Abstract
Stephen Glover's selected potpourri of essays about journalism omits, he confesses in his introduction, a number of significant areas: cartoons, for example, and photography, and the regional press… “You can't have everything,” he asserts, twice within 10 lines. “On the other hand, there are some subjects so important that it would be wrong to leave them in the hands of one contributor, however brilliant.” So there are three essays about foreign and war reporting and two about sexism in newspaper offices and nothing at all about those facets of the trade mentioned above or, come to that, lobby journalism, subediting and general reporting — all of which have and still do pump lifeblood into the journalistic creative process.
There's something else in short supply in Secrets of the Press: namely, secrets. What we have is a cluster of journalistic toffs and a few talented foot soldiers ruminating about what Glover presumably considered vital elements if the book were to be taken seriously. That these include an anonymous piece on expenses fiddling, and the late politician and diarist Alan Clark explaining “Why I hold journalists in low regard” — no mention of coverage of his serial philandering, so that couldn't be the reason — are indicative of the book's imbalance.
So what's to like? Oh, a great deal, because contributors such as Francis Wheen, Paul Foot, Michael White, Richard Ingrams and Alan Watkins are — or, sadly in the case of Foot and Watkins, were — top-of-the-tree talents incapable of writing an unattractive sentence. But secrets? Well, Wheen, in a piece looking back on what was possibly the last of journalism's “golden ages”, did reveal that when Robert Maxwell died, a daughter of the former Telegraphs' proprietor Lord Hartwell burst into the offices of Private Eye wanting to strangle editor Ian Hislop, in the belief that the magazine was responsible for Cap'n Bob's demise. The bizarre incident is but a footnote to Maxwell's often nefarious career, but that fact that there was actually someone outside his family who mourned the old rascal to such an extent was, I suppose, a secret of sorts.
Hugh Cudlipp: Wrong age, wrong title, tsk, tsk
Paul Foot recalled how Claude Cockburn taught him that a single source in high places was worth a million official spokespeople — “Never believe anything until it is officially denied.” That's hardly a secret, although one sometimes feels that the fledgling reporters of today are unaware of such fundamental guidelines. Michael White dissects spin, recounting how Ed Balls — then Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown's economics adviser — turned up in the Commons press gallery to “leak” a story on to the front pages of five different papers and then arranged for Brown to go on the Today programme the following morning to discuss those “reports”. Such manipulation was, of course, secret to millions of radio listeners, so I guess it qualifies, as does Richard Ingrams' reason for replying, when asked during a libel action brought by Robert Maxwell whether he had ever published anything in Private Eye that he knew to be untrue: “Yes, the apologies.” His sort-of secret was that the more grovelling wording of an apology the better, as the more likely it would be considered by readers to be insincere.
As for Watkins, taking one of his not infrequent walks down Fleet Street and popping in and out of its pubs, he concluded: “There was much idleness and drunkenness in Old Fleet Street,” but, “journalism was certainly more fun in those days.” If there are those who are ignorant of these truths, they must be among the more recent recruits to the trade, those prevented by killjoy modern office regimes from visiting El Vino on the afternoons when, until shortly before his death, Watkins could still be found enjoying a late lunch, accompanied by a glass or several. Casual acquaintances would always be greeted warmly. More wine and stimulating conversation would flow. Among Watkins's admirers it was no secret that there was still fun to be had.
So while not fulfilling the promise of the book's title, many of the essays included are a delight and must have required little, if no, editing. There are occasions, however, when a little editing would not have gone amiss. That usually-fine journalist Henry Porter, writing on “Editors and Egomaniacs”, claims: “If you have talent and energy you can get there [to the top] very quickly. The late Lord (Hugh) Cudlipp, for instance, became editor-in-chief of the Daily Mirror at the astonishing age of twenty-three.” Astonishing, indeed, but not true. Cudlipp became editor of the old Sunday Pictorial (now the Sunday Mirror) at 24, and it was not until after the Second World War, when he edited forces' newspapers, and a spell working for Lord Beaverbrook's Express group that he became the Mirror group's editorial director.
And Lord Beaverbook's famous remark to a Royal Commission: “I run the Daily Express for influence, not profit,” recalled in the piece on expenses excesses, was never famous because he never said it. He told a Royal Commission: “I run the paper for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other motive.” Now that is famous and it's no secret, being discoverable on the web (as is Cudlipp's life and journalistic history in his excellent books on the trade) in the time it probably took Stephen Glover to write the first sentence of his introduction: “Most of us are newspaper readers, but not all of us know very much about how journalists operate.”
Unfortunately, I fear there are many who still won't after reading this book.