Why you should never trust a journalist.

There has, quite rightly, been criticism of New Statesman Deputy Editor, George Eaton for his hatchet job on conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton.

The 75-year-old Roger Scruton gave his candor and trust to George Eaton because he is deputy editor of the New Statesman. Eaton used those civilized and liberal instincts against Scruton, dishonestly edited his remarks in order to smear Scruton as fearful and bigoted toward Chinese people in order to drum up a mini-Twitter outrage, and got him fired from an honorary position, in which he was advising the government on how to build more beautiful housing.

This is seen as an example of today's politics filled as it is with what Scruton called "this store of malice" but I've a feeling that, for all the criticism of Eaton, he have merely behaved as many journalists have always behaved. What Eaton got was a scalp and it doesn't matter how disingenuous he was or how he cherry picked phrases and twisted words, he brought the man down. And the plaudits he'll get from fellow journalists are like the 'expert pundit' in a football commentary applauding the professional foul, the bad behaviour is excused because it was justified by the game.

So my advice to every budding politician is never, not under any circumstances, trust a journalist. It doesn't matter how many drinks they buy you, how often they write or say nice things about you, if they've a chance to kill your career they will. I learned this the hard way...

When I was hauled, for the second time, before the Standards Board for England, I made the mistake of trusting a Yorkshire Post journalist. I was there because I'd been loud and rude to a Labour councillor. For some reason the officious investigators down in London decided this was a really bad thing so they'd have a tribunal - including paying thousands of pounds to ship a barrister up from London. There's me, in bits and pieces supported only by my wife, facing the Standards Board's investigating officer, a London solicitor and a barrister. This barrister read out, in the manner of these creatures, the bad words I was accused of saying - "didn't you say (lots of swear words)" to which I replied, "I don't remember my words, I was loud and rude".

The journalist promised me after they'd found me guilty but let me walk, that he'd fairly put my side of the story. He didn't, he just wrote down all the rude words and the editor plonked an unpleasant headline on the top.

Another time, I went to the leaving do for Olwyn Vasey who had been the Telegraph & Argus City Hall reporter. Most at the do were journalists and, at one point, the head of news at the paper stood up and said the sort of thing you'd expect - well done folks, you've been great, some super stories. Only then this journalist - not appreciating that I was there - talked about the highlight of the news year for them was getting me sacked (long story and I won't bore you with the details excpet to say I'd done nothing worthy of sacking). Think about this for a moment, celebrating forcing someone out of their job because it gets you a great front page.

I could give you other examples - journalists who made stuff up because they hadn't seen what someone else said they'd seen, stories created by getting a couple of friends to castigate someone on Twitter then reporting the outrage. I'm not saying journalists are any nastier than the rest of us, just that they are not your friend. So treat everything you say to them as on the record, always behave professionally, stick to facts, and remember that they are judged by the story - for some, as George Eaton shows, this doesn't make for decency or trustworthiness.

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Understanding Bradford...a few tips for London-based journalists

Goit Stock Falls, Cullingworth

I read a great deal about Bradford in the national papers since 29th March (I gather something happened). And I've seen a load of nonsense spouted by assorted clever people of right and left who, if they've ever been to Bradford, haven't got past Manningham's terraces in that visit.

By way of illustration (and to be fair this one is rather better written than many others) here's David Goodhart in Prospect Magazine. I believe Mr Goodhart is something important in some grand think tank or something like that - which of course makes his opinion of my City so much more significant than mine:

Even more than George Galloway, a young man called Naweed Hussain is the key to the Bradford West by-election upset. I spent a couple of hours with him last summer when I went to Bradford to write a piece “ten years on” from the 2001 riots. He was an angry and thwarted man; angry not so much about joblessness or discrimination (though he did complain about a “brown ceiling” at the council and university) but about the control of minority representation in the Labour party by people from the Jats and Bains clans from the Mirpur region of Kashmir, from where so many of Britain’s 1.2m Pakistanis originate.

Now let me explain something - it really is crucial to understanding Bradford. The Pakistani muslim population is a minority in all but seven of the City's wards. There are five more where that population are a significant minority - more than a third of the electorate.  Every other ward has a white (sort of christian I guess) majority.

To understand Bradford, look at the picture above and ask yourself what kind of place has a wonderful waterfall like that? Not urban for sure - two thirds of Bradford is rural (you never hear that on the BBC do you) and the District contains such iconic symbols of Yorkshire as Ilkey Moor, Top Withens and Saltaire.

Yet each year journalists troop up to the City (or more often make a couple of phone calls while staying safely in their well-appointed home near Hampstead Heath or some other trendy part of London). And talk the most complete tosh about the place based on their stupid belief that it's all terraced, Victorian housing and tatty council blocks. A sort of Liverpool built from stone.

I lose count of the times I've said this to journalists. It's not that the BBC, Channel 4 and so forth haven't had the briefing. It's just that the City has to conform to their London prejudice - poor, Northern, Asian and riot-strewn.

None of this is true - for sure, the City has problems. Too few jobs, too many poor schools, what Anne Cryer called the importing of poverty from South Asia and a City Centre that simply isn't good enough. But talking about Pakistani clan politics as if it was the City's problem rather than the Labour Party's problem doesn't cut the mustard as far I as I'm concerned.

So please my friends in the press, next time you're up give me a call and I'll give you a tour - I'll take you to Goit Stock, to Manningham Park, to Thornton village and to Apperley Bridge. If you've time we can pop up to Baildon, visit Bingley market and eat pie and peas in Keighley. Maybe then you start to understand Bradford and to set aside your prejudice, your stereotype of our great City.

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Are national newspaper journalists really, really stupid?

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Cigarette may have started M1 blaze

Look it's pretty simple, we get a huge blaze in a scrap yard that closes the M1. And it wasn't caused by someone lobbing a fag end out the window. There is not the slightest - not even a miniscule - chance of this being the case. None. Zilch. Zero.

So why do journalists on national newspapers write this bollocks?

 

 

Anonymity...

In commenting on a blog, I was struck by our inconsistent – bordering on hypocritical – treatment of anonymity. Now I have always had a straightforward view on anonymous allegations – that is what I have a bin-shaped filing cabinet for.

And I hear the screams.

“Anonymity protects the person making the allegation.”

“The right for journalists to protect their sources is a hard-won freedom.”

“We should always investigate allegations – it’s what the public expect.”

And so on. Well let me tell you that this is all nonsense. If we want to protect complainants, why do we do so only selectively? Are some complaints more important than others? Is anonymity only to be granted to a special, privileged category of alleger? That – to me – is how it appears. Yet on this basis people I know and respect have lost their jobs and others have had their careers wrecked.

Usually that is the sole point and purpose of the anonymous allegation

And please can we stop all this, ‘journalists are little tin gods’ nonsense. Journalists are not supermen on a great moral crusade to save the planet from whatever their newspaper tells them it needs saving from. Journalists mostly just do the job and often this job driven by tittle-tattle, gossip and unfounded allegation as these make by far the best stories and most exciting copy. Which means more circulation, more advertising and more profit. Hey ho!

And the public aren’t as dumb as you think – they understand the impact of anonymous backbiting (occasionally indulging in such a pastime themselves) and that most allegations are raised with the sole purpose of advancing the allegers (or his friends) interests. Those interests might be the search for political power, they might be money, business advantage or control. Or the interest might be good old fashioned vengeance. Almost never is the motive of the anonymous alleger to bring the light of truth to play into murky corners.

Anonymous allegations should be – wherever possible – avoided or dismissed. And never ever trusted.

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