Stephen Glover

Is Richard Desmond the new Murdoch? Many lips were curled when he acquired Express Newspapers in November 2000. People said that he had borrowed too much money. It was suggested that as a man whose fortune was built on pornography he knew next to nothing about running national newspapers. In some quarters he was dismissed as a foul-mouthed vulgarian who would be unable to halt the long decline of the Daily and Sunday Express. Nearly three years later Mr Desmond is taken more seriously. Largely as a result of ferocious cost-cutting, he has increased the profits of Express Newspapers, last year pocketing nearly £21 million for himself. The Daily Express has been stabilised, and is even selling a few more copies.

Last week the Press Complaints Commission delivered two judgments which, taken together, seem highly perplexing. It exonerated the News of the World for paying £10,000 to a convicted criminal who was implicated in the alleged plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham. And it censured the Guardian for paying £720 to a former criminal for writing an article about life in prison alongside Jeffrey Archer. As a result of this second ruling, the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, has reportedly blown several gaskets and has had to be soothed in a darkened room. The News of the World’s escape is fortunate, to say the least. Readers may remember the case.

When Robert Thomson was made editor of the Times some 18 months ago he let it be known that he intended to take his paper up-market. There was also good reason to believe that he would not let it be so slavish towards New Labour as it had sometimes been during the long tenure of his predecessor, my old friend Peter Stothard. How has he fared? The paper's news pages did briefly become more elevated. A couple of new foreign correspondents were hired. No one could have pretended that the transformation was a great one, but something seemed to be going on. Yet in recent months Mr Thomson has gone into reverse gear. Last week the Times thought fit to publish on its front page, above the fold, large pictures of Lady Archer before and after her face-lift.

A favourite newspaper ruse is to sneak a journalist on to the flight deck of a Boeing 747 and then to suggest that we are all at risk as a result of lax security. It is, of course, very effective. Most of us are easily alarmed. And many of us will have been persuaded by the media that the admission of the 'comic terrorist' Aaron Barschak into Prince William's birthday party at Windsor Castle was a terrifying lapse. There was almost universal horror. 'This security breach has repercussions for the safety of every British citizen,' thundered the Daily Telegraph. 'This sorry saga reveals failings that are systematic, showing laxity at every level,' asserted the Daily Mail. 'When the inquiry finds who is to blame, an example must be made and heads must roll,' demanded the Sun. What nonsense.

Polly Toynbee of the Guardian believes that the Daily Mail is responsible for most of what is wrong with this country. When she learnt that the paper was intending to hold its own referendum on the new European constitution, the streets of Clapham, where Polly has her house, began to tremble. 'Who runs the country?' she demanded to know in her column of 21 May. The answer was that the 'right-wing press barons' with their 'raucous bullying' want to. The Daily Mail was naturally the worst offender. Its decision to have its own plebiscite was 'a crude usurpation'.

Almost everyone dislikes the News of the World, including many of its readers. It is coarse, intrusive, hypocritical and sanctimonious. It frequently puts itself above or outside the law – perhaps most famously when it so whipped up public hysteria over paedophilia that the mobs took to the streets, in one case mistaking a paediatrician for a paedophile and driving her out of her house. The editor of the newspaper at the time was Rebekah Wade – now editor of the Sun – who invariably refuses to talk to the press or to be interviewed even when she sets Britain ablaze. A more disagreeable example of the new media aristocracy would be difficult to find.

Before I start this piece, which is about the future of the Daily Telegraph, I should make clear that it is written by me. When I last wrote at length about the Telegraph – rather controversially, perhaps – I appear to have caused palpitations in the heart of at least one banker. The Spectator is owned by the same company as the Daily Telegraph, namely Hollinger International. And this banker, who may have been a somewhat unsophisticated individual, formed the view that anything appearing in The Spectator about the Telegraph must carry some sort of proprietorial stamp of approval, and reflect in some way the thinking of its higher management. This is completely untrue. What appears here are only my thoughts.

Is the eight-year reign of Piers Morgan at the Daily Mirror drawing to a gentle close? Last October I wrote, 'My bet is that in six months' time the Mirror will not belong to Trinity.' Mmm. More than six months have passed and the newspaper has not been sold – yet. An approach to buy it was made before Christmas by the venture-capital groups Apax Partners and Candover, but rebuffed by the board of Trinity Mirror. Since then the condition of the group has worsened, with the sales of the Daily Mirror and its sister titles falling further, and several senior executives being asked to walk the plank. Readers may be inclined to receive my predictions about the future of Mr Morgan with scepticism. Nonetheless, I believe his day is drawing nigh.

If William Rees-Mogg had a fan club, I would be its president. I would lick envelopes for him and update his website, which would no doubt be full of his latest geopolitical prognostications. I would arrange coach parties of the faithful so that we could travel down to Somerset and glimpse him as he paced his grounds. I would organise seminars in which various 'Mogg experts' could unveil their latest theories about his work. There is virtually nothing I would not do for him. Almost my first act on a Monday morning is to read his column in the Times. It is invariably a pleasure. William Rees-Mogg is an old-fashioned essayist who can turn to almost any subject under the sun, and write with knowledge and authority. This Monday, however, I was stopped in my tracks.

This was not a good war for newspapers. I am not so much thinking of the journalism. Much of it was excellent, though newspapers are obviously at a disadvantage to 24-hour rolling news channels, which not only provide breaking stories but also analysis from people who surprisingly often know what they are talking about. Newspapers scarcely put on sales during the war, and those that did appear already to have lost them. This is very disheartening to editors who have burnt the midnight oil, to reporters on the spot who have risked life and limb, and to publishers who have spent tens of thousands of unbudgeted pounds only to see very little sales uplift, if any at all. Exact figures are hard to establish.

One of the paradoxes of this war is that most of us do not have very much idea of what is going on. That is at any rate what I feel. There are hundreds of brave and talented journalists in Iraq who address us every hour of the day and night on television, and fill untold acres of newsprint in the press. But although I have spent countless hours slumped on my sofa watching the box (last night I tore myself away from Fox News at two o'clock in the morning), and almost as much time poring over the newspapers, the fog of war clings to me wherever I go. As I write, we don't know whether Saddam Hussein is alive or dead. The media seem momentarily to have lost interest in the progress of our magnificent soldiers around Basra.

We journalists think pretty highly of ourselves. I don't mean the chap who touches up photographs of Page Three girls; he may have a proper sense of his place in the universe. I mean columnists, leader writers and foreign correspondents. I mean the undoubtedly brave men and women who stand in the desert in Iraq (a country most of them have not visited before) and pronounce on the progress of the war (a subject about which many of them know rather little). I mean the editors who tell us what to think. Most of us draw comfort from the thought that the job we do is a vital one. We know that a free press is the mark of a free society, and we see ourselves as the guardians of that society.