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Feral? Why Blair wasn't all wrong

Former long-serving political editor of the BBC, Cole suggests that Blair’s attach on the British media – made in a speech as he prepared to vacate 10 Downing Street – was to a certain extent justified. “The recent burst of breast-beating about the loss of trust in the media has mostly been concentrated on broadcasting,” writes Cole. “But when you consider how many newspaper ‘scoops’ are not followed up by other papers, or even by the originator of the story, how many are never heard of again, you wonder whether trust in the printed word is being similarly eroded. Much of the blame for all this is put down to ‘spin’. Certainly the public relations trade, in which I include focus groups and public opinion polls, and not only in politics, but in business, the entertainment industry, and even charities, has gained an unenviable reputation for perverting the truth on behalf of its clients. This is where Tony Blair’s criticism of media obsession with ‘impact’ rings bells. Non-governmental organisation, charities, university researchers have all learned that the first sentence of their press release must contain a story. Sometime it is hyped. When I was news editor and deputy editor of The Guardian, we were very reluctant to print a story that claimed a forthcoming cure for cancer, lest it raised false hopes in patients and their families. Nowadays, researchers seem to claim cures for everything down to in-growing toenails, and gain publicity for them… The media do not operate in a vacuum. If we wonder why life is more strident today, we must look at others, including politicians, but also at ourselves. We have some kind of duty to truth, so far as we can discover what the truth is. But are we taking on the malignant forces that impede the search for truth as often as we ought?”