Journalists are prone to a bouts of tiresome nostalgia. Stick a handful of us round a table, add a couple of bottles, and the war stories will flow. Having once been one of the new generation (I’m 55, now, and started this nonsense 37 years ago) I know how exhausting encounters with aged hacks can be. Fortunately, it is possible to resist becoming that old know-it-all.
The truth as I see it is that young journalists today work under levels of pressure that those of my generation never did. Newsrooms have been hollowed out, piling additional stress on an ever-decreasing number of reporters, many of whom are lucky to have time to get out of the office to follow up a lead. While I’m generalising, let me add that I detect, among younger hacks, more thoughtfulness about the subjects and the people they write about than was ever displayed when I started out.
In the media wild west of the past, there was far too little thought given about the consequences of the stories we wrote. It was a case of get the tale then get to the pub and if anyone suffered collateral damage from appearing in our pages, well, that was the price of a free press.
These days, as I watch an increasing number of stories about the damage to women’s rights caused by gender ideology, I can’t help feel we could do with a return to the old days. Next month, the tribunal brought by nurse Sandie Peggie – suing both NHS Fife and trans-identifying doctor Beth Upton for harassment and discrimination over single-sex spaces – will restart.
During the first evidence sessions in February, we heard extraordinary details about the way Peggie was treated when she declared biological sex both real and important. We heard of a health board captured by gender ideologues, where women were expected to indulge the beliefs of biological men like Upton and the law on single-sex spaces was ignored.
What the tribunal has not yet uncovered is how a health board could have got itself into this appalling, not to mention hugely costly, mess. It struck me during those first hearings that something was missing from the coverage. Where were all the members of the board – the people legally responsible for the NHS trust’s actions – in all of this?
As the first week of Peggie’s tribunal drew to a close, I messaged an old chum. Murray Foote is now the former chief executive of the SNP but, a quarter of a century ago, he was the news editor of the Daily Record and I was one of the many reporters he managed. In our day, I told him, you’d have had one of us on the doorstep of every member of the board, terrifying them with questions along the lines of: ‘What are you playing at?’ He agreed and we exchange rueful messages of the sort old gits send.
Don’t get me wrong, the classic journalistic ‘doorstep’ still takes place but it is less common than it was and our media and democracy is the poorer for it. NHS Fife has handled every step of Sandie Peggie’s case, appallingly. Even now, the trust evades scrutiny, even launching an unsuccessful attempt to exclude some reporters from joining the live feed of the coming tribunal sessions. This would not have happened, I believe, if members of the board had endured the terrifying experience of opening the door to find a hack and a snapper in the garden.
A reduction in staffing levels is only part of the reason that the ‘doorstep’ is going out of fashion. The phone-hacking scandal which closed the News of the World in 2011 sent a wave of fear across the newspaper industry. Not because everyone was at it but because that dreadful mess made a strong case for stricter regulation of the media. In a bid to see off stricter controls, editors argued that they would get their own houses in order. Part of this process has been a new era of caution which, while it might please the legal departments of newspapers across the country, has changed the game for the worst. A more cautious press is not a more effective one. How could it be?
The Sandie Peggie case – along with countless others – has exposed a modern corporate culture where faceless and lavishly rewarded executives ignore the reality of the law and apply work regulations based on vibes. If we want to restore sanity to these organisations as quickly as possible, it is time for a return to the combative days when reporters would turn up unannounced at someone’s home, where the questions asked were less important than the message sent. And that message was ‘we’re on to you, mate’.
I make no defence of the worst excesses committed by some in my trade in the past, but I can’t help feeling an overcorrection has taken place. How I yearn for more serious decision-makers and a less grown-up press.
Comments