Re: British P.M. Puts Pandemic Flu Above Terrorism, Climate on Risk List
Beware the pull of the black hole
Peter Preston - The Observer, Sunday March 23 2008 - This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 23 2008 on p14 of the Business news & features section. It was last updated at 00:02 on March 23 2008.
First, clear away the detritus. Mr Richard Desmond is Fleet Street's least loved proprietor. No one likes him, though (in common with Millwall FC) he doesn't seem to care. He runs remunerative magazines and TV sex channels - and sometimes pays himself ?40m-plus as a reward. But his Expresses and Stars, supposed tickets to national salience, wallow in perpetually shrinking crisis. February's figures show the Daily Express down 3.28 per cent in a year to a historically paltry 737,000, the Star down 7 per cent, its Sunday stablemate down 4.6 per cent - and the once mighty Sunday Express slumped 17 per cent to 676,000, the lowest of low ebbs.
If, as asserted, the four papers concocted dozens of libellous stories about the McCanns to boost sales, then it appears to have been a dud tactic. And if (excuse number two) they're so devoid of staff that they can only afford to make stuff up, then perhaps Mr D might shave back a tad on personal bonuses. But the main point of current, clamorous complaint lies elsewhere.
The McCann saga isn't fundamentally a tale of scanty resources. A three-ring circus of British journalists - with Huw Edwards as anchor and ringmaster - camped out for it on the Algarve last summer. The more difficult problem is that it's what we may call a black hole yarn: a story that seems to exist in a legal and practical vacuum. Go down the hole and you can invent or distort without apparent fear of correction. Heaven knows, anything goes ....
Try black hole one with Kate and Gerry: you lose your child, you hunt for her, refusing to give up; the press interest is so great you need a press spokesman; but the Portuguese police aren't cutting it, so they get briefed against, then turn to briefing themselves. So the McCanns become formally designated suspects and their team feeds favoured papers - such as the Mirror - while leaving less favoured papers - the Express, say - out of the loop.
Result: an internal world of briefing and counter-briefing that sidelines the rest of the world; and the appearance of a legal limbo. Nods, winks, internet chatter and Lisbon dailies rule the roost. The Desmond Four don't think that they're vulnerable (and nor do lawyers helping other papers). But suddenly the music stops, Portuplod falls silent and a letter from Carter-Ruck arrives. One hole morphs into another.
More black holes? Anything to do with Lady Di (she's dead) or the Royal family (which tends not to sue). You've traditional licence to speculate - though the interminable inquest featuring the abominable Burrell shows the limits to even such a verdant playing field.
Then there's anything, until last week, featuring Sir Paul and Lady Heather because - briefings again - there was so much back-and-forth behind doors that the show seemed to have a life of its own. But now we know that Paul is 'consistent and honest' and that she's 'less than impressive' with a case 'devoid of reality', the name of that game has changed. Only Ms Mills, having not much of a reputation to lose, will find herself in black-hole play.
Anything featuring the European Commission, which may answer back but won't get reported because tame Westminster reporters can mop up Brussels without leaving their desks. Anything on a John Lewis wish list that MPs might fancy, because 'they're all as bad as each other, aren't they?' Anything where spin doctors for the two big parties bash away at each other under cover of darkness. And anything regurgitated by a Desmond paper, because no one is likely to believe it anyway.
Oh, and anything where the subject is recently deceased (ie, beyond litigation). Thus Bill Deedes, late grand old man of the Telegraph, was a 'moral coward' who found it puzzling that others did not share his 'moral cowardice', according to Simon Heffer (in the Telegraph, of course). Turn to Stephen Robinson's new biography of Deedes, though, and you'll find Bill 'delighted' that Heffer was 'eased out of his role as Comment editor' and deploring the tone of Heffer's columns 'which he thought unsuited to a broadsheet newspaper'. But now he's in his grave and can be duly shafted.
Black holes, in short, are morality- and retribution-lite. They are areas where journalists who would normally have to convince their editor and the night lawyer reckon there'll be no comebacks, either in the High Court or via the PCC. They leave traditional definitions of truth on the rim as you plunge right in.
More shocking than in olden days? Remember 'so sorry, Sir Elton' and a ?1m settlement from the Sun? Or than abroad? Frankly, Whitewater and the death of Vince Foster was a grey, grimy hole staining American journalism.
So kick the Expresses and Stars all round the park here, to be sure, but please don't pretend that total purity marches with you every step of the way. Black holes pose the ultimate probity test - and the law of no consequences comes stuffed full of frailty and failure.
Tidal wave of adjectives will drown us all
There you have it, then. An outbreak of bird flu could be the 'greatest challenge facing us since World War Two'. Now that the 'volcano' of 'hocus-pocus' scientific reassurance has 'exploded', and 'the molten lava' of incipient calamity stands revealed, 'many innocent victims are asking, not unreasonably: who's to blame for this disaster?' There is 'mayhem as the panic deepens' and a 'massive loss of confidence' all around us today.
We can't, to be sure, proclaim medical 'meltdown' just yet. 'No cathartic blow-out' has 'cleared the air' of infection. But experts can find at least 'eight reasons why things may get worse' along the road to 'further horror'.
We've already endured 'one of the worst days' in NHS 'history' and 'extraordinary' bouts 'of turmoil' as 'reeling' patients have confronted 'chaos' and 'events race ahead of any rescue plan' while patients suffer. 'Is there any way to halt this slide'? 'How bad will the crisis get' in a land where our leaders are 'pygmies'?
Well, it depends on which crisis you're talking about.
Gordon Brown did indeed visualise a pandemic of bird flu last week, and put it at Number One on his tally of threats facing Britain because he said 750,000 could die.
But every volcanic upheaval or panic-stricken response in quotation marks above comes from a random selection of economic and financial commentators describing a troubled week on the markets.
And a gentle, more measured question follows. If the collapse of a single investment bank, and shares going down before they go up again, is enough to trigger such an adjectival apocalypse, what have we got left in reserve when bad gets a little worse? Cue much huffing and puffing over the 'rumour-mongers who tried to bring down one of the UK's biggest banks'.
But cue, too, a need to throttle back on the lexicon of tragedy. Or do we assume that City traders don't read newspapers anyway - and would be too full of superior wisdom to take any notice if they did?
The PCC has right to complain about maths like that, George
The Evening Standard got a dressing down from the Press Complaints Commission last week. Its tale about climate change militants preparing to 'hit Heathrow' with a spate of bomb and other hoaxes disintegrated under sharp scrutiny. Inaccuracy committed, condemnation delivered. Victory for the airport campers and George Monbiot of The Guardian who took up their case.
One inaccuracy doesn't excuse another, though. In their press release hailing triumph, the campers quoted Monbiot (in turn quoting Nick Davies of Flat Earth News fame) saying that the PCC had only 'ruled' in 448 cases, out of 25,500 complaints, in the last 10 years. Pretty derisory, if true: which is the familiar point the Commission's detractors make.
But it isn't remotely true, because every year many hundreds of rulings aren't published. Some complainants request privacy; other rulings are just routine. In 2007, for example, the PCC received 4,320 complaints and ruled on 1,227 of them. Some 56 per cent of complaints put down on paper or screen were formally considered - and those discounted were either the business of other regulators (such as the Advertising Standards Authority) or not covered by the Commission's published code.
The chairman of the PCC calls the 448 figure a 'schoolboy howler' and wants the record put straight, which seems a fair enough request (if Monbiot and co can't get those simple figures right, how on earth can they cope with the sums of global warming?). But where does he go to get a correction? No, don't say the PCC ....
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/23/pressandpublishing
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