Media

Wednesday

Steerpike

Leveson’s global celeb appeal

Tomorrow’s Spectator Life cover interview is with Alec Baldwin, who as any American will know, does not hold his tongue on matters political. He even has a view about Westminster: ‘The thing I follow most closely there is the Leveson inquiry, anything about Rebekah Brooks and Murdoch.’ Baldwin makes it clear he would like a Leveson inquiry in the US. ‘If they were doing that over there, you have every reason to believe they were doing that here as well. There is no market that is bigger for media outlets in terms of the tabloids and generating trash than the US. It’s a reasonable question to ask if they were doing that here and to look into it.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Would the Strasbourg Court end up in charge of any system of statutory regulation of the press?

In just over 18 hours, advance copies of the Leveson Report will be sent to the Prime Minister, various ministers and the other party leaders. The expectation in Westminster is very much that the Prime Minister will steer away from statutory regulation, saying instead that he wants to see if a new beefed up form of independent but non statutory regulation can do the job. Others in the coalition, remain keen on the idea of a one line bill setting up a statutory based but independent regulator. There is though, as there is with so many stories these days given its intrusion into our national life, an ECHR angle to this debate.

Camilla Swift

Lord Patten’s select committee catfight

Sparks flew this morning in the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, as Lord Patten came to verbal blows with Tory MP Philip Davies over the extent of his involvement in the BBC. Patten has previously come in for criticism over allegedly holding down 14 separate jobs – including his role of chairman of the BBC Trust - but when asked about his day-to-day work at the corporation, he dismissed the MP’s ‘impertinent question.’ ‘Do you want to know my toilet habits?’ Patten scoffed. Fortunately, Davies didn't, but he went on to describe the BBC as ‘a shambles’, asking: ‘Have you been actually putting in the hours?’ Perhaps wearied by his morning of questioning, Patten had had enough.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

David Blunkett warns MPs against regulating the press

David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, has has his private life in the newspapers often enough to yearn, Hugh Grant-style, for a world where the press is not free but obliged to operate within parameters outlined by the government. But I’ve interviewed him for Radio Four’s Week in Westminster (it airs at 11am this morning) ahead of next week's Leveson report and he has come out against the idea state-mandated regulation. It was an unusual discussion: the supposedly illiberal Blunkett, himself a compensated victim of hacking was defending press freedom. A Tory, Nadhim Zahawi, was urging David Cameron to act. As a former Home Secretary, Blunkett’s words carry some weight.

Friday

Rod Liddle

I hear Owen Jones was on Question Time last night, was he awful?

My friend woke me up this morning. I am in a tiny apartment in Italy, finishing a book. I mean writing one, not reading one. Anyway, he rang as I was dozing — dreaming, bizarrely, that I had just been shortlisted for the Turner Prize – and delivered this torrent of violence down the phone. His animus, which was fabulous, immense, was directed towards a person called Owen Jones whom he had watched on Question Time yesterday evening. I cannot quote his diatribe in full because of the prohibition in these parts about the excessive use of foul language. But it was something like 'F****** third form arrogant public school infantile leftist ****, vile smug and self-righteous tosser…….' And so it went on.

Thursday

James Forsyth

David Cameron’s tricky position on the Leveson Report

Politics is gearing up for the publication of the Leveson Report next Thursday. It was telling that when Boris Johnson picked up politician of the year at The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards, he didn’t use the occasion to list of his achievements in London or to reminisce about the Olympics but rather took the opportunity to decry the possibility of statutory regulation of the press. On the other side is Ed Miliband, whose party is committed to backing whatever Leveson comes up with. It is unclear yet what Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats will do. But there are a large chunk of Tory MPs who appear to have come round to the idea of statutory regulation.

Steerpike

We ask the questions

The enemies of a free press, also known as the mysteriously funded Hacked Off campaign, are positively salivating at the prospect of new legislation to regulate the press. I hear that their press conference, held after lobbying the three party leaders, at Four Millbank yesterday gave a glimpse of things to come. Professor Brian Cathcart and former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris waxed lyrical about their relentless pursuit of justice for their celebrity backers like Hugh Grant, and the lesser known victims of press mistreatment. Despite being promised the chance to quiz the victims, journalists in the room got increasingly irate as the double act hogged the limelight.

David Blackburn

Tony Hall appointed Director General of the BBC

It seems that Lord Patten has been reading the Spectator: Lord Hall, the BBC’s former director of news and the man who revolutionised the Royal Opera House, has been appointed Director General of the BBC, an appointment recommended by Tom Bower in last week's Spectator Diary. The BBC Trust states that Lord Hall will take over in March. Hall is a hugely respected figure. Here’s what Tom Bower wrote about him last week: ‘To avoid chaos, Patten cannot be fired without the government naming his successor. Step forward Tony Hall, the Royal Opera House’s chief executive. Hall was a respected editor of flagship broadcasting who resigned as the director of BBC News in 1999.

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Hopeless in Gaza

I have already tweeted my feeling of utter despondency at the situation in Gaza. I feel hopeless, both in the sense of having no hope and in the sense of being useless to help. Compared to the misery of what is happening on the ground my soul-searching is a mere pimple of suffering and I realise that I have no right to lose hope, when hope is what Israelis and Palestinians who want peace must cling to. But what has struck me in this conflict, more even than during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9, is how quickly those who care to comment about such matters have retreated into pre-rehearsed positions.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Ceasefire in Gaza?

A ceasefire is expected in Gaza later this evening, but is yet to materialise. Unsurprisingly, agreement has been hard to reach. Indeed, it has become a tool of propaganda. Hamas was busily briefing the world's media that the ceasefire had been agreed even as rockets struck Rishon LeZion in southern Israel at 16.22 (GMT), causing two light casualties. Israel, for its part, was clear that there would be no ceasfire while it was still under attack. It was hoped that the message had got through: the BBC reported that the guns, so to speak, fell silent shortly after 16.40 for more than half an hour. However, it was the triumph of hope over expectation.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Israel vs Hamas: Who started it?

The papers and media are full of the news that Israel has killed a Hamas leader in the Gaza. Why did this happen? Where did it come from? Is it not yet another example of the blood-thirsty Zionists doing their worst? If you read most of the British media that may well be what you think. After all there has been barely any previous mention in the British papers of the massive escalation in rocket fire into Israel in the last month or the even swifter escalation this week. Certainly no British paper or broadcaster has come close to giving these attacks the front-page publicity they grant to Israel’s response today. Nobody much bothered to report that in October alone, 116 rockets and 55 mortar shells were launched against Israel in 92 separate attacks.

Wednesday

Grace Goddard and Barbara Speed

Oxford students: Chris Patten needs to devote time to being our Chancellor

As students at Oxford University, we are told repeatedly by tutors, proctors, and the Chancellor himself that we're not allowed to do much outside our degree. We cannot do more than eight hours of paid work a week, and extracurricular activities are monitored carefully by colleges, who can revoke your right to do them at any time. Any major positions at the student union or Oxford Union require you to take a year out. And, as we can vouch for, taking on an editorship of a student newspaper isn’t exactly welcomed by teaching staff.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Murdoch’s son-in-law advising the new BBC chief

You have to hand it to Rupert Murdoch. The BBC is in turmoil and now being led by Tim Davie, its former audio and music chief whose journalistic experience does not even run to making cups of tea at the Scunthorpe Gazette. Mr Davie needs help, especially as he fancies his chances of keeping the top job. So who is he turning to? Mr Steerpike is reliably informed that he’s being advised by his old mate Matthew Freud. That’s right: Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law. Our dynamic duo has not had the best start. Yesterday, Mr Davie filmed a car-crash interview with Sky News in which he revealed that his broadcasting skills did not even extend to being able to look into a camera or even finishing an interview before walking off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Sebastian Payne

Revealed: who decides the BBC’s climate change policy

Just when you thought the BBC had no more scandals, Guido Fawkes has revealed what the Beeb tried very hard to cover up: the 28 mysterious individuals who have been informing its climate change reporting policy. As a state-funded broadcaster, the BBC has a duty to provide balance. It rejected this on its environmental coverage after taking advice from people in a now-infamous 2006 seminar from people whose identity the BBC was keen to keep secret. I wrote on Sunday how it had refused FoI requests to reveal those names.

Nick Cohen

A black, bloody insurrection of the hard-working, over-taxed and unbenefited

If you want to understand the mood of modern Britain, James Hawes’s novels of middle class fury are not a bad place to start. Hawes’s heroes are middle-aged men, whose dreams have collapsed. They want the nice, “normal” middle-class homes and secure jobs their parents received as a matter of course. But Britain is not offering them normal anymore. Normal is a foreign country to which they can never return. They are harried and broke. They work in dead end teaching jobs, as Hawes once did. Their homes are in rundown streets, where they must pay vast amounts of money to live in a pokey dump. The moral of Hawes’s stories is that the puritan virtues of hard work and thrift offer no chance of escape.

Monday

Lloyd Evans

Nadine Dorries prepares for burial

Nadine Dorries sidled back into view last night on ‘I’m Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here.’ The show is a parody of transportation. A gang of well-known show-offs are rounded up and removed to Australia where they endure privation and meagre living. They wear prison uniforms with serial numbers stencilled on the back. Phones and other luxuries are banned. So are script-writers. Everyone is wired for sound and the producers are desperate to broadcast anything approaching a witticism. ‘Slike a bleedin Bon movie, I’m tellin you,’ said Brian Conley as the contestants were ferried by helicopter into the bush. Their corner of the Outback looked like a Hampstead Heath beauty spot prepared for a hippy wedding.

Rod Liddle

George Entwistle’s parting gift

Have to say, I wish I’d got a year’s salary plus pension when I made an, er, dignified resignation from the BBC. The outgoing DG, George Entwistle, will receive an entire year’s salary plus various other stipends, amounting to more than a million quid. He’s had a horrible time of it recently, for sure – but this is another example of the BBC, and in particular Fatty Pang Patten, neither understanding what happens in commercial organisations nor indeed understanding the mood of the public. Nor, still further, understanding the BBC’s vast majority of employees. They are for the most part underpaid and have no secure tenure, working on short term contracts.

David Blackburn

Chaos at the BBC

The BBC crisis continues to dominate the airwaves. George Entwistle’s £1.3 million payoff has set outraged tongues wagging. Tim Montgomerie has collected the furious comments made by several Tory MPs. Much of the rest of the press pack has followed suit, saying that the severance deal is yet another self-inflicted wound by BBC management. Meanwhile, Helen Boaden and Stephen Mitchell, who are respectively the director and deputy director of BBC News, have stepped aside pending the results of the Pollard inquiry. David Dimbleby told the Today programme that he couldn’t understand why George Enwistle resigned, adding that the continuing fallout from the Savile scandal is not the greatest disaster to befall the BBC.

Sunday

Douglas Murray

A crisis, yes. But let’s not all shoot the BBC.

I have just returned from two hours of broadcasting on the BBC World Service. It is an odd time to be inside the BBC, not least because reporters from the organisation itself, as well as its rivals, are standing outside the studio doing pieces to camera about what is going on inside. Anyhow – having dealt with some web and print-press troubles in my last post, I wanted to jot down a few thoughts on the BBC's troubles. 1) The first is that the Newsnight McAlpine story is devastating. How any news organisation, let alone the publicly-funded (and compared to its commercial rivals extremely well-funded) BBC could have run such an amateurishly flawed piece of investigative journalism is appalling.