Column November 11th. In defence of populism.
The Editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre does not need defending. He will never a) read this article or b) give two hoots about what it says. Nonetheless, this is a defence of Paul Dacre.
There is a personal reason for writing it, which is that I spent three enjoyable years working closely with Dacre at the Daily Mail when he was new to the editor’s chair. It was the time when he was remoulding the paper to his own image after the long rule of David English, and I suppose I had something to do with the shape of the paper which emerged and which has continued successfully to this day. So I am in part defending myself.
There is however a more important reason. In the circles where I live and work - typically middle class, non-ideological but educated - the Daily Mail needs a voice. Almost to a man and woman, these people identify the Mail with disastrous and deluded demagoguery. So powerful is the latent antipathy that any position the Mail takes is automatically rejected out of hand.
And yet the speech that Paul Dacre made at the Society of Editors last Sunday (Nov 9th 2008) will, I believe, come to be seen as a landmark in the contemporary discussion about journalism - containing the lineaments of a path to recovery for an industry that desperately needs re-invigorating and, without which, Britain would be massively worse off. Philosophically it belongs to a tradition of emotional populism that has had many champions in the West, from Wesley to Dickens to Philip Roth and the fiercely intellectual contemporary American scholar Martha Nussbaum. It is nothing to be ashamed of and still less to be sneered at.
The reaction to Dacre’s talk has been evidence of a shocking lack of attention, or perhaps just lack of intelligence (and this is from the supposed British intelligentsia).
On The First Post, the writer Neil Lyndon huffed and puffed about coverage of the McCanns and national papers that “traffic in degradation” without any sense that he had listened to Dacre’s argument for a rumbustiously entertaining press.
On his blog, Observer columnist Henry Porter criticised the Mail’s ‘inconsistency’ (the intellectual snob’s favourite word) in defending the right to expose the private antics of Max Moseley and attacking the government’s plans to store data on phone and web use, without appearing to understand the huge difference in principle between the misdemeanours of public figures and the innocent business of private citizens.
Charlie Beckett, the director of the media think tank Polis, merely pointed out that “many people do not think S&M is depraved”, forgetting perhaps that the Mail is not about ‘many’ it is about ‘most’.
Peter Wilby, the Guardian media columnist, says in his brilliantly acerbic style, that it is pernicious to attack the most trusted news source in the land (Beeb) and that without it we’d only be left with the distortions of the Mail. He must have missed Dacre’s previous assertions that he would “die in a ditch” to defend the need for a BBC but that he was trying to take a stand against its incursion into every nook and cranny of national life.
Most vehement of all was Polly Toynbee in her Guardian column. Among other things she attacked Dacre’s twisted logic for saying that Mr Justice Eady, the judge in the Moseley case, might have felt very differently if his wife or daughter had been one of the prostitutes in uniform. No logic was intended. Dacre’s point is an emotional one. He does not think that anybody’s wife or daughter should be treated like Moseley treated his willing accomplices in S&M. Indeed the twisted logic is Toynbee’s argument that there is an equivalence between torturers and newspapers who expose people.
The Guardian letters page today contains a clutch of readers cockily pointing out the difference for the millionth time between ‘interesting to the public’ and ‘public interest’. But whenever Dacre defends the press right to expose public figures he is patently clear. He is talking about public interest. Joe Calzaghe would as likely confuse ‘punch’ with a fruit drink.
The headlines after the speech focussed on Dacre’s attack on Mr Justice Eady and on the expansion of the BBC. But the speech is not primarily about either of these points. It is primarily a defence of populism.
The emotional populist, such as Dacre, believes that ordinary people have instincts and reactions which, if properly tapped, will be sufficient to provide guidance and authority to the statesman. He supports the people versus the elites. Long passages of his speech last Sunday were a tribute to the great populists who shaped his career; a previous generation of newspaper editors such as John Junor and Arthur (We never waste space saying, “On the one hand.” We just state an opinion in a Godlike voice) Christiansen, legendary editor of Beaverbook’s Express and tireless champion of the little man.
Of course any of these editors will take a stand again the pink-cheeked judge and the smug BBC. Of course they will rail against the loss-making liberal-left papers that think that they know best and have a right to stick their views down people’s throats (however good these papers actually are, and they are). What is shocking is that this should offend so many people so deeply. Why? Are we still so class-ridden that we are afraid of the convictions of around one in three of our countrymen? Do we yearn so strongly for the infinitely more elitist culture of continental Europe?
I believe that the press, in its current crisis, is betraying itself. It is so distracted by commercial, technological and cultural problems that it is very seriously missing the point. I bemoaned last week the shocking lack of innovation and inventiveness among newspaper managements. However it is just as important to recognise the shocking lack of ability among editors and journalists to connect with a readership and write with sufficient passion about anything worth caring for. The British press is still among the best in the world. But the steady growth of flimsy, pointless opinion writing combined with predictable, turgid and irrelevant news is the real problem. Blaming the internet, the advertising downturn and the price of paper is a lame excuse.
Dacre’s speech was a call to arms. His paper practises populism his way. There are other ways. Did anyone listen?
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