Then John Lloyd, editor of the Financial Times magazine, pitched in with a book, reviewed in this issue of the BJR, and a curtain-raising article in The Observer which aired the view of one senior politician that “Britain is the first ‘media-ocracy', in which the media don't just strive for supreme power over the national narratives, but have actually taken it”. In The Guardian, Martin Kettle supported Mr Lloyd's argument, tentatively proposing that a cross-party parliamentary committee might put editors and senior journalists under public scrutiny from time to time. From the law, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, last chairman of the old Press Council, thought that “the days of self-regulation have gone”.

Let us leave aside the mystifying notion of “national narratives” and examine Mr Lloyd's pessimistic tract. His view is that the media have turned themselves into an unelected and unaccountable shadow establishment, bent on increasing their own power: no matter what political position the media take, “their most powerful ‘ideology' is the pursuit of their own power, and the permanent untrustworthiness of public figures”. Mr Lloyd has given us a modern formulation of Stanley Baldwin's denunciation of Lords Beaverbrook and Northcliffe for exercising “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. The phrase has been echoing through discussions of press freedom and press ownership since 1931.

Although the BJR is a nicely-brought-up young journal which was taught to shun the louche and shady aspects of human existence, it has, regrettably, some repentant acquaintances who have, through no fault of their own and often in the line of duty, been obliged to observe the seamy side of life. They report that harlots are frequently expected to take their responsibilities very seriously indeed, and that they are constantly and forcibly reminded of their duties by those who have them in their power: their customers, their pimps and some corrupt members of the police force.

So the famous phrase, grand as it sounds, has no foundation in sense. Its actual author, Rudyard Kipling, clearly had not appreciated the economic and social situation of the average harlot, presumably being unacquainted with them. But when he was needed he was happy enough, as a journalist whose career had started on an Indian newspaper which supported the local government and was supported by government printing contracts, to lend his eloquence to the Prime Minister. Baldwin, after all, was not only his friend but his cousin.

Persuasive words

In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that journalists take a cynical view of politicians and officials, and treat them, as Mr Lloyd complains, with scorn. What he and Mr Kettle see as essential modifications in journalistic practice – among other things, a determined reliance on facts and a new regard for ethics – are certainly necessary for a revival of trust in the media by the general public. The BJR has for some considerable time been urging the industry to clean up its act for that very reason.

There are parallel attempts to assert old-fashioned standards of solidly based reporting in Ron Neil's recommendations for the BBC's news operations in the aftermath of Hutton, about which Richard Sambrook writes in this issue. But admirable though any such reforms are, journalists, apart from a few whose commitment to one party or another is unshakeable and sometimes disreputable, are really only themselves members of the general public. When they see politicians surrounding themselves with secrecy and spin, they can hardly be expected to approach them in a spirit of deferential scepticism, conscientiously assessing their actions from the point of view of a disengaged but honest observer.

We should emphasise, also, that press attempts to destabilise politics are nothing new, nor any more virulent than when Beaverbrook and Northcliffe were causing Baldwin sleepless nights. Newspapers are not public service instruments, as Beaverbrook made clear to the 1948 Royal Commission when confessing that he ran the Daily Express “purely for propaganda, and with no other purpose”.

When politicians start wailing about journalistic malpractice, the words pot, kettle – no offence, Martin – and black spring to mind. The public may distrust, with some cause, certain sections of the fourth estate, but its view of politicians – as being largely a bunch of hoodwinkers for whom the truth is a foreign country – is not without foundation. Mr Lloyd and others, anxious to see the press muzzled, appear to have been seduced by government bleating that often seems driven by desperation. When the advice of lawyer Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago, “Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle, and they'll never get wise”, doesn't pacify the electorate, it is a knee-jerk reaction to blame the media. Sir Harold Evans says: “Something is rotten in the state of relations between government and press in Britain.” But who started the rot?