Is it fitting that a journalist should accept a gong from a monarch via a politician? I’m not quite sure to what extent, if any, the question bothers those of us in the media, since it seldom is openly discussed. One possible reason for the inhibited debate is a fear of appearing churlish, given that, by and large, those of our colleagues past and present who accepted honours from Buckingham Palace via Westminster were, or are, excellent practitioners with few obvious professional flaws; to challenge their ennoblement might well smack of envy.

Nevertheless, there is a dilemma here. It was expressed, though not too forcefully, in 1893 when John Robinson of London’s Daily News received a letter at his club (the Reform) just as he was leaving his armchair for home. The letter, on 10 Downing Street notepaper, read: “Dear Mr Robinson, I have the pleasure to inform you that Her Majesty the Queen has empowered me to propose to you that you should receive the honour of knighthood; and I trust it may be agreeable to you to accept the proposal, which I now tender in pursuance of Her Majesty’s gracious permission. I remain, faithfully yours, W. E. Gladstone.”

According to Robinson’s diary, the letter caused him “a sleepless night”. While delighted at the compliment it implied, he could not make up his mind whether to accept the offer or not. The editor of a 1904 volume of Robinson’s recollections of Fifty Years of Fleet Street says: “No man was less tainted with that snobbishness that pays homage to a title irrespective of the merits of the bearer; but to a distinction given for a life well spent in the public service he was never averse. The question in his mind was: Did his efforts, such as they had been, to promote the cause of right as he saw it, deserve the recognition so kindly and gracefully suggested by the statesman whom, above all others, he esteemed? Perhaps he had a proud consciousness that this was really the case.” In all events, “after much self-communing” the journalist decided to accept his knighthood, telling his close friends: “The worst of it is, that, being a widower, I cannot allege the customary excuse that, while ‘I do not care a fig for a title, my wife insists on my accepting it in order that she may be Lady So-and-so’.”

Despite his jokiness, Sir John Robinson was “a little nervous as to what would be said in certain quarters”. (His own newsroom? The rest of Fleet Street? We are not told). He need not have worried. When his name appeared among Queen Victoria’s birthday honours, “there was not one jarring note in the chorus of approval”. Indeed, his friend, the distinguished war correspondent Archibald Forbes, wrote to Sir John declaring that Gladstone’s Liberal party had been far too remiss in rewarding “those who were steadfastly loyal and faithful to its cause”, and that Robinson “ought to have had a baronetcy at least”.

What’s the reward for?

There are, of course, proskynetic exceptions, one being Robinson’s contemporary, William Howard Russell, the Dublin-born war correspondent whose valiant and stylish work in the Crimea, North America and elsewhere on The Times’s behalf earned him a knighthood in 1895 and, seven years later, a CVO (Commander of the Royal Victorian Order). Billy Russell did not have to prostrate himself for the latter honour. Edward VII whispered as he slipped the CVO ribbon over the journalist’s head: “Don’t kneel, Billy, stoop!” Yes, yes, I know the king was being solicitous about “Billy’s” 80 years, but that request from on-high to a journalist to “stoop” must surely produce a rueful chuckle or two.

Nothing I have said so far is meant to cast aspersions on those distinguished journalists, such as Sir Simon Jenkins, Sir Max Hastings, Sir Harold Evans and the late Sir Denis Hamilton (for all of whom I retain considerable admiration and respect), or for the late Lords Cudlipp, Jacobson and Ardwick – John Beavan – (ditto). All I am asking is: what is the point of accepting such baubles when the profession itself is well equipped to dish them out for good journalism? Perhaps knighthoods and peerages are occasionally conferred on journalists, not because of their journalism, but because they are hailed simply as good citizens whose extra-curricular deeds are an example to us all. If so, I can think of many even better citizens passed over by the Crown and its advisers in these matters. Besides, journalists, for as long as they work for newspapers, even as semi-retired reporters or greywhiskered commentators, are supposed to remain detached from the Establishment, not become part of it.

It has been said that the greatest politicians have neither morals nor malice in their composition. Might this be said about our greatest journalists? I really like to think not (OK, there are exceptions). So why are they gongable? There are, no doubt, some of us who could make a perfectly reasonable case for dishing out royal gongs to journalists who no longer are in a position to influence State policies. The wonderfully talented Sydney Jacobson, for example, accepted a peerage only upon ceasing to be an influential figure at Mirror Group – as was the case with Cudlipp. Group political heavyweight Beavan withdrew from his senior role upon accepting his. Fair enough, I suppose, yet others of us remain uncomfortable with the idea of even deactivated media chroniclers assuming mantles of prestige from those with whom their professional duty obliged them to lock horns. And I occasionally wonder if that same twinge of discomfort caused Simon Jenkins, having accepted a knighthood, to discard the use of it.

I am a bit more troubled when royal gongs are accepted by colleagues who are supposed to be in the thick of media-government mud slinging. Nick Lloyd took his knighthood and Brian Hitchen pocketed his CBE while still editing the Daily Express and Daily Star respectively. The thought that they were so honoured simply because of their unstinting support for Margaret Thatcher is, no doubt, anathema to them (just as the idea of raising the redtop Star editor to “Sir Brian” may have struck Whitehall and Palace flunkeys as infra dig). David English was knighted while still occupying a pivotal role at Associated Newspapers and, so we understand, would have been elevated to the peerage but for his untimely death. In cannot be argued that his honour was unjustified, but the timing, surely, was questionable. Equally, I’m puzzled by the criteria used to elevate some journalists. It must have been pleasing for Mike Maloney (former Daily Mirror and People snapper) and Philippa Kennedy, the Press Gazette’s ex-editor) to collect OBEs. I’m sure they were excellent at their chosen toil, but so are countless thousands more, within and without journalism.

Occasionally, one can see immediately why a journalist is gonged. When Larry Lamb, Rupert Murdoch’s first editor at The Sun, was knighted we suspected it was because he had turned the paper rightwards, as well as upwards (in circulation, that is). But we also suspected the knighthood had gone to his head when he sought to have a lavish private bathroom built next to his office. This was one of Sir Larry’s least successful ventures, because Murdoch reportedly said: “Absolutely not! Tell him to piss out the window!”

No limit to credulity

Such public cynicism is much more likely now than in Robinson’s and Russell’s day. Trust in journalistic standards and motivations has deteriorated, as we know from both opinion-sampling and from recent stern critiques from our fellow journalists, among them Nick Davies and Peter Oborne. We cannot claim that our virtues blossom on our natures or our work as radiantly, unselfconsciously, and inevitably as the flower on the hawthorn bough. Those government and parliamentary people who claim otherwise by “honouring” certain journalists may be classified as a tribunal of mediocrity. And what does that make us? Should our sights be on a gong and its intimations of flunkeyism and hypocrisy, or on the morass of misery and sweated labour at the bottom of society; a morass sustaining an edifice of competitive commerce as greedy as it is merciless?

I should declare that I am a republican, and therefore somewhat out of sympathy with feudal practices that officially and officiously – and often speciously – seek to elevate one citizen above another. I should also concede that I, too, have accepted awards from other than my journalistic colleagues (from, for example, an organisation devoted to mental health). But, although one may argue about it, I contend that such awards are vastly different and less troubling than the acceptance by journalists of honours from the State.

Why I never voted

Perhaps this makes me over-sensitive in the matter of neutrality. Still, for the life of me I cannot see that a scrupulous effort to maintain distance between the journalist and the State should not be regarded as crucial to effective journalism and an easy conscience. Most of us recall fondly my former, highly-esteemed editor, Harry Evans not believing “the bastards [politicians] when I know they’re lying to me”. By the time he accepted his knighthood his credo was, of course, free of British newspapers and their bastardy interlocutors, and his eye less jaundiced. He also had become an American citizen with no axes to grind in the land once stimulated by his journalism.All of which gives us no reason to laugh at the little dilemma Sir John Robinson took back with him from his club to his home, and next day to his Bouverie Street office. It may be more appropriate to guffaw at – or rather with – the chap who accompanied him to the Palace for a similar gong: John Tenniel, the renowned cartoonist on Punch.