Thought for the Day

Courtesy of Charles Moore in this week’s Spectator:

Reviewing Stephen Robinson’s new biography of Bill Deedes in these pages last week, Peregrine Worsthorne was fierce against his old colleague. Worsthorne said that Deedes lacked the ‘willingness to tell the truth to power’ which is ‘indispensable’ to journalism. Bill did indeed hate confrontation, to a fault, but there is something arrogant about the assumption, always made by journalists about ourselves, that we know so clearly what the truth is. Besides, if we do know it, surely our first duty is to tell the truth not to power — that is our second duty, flowing from the first — but to the readers. It amazes me how little consideration the readers get in the memoirs and conversations of journalists. If they appear at all, it is as an offstage comic army of bores who write foolish letters which we rarely bother to answer.