In about a week it will be 34 years since the morning I turned on BBC’s RADIO 4 NEWS with anticipation.
I was delighted and excited to learn that its lead story involved the Press Council. But both turned to disappointment and to a contempt which has not abated since.
That morning, or the previous day, a tabloid newspaper carried photographs of a young, healthy, attractive married pregnant woman in a bikini. It was not indecent nor scandalous but to judge from the uproar arising one would think there had been an earthquake in London killing most of the population. (At the time the population of London and most of Britain would have been cheerfully written off, whilst key Government Ministers and agents had secure bolt holes. The rest of the population was expected to “PROTECT AND SURVIVE” by hiding under their dining tables and beds in the not unlikely event of a nuclear war.)
Anyhow, the Lady at the centre of the fuss was Princess Diana, and the Press Counsel gave the offending newspaper a slap on the wrist for its misdemeanour.
That evening I turned on the Television and witnessed Harold Evans, Editor of THE TIMES, given the accolade of “EDITOR OF THE YEAR” by his fellow British editors. The morning’s disappointment and contempt were reinforced by a white-hot anger which still burns.
For that morning also saw the lifting of an embargo on publishing the Press Council’s censure of THE TIMES for untruths in its front-page coverage of the funeral of Bobby Sands the previous May and its refusal to retract them when asked to do so by myself, and another reader independently in Paris. I had received a lying letter from John Grant, then the Business Editor of THE TIMES, a former Guards Officer and an old boy of Balliol College Oxford.Grant’s Obituary in his old paper in 1912 has no mention of his dishonesty, but if there’s any justice I hope he’s shovelling coal to keep Thatcher warm.
I had spent nine months, from May 1981 until February 1982 writing letters wrestling with the twisting ,and twiste objections of the Press Council which, no doubt, were intended to make me give up in despair.
I did have the satisfaction of having THE TIMES, the IRISH TIMES and THE IRISH POST publish the Press Council’s censure of THE TIMES. Also, a young and honest English journalist interviewed me and wrote a fine piece for THE NEW STATESMAN. Unfortunately it was spiked, for that journal was commemorating the centenary of the birth of JAMES JOYCE.
A couple of months after the Press Council adjudication at least three daily papers -The Daily Express, The Daily Star and the Daily Mail, all on the same morning, in a coordinated onslaught on Ken Livingstone, repeated verbatim, the untruths for which THE TIMES had been censured. In the case of THE DAILY MAIL the untruths, part of a two page onslaught on Livingstone was underlined for emphasis.
A Mr Conlon of Birmingham, armed with the Press Council’s then recent censure, reported The Daily Express and the Daily Star to the Press Council, which took another nine months to adjudicate. I reported theTHE DAILY MAIL to the Council, but it did a backstairs deal with the paper so that it buried a “correction” in a couple of lines somewhere. The lies had gone out over the names of Sir Humphrey Atkins, former Secretary for Northern Ireland.
The Press Council had earned a reputation for toothlessness and Atkins’s reputation was not too high, A bit like “the Love that dare not breathe its name”, perhaps. Without a change of personnel or an acquisition of principles, the Press Council was renamed the Press Complaints Commission. Atkins was, mirabile dictu! “ennobled” and took his seat in The House of Peers under a completely new name. To eke out his ministerial pension and his Lordship’s other emoluments he was made a Commissioner of the Press Complaints Commission. He has now dis-a-peered and is presumably shovelling coal for the Father of Lies.
Another 12 years elapsed and when Albert Reynolds sought a US visa for Gerry Adams, former TIMES Editor Simon Jenkins fed White House agents similar porkies to those peddled by the paper when Harold Evans was Editor.He had the brass neck to boast of this in that paper some years later. In spite of his efforts Adams got his visa, and the peace process was not aborted.
It’s depressing to read top journalist Andrew Marr’s “My Profession” and learn that he regards Evans and Jenkins as models to be emulated. Perhaps Marr covets the Knighthoods they were simultaneously awarded by a grateful Establishment?
The gist of the lie spread by the newspapers mentioned is that the only persons killed in the unpleasantness since 1969 were British or Protestants, or both, and the only ones doing the killing were Irish Catholics or Republicans, or both.
The Sunday Times magazine today (Jan 24) features Sir “Harry” Evans, 87, and his wife, Tina Brown, 62. As the owner of THE TIMES, Rupert Murdoch, 84, is about to Marry Jerry Hall, 59. Perhaps the Pinocchio story is less incredible than news stories in “papers of record” . Could it be the fairytale refers to the wrong organ?
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