph on Sunday.
So, David Cameron is looking at the camera. To his left, it goes, Major Blair Brown. It could, of course, was she still alive, go Thatcher. Major Blair Brown. And then, Cameron is the pivot. And to his right it goes, May, Johnson, trusts Sunak. Now, that can't be a coincidence. You can't have gone from four people who nobody would dispute their statesman status, and then to his right, the people that came after him, the scenario that he opened the door for, you've got May, by far the best of this bunch incidentally, but probably not prime ministerial material in the absence of Brexit. You've got May, and then you've got Johnson, Truss, Sunak.
And Cameron doesn't even, I don't think, recognise his responsibility for that, never mind the responsibility for essentially running scared of the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe of the Euroskeptic part of the Tory party, and making that promise. And crucially, when it comes to entitlement, impunity, birthright, thinking he could go to Brussels and secure some unspecified but magical deal that would quell decades, generations of disquiet, about EU membership on the Tory [inaudible 00:45:37]. He just believed that he had some peculiar set of skills, which as far as I can tell, has only ever boiled down to being sort of vaguely clubbable and charming for want of a better word.
And the idea that he was going to come back from Brussels with dispensations and concessions, and subsidies and gold, perhaps frankincense and myrrh, and people like Bill Cash would stay quiet for the rest of their political careers, was just arrogant and complacent to the Nth degree. And only somebody possessed of that level of arrogance and complacency would look at his own recent past and the current political landscape and think, yeah, I think I'd make a pretty good foreign secretary.
Alan Rusbridger:
You're quite unusual, James-
James O'Brien:
Thank you.
Alan Rusbridger:
... in many respects. But you're unusual in this respect, that you talk about the media and you criticise the media, and you work within the media. Usually, the experience of those who criticise particularly Fleet Street, is that you get hammered back. Have you been hammered back?
James O'Brien:
I have a bit. More so when I was doing Newsnight briefly, the BBC. I get the odd Sun column. I think that my heart is on my sleeve, and my facts are on full display. So, if I make a point about something or someone, I'm backing it up. And if you want to come for me, I've got most of the receipts. So, I don't worry about that. I take it very personally, Alan, actually. I wanted to be a newspaper man all my life. It's all I ever wanted to be. I wanted to follow my father into newspaper journalism.
And when I got there, I discovered two things. Firstly and very honestly, I wasn't very good at it. I can write, but I never would've been a good newsman. And the second thing I discovered increasingly, and partly after moving across into broadcast, was that there was something very rotten in the heart of it, in the state of Denmark. And that breaks my heart. It really does. It makes me think of my late dad and what he stood for. And to compare him to some of the people that are in positions of seniority now on major newspapers, is a national tragedy and a personal heartbreak.
Alan Rusbridger:
What did your dad work for?
James O'Brien:
He was on The Telegraph. He was old school. He was on the whole Daily Mail. He was on the Shipley Times. He was on the Sheffield Telegraph. He worked his way through court reporting and industrial disputes, and all of the stuff that used to fill the news pages of both regional and national papers. And then, he was the Midlands correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, doing minor strike in a way that we would get phone calls from both Arthur Scargill and Robert McGregor in our home. That's the level of trust. And there are still some journalists who achieve this, but it's not normal anymore.
Alan Rusbridger:
You must go out and talk to young journalists. What do you tell them about the profession that they may be thinking of, when you're so critical about the way that British journalism has developed?
James O'Brien:
Well, there are some places where you can do good work still, and you are probably going to end up if you want to get ahead in a place where you can't do the kind of work that you wanted to do. And I'm very clear about how lucky I am to have ended in this weird place, because I can't say to you with any confidence whatsoever that if the cards had fallen differently, I've still got friends on the papers that I attack. We've stayed friends. Generally steer clear of some subjects when we're out together, or when we're... But I'm not arrogant enough to think that I wouldn't have made deals myself in order just to be a journalist, which is all I've ever wanted to be and all I've ever been any good at.
But with regard to younger journalists, I find it very difficult. I generally tell them, and it's probably not entirely helpful advice. I generally tell them to look very seriously at trying to build their own platforms, which is easier than it's ever been, certainly easier than it was when any of us started out.
Elon Musk has buggered it up a bit by buying Twitter and robbing that platform of a shop window opportunity for young journalists. But I think that I generally say, don't rule that out. Even if you're going to have to do something that makes you feel compromised for a while, remember that you are for the first generation really, since people were running off pamphlets down on Fleet Street and flogging them in coffee shops. It's probably the first generation since then that has a real chance of building its own platforms.
Lionel Barber:
James, it's been fascinating. My advice to journalists is stay curious. Don't be cynical. If you read your book, you're not reading a cynic, you're reading someone who's definitely still curious.
James O'Brien:
Thank you. That means a lot to me, Lionel.
Alan Rusbridger:
Thanks for coming in.
James O'Brien:
Thank you, chaps.
Lionel Barber:
Well, Alan, there was plenty of meat to chew on there. But for me, the last takeaway was the advice that he'd give to younger journalists. In my day, of course, everybody wanted to go to Fleet Street. That was the thing. And even James wanted to work at The Daily Telegraph. But he suggested that younger journalists should perhaps develop their own platform and own brand, and that really is media fragmentation, I guess.
Alan Rusbridger:
It's not bad advice. I always struck when I go to journalism colleges, that you've got a lot of very idealistic young people who want to go into journalism for all the right reasons. And you think actually a lot of the places where they're going to end up, they're going to be disappointed because that's not the journalism they're going to be to be able to do. And I think where we are now in the digital revolution, it is possible to set up your own platform. And it's not for everyone, but I think it's not a bad piece of advice to start something new.
Lionel Barber:
My advice also is, develop software skills as well as writing skills. You have to be multimedia these days.
Alan Rusbridger:
Completely.
Lionel Barber:
If you have any questions for us about the media, email them to mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk, and we'll answer a few of them in a future episode.
Alan Rusbridger:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer is Danny Gollick.
Lionel Barber:
Remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcast, with new episodes every Thursday.
Alan Rusbridger:
And we're on Twitter/X as well. That's @mediaconfpod.
Lionel Barber:
Thank you for listening. Another episode will be along next Thursday.
