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How Blair fell out of love with the media

Hasan Suroor

As parting kicks go, this was in a ruthless class of its own and delivered with merciless force. Not surprisingly, those who happened to be in the line of attack that morning are still reeling amid anguished cries of foul play and worse. Even those who grudgingly acknowledge that they deserved a kicking say they will not take it from a person who could do with a dose of his own medicine. “For someone who himself is a master of the black art of spin and manipulation i t is rather rich of him to lecture others on the sanctity of truth,” said one angry critic.

And that pretty much has been the general reaction in the media to what will go down as Tony Blair’s most savage assault on modern British journalism, which he likened to a “feral beast” on the rampage “tearing people and reputations to bits.” And feeding on lies and “conspiracy theories.” In his judgment, everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong with the British media: news had been replaced by views, facts had become secondary to sensationalist headlines, and balance had become an alien concept to much of the media. Like wolves, they tended to hunt in a pack leaving behind a trail of half-truths, plain lies, and cynicism.

Moreover, things were “becoming worse,” Mr. Blair warned. Because the new forms of communications such as the internet, which were expected to provide an alternative to the “increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media,” had turned out to be “even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five.”

In a curious passage, he seemed to trace the “crisis” in the media to what is generally regarded as the defining moment in the history of independent journalism: the Watergate story that brought down the hated Nixon administration. “Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own to examine the consequences for journalism of standing up one conspiracy,” he said.

The attack, which reminded old-timers of the late Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin’s famously vitriolic anti-media rant, came during one of his farewell public appearances — a speech at Reuters in London — before he steps down as Prime Minister this week. Many of these things he had said before in bits and pieces, but taken together — plus his combative tone — they had an altogether different sense. Accusing the national media of lying and deceitful behaviour and holding out the threat of “regulation” was provocative stuff from a serving, even if a lame-duck, Prime Minister. And he was conscious of this. “I’ve made this speech after much hesitation. I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters. But I also know this has needed to be said,” he declared.

Mr. Blair’s criticism has re-ignited the debate on the role of the media in today’s highly competitive 24/7 news cycle. But it needs to be placed in its proper context for it to make sense to those who may not be familiar with the many twists and turns in what has essentially been a love-hate relationship between New Labour and the press. They enjoyed a long honeymoon. In fact, in media terms, no other Labour administration in recent times had it so good. And guess who was responsible for turning around Labour’s relationship with a traditionally hostile media? Mr. Blair, of course.

In his speech, he almost sounded apologetic about paying “inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging and persuading the media,” but at the time the party was proud of its efforts. Mr. Blair had seen the media destroy Neil Kinnock’s leadership in 1992 (Mr. Kinnock was the architect of the reforms Mr. Blair later used to rebuild the party) and he did not want this to happen to him. So, when he took over leadership of the party in 1994, as it struggled to emerge from years of political wilderness, he was overtly anxious to please the media. He realised that the party wasn’t going to get anywhere unless it extended its support base beyond the left-wing press.

Together with Peter Mandelson, his fellow young Turk, and Alastair Campbell, a former tabloid journalist who later became his powerful communications chief, Mr. Blair launched an elaborate strategy aimed at “courting, assuaging and persuading the media.” It involved cultivating not just editors and individual journalists, but getting their proprietors to change their political line. As the leader of the opposition, Mr. Blair flew to Australia to meet Rupert Murdoch, who owns some of Britain’s most influential newspapers including The Times and the Sun besides a substantial stake in Sky TV. He wanted Mr. Murdoch to order his traditionally pro-Conservative papers to switch support to New Labour. Especially the mass circulation Sun, which had played such a damaging role in destroying Mr. Kinnock, was seen to hold the key to New Labour’s election prospects. To those who questioned the wisdom of courting the Murdoch press a nd such Labour-hating papers as the Daily Mail, his answer was: “It is better to ride the tiger’s back than let it rip your throat out.”

With hindsight it has been suggested that by 1997 people were so desperate to get rid of the Tories that Labour would have won the elections even without the backing of the Murdoch press, but at the time their support seemed crucial. And Mr. Blair was determined to get it. Eventually he succeeded with both The Times and the Sun switching to New Labour and, at times, sounding even more loyal than the party’s natural allies such as The Guardian< /em>, the Daily Mirror, and The Independent. Indeed, the Sun was to claim credit for the 1997 Labour Party victory with its famous headline: “It was Sun wot won it.” This was a warning that Mr. Murdoch would soon be knocking at No 10 to collect his dues. And he did. His newspapers came to wield enormous influence on policy-making in Downing Street, which alienated Labour’s ideologically loyal sections of the media.

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