Tory Nation by Samuel Earle

Author:Samuel Earle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2023-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

On 10 June 1987, the Daily Mail’s editor, David English, sat with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street, anticipating the next day’s general election results. Thatcher’s third victory in a row seemed almost certain, and English asked her what the Mail’s celebratory headline should be. She suggested ‘Thatcher set for a winning treble’, and, sure enough, the following morning her words appeared in block capital letters on the paper’s front page – without inverted commas. English sent over his congratulations. ‘Well, we certainly agreed the right headline on Wednesday night!’ he wrote. ‘It gave me great pleasure to put it in type after you wrote it. In fact, you not only wrote it, you worked for it, you earned it and you deserved it.’1

Needless to say, a prime minister writing her own headlines is far from the idealised image of the free press. Journalists are supposed to bravely hold the powerful to account, investigating their actions and exposing any scandals to public scrutiny. They put their own political beliefs and allegiances to one side, as they pursue corruptions of power regardless of who is culpable, or whose interests their stories might serve or foil. As they shine a light on injustices in society, the work of journalists should also awaken a sense of empathy among the public. All this performs a vital role in any democracy, which is why a free press is held (and often holds itself) in such high regard. Citizens are empowered to see their society more clearly. Those with power know they must watch their step. ‘Democracy dies in darkness’ as the famous slogan of the Washington Post goes.

Perhaps it would be unrealistic to expect the media in any country always to live up to this ideal. No newspaper could ever fill its pages solely with investigations and in-depth exposés, nor would most readers want that: people read newspapers not only for politics (or even especially for politics), but for entertainment and information – sports coverage, celebrity gossip, film reviews, recipes and so on. Nonetheless, we might at least hope that journalism maintains a basic sense of its responsibility: that journalists should never deliberately mislead the public, inflame prejudices or cultivate a distorted view of society. As far as politics goes, their role is to scrutinise those in power rather than to protect them, to punch up not down. After all, if newspapers continuously gave their readers a warped sense of the world, or sought to obfuscate rather than illuminate the workings of power and privilege, then journalism’s prized place in a democracy would be harder to justify. We might all agree that something had to change.

In Britain, we are at such a point. Taken as a whole, the media landscape is so tilted in the right’s favour that it is more useful to the interests of the Conservatives than to the health of Britain’s democracy. The partisan nature of the British press becomes most pointed at election time, when most newspapers abandon all pretence of independence and effectively become extensions of the Conservative Party’s election operation.

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