COCK-UP or conspiracy? When it comes to officialdom, the journalist’s natural inclination is to believe the latter until proven otherwise and, lo and behold, it almost always turns out to be the former.
But not always, and the further up the government tree you go the more communications “experts” with time on their hands for cack-handed cunning plans you tend to find. A whole industry has sprung up for smarty-pants trying to climb greasy political poles with impossibly wizard wheezes to impress their bosses.
Apart from The Thick Of It creator Armando Iannucci, the beneficiaries are us, the always-hungry members of the press for whom what matters is the story, and whether it was part of a strategy or a shemozzle is a follow-up for the Sundays. Into this category is the apparent blunder by Julia Dockerill, a Conservative aide from the new Brexit Department, who walked into Number 10 with her A4 pad folded open to display her briefing notes to the photographers outside.
So we now know that her department thinks the French will be difficult (vous ne dites pas…), there will be no transition, no single market membership, and no real news until March, or until an insider comes up with the next marvellously Machiavellian move to box their boss’s enemies into a corner.
In a world where manipulation of the press is just part of the daily routine, and nobody walking up Downing Street on official business is not fully aware of the protocols, it stretches belief to accept this was a simple mistake. But of course the beauty is it’s impossible to prove otherwise unless the perpetrator walks close to the snappers and hisses “take a picture of this, plebs”. Now it’s emerged that the photographer actually hissed “cover it up” to her.
Leaks that aren’t leaks, briefings which are denied when the excrement hits the extractor, consultations which appear genuine but which are just a set-up, it’s all part of the communications game. Perhaps the current consultation by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the Leveson Inquiry and the Crime & Courts Act is another example, not so much a search for guidance but a means to buy time for the UK Government before it launches part two of the investigation into the relationship between the press and the police. It is also supposed to be gathering evidence to gauge whether Section 40 of the Crime & Courts Act should be triggered, a measure which, as I have written here before, will mean any news publisher not part of the Government’s regulation scheme sued in English civil courts will have to pay all the complainer’s costs even if it successfully defends the case.
Just as disgracefully, Section 40 allows members of the officially-sanctioned system to avoid paying costs even if they lose a case. Given it’s unlikely all costs will be awarded against the winner, this means the taxpayer will pick up the tab. And this is coming from a Conservative administration?
Helpfully, DCMS has set up an online survey so the public can very quickly vote whether or not Leveson should be reactivated and if they would like to see Section 40 enacted or scrapped. It might not keep many Herald readers awake at night but there are plenty who want the Leveson locomotive stoked up again, even though millions have been spent pursuing journalists, police officers and prison officers through the courts and the press regulation system has been revolutionised.
No identification is needed to complete the survey so you can vote as often as you like from different addresses and devices. In fact it’s possible to submit multiple responses from the same device and the technically-minded could even set up an automatic response to keep going until the consultation closes on January 10.
So is this a mistake or a means to produce the answer DCMS wants to find? Separate sources within DCMS indicate two things; that the survey is simply a numbers game in which volume is all that counts, and the consultation is a sham because instruments to trigger Section 40 will be introduced anyway.
Culture minister Karen Bradley should listen to the watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which ranks Britain 38th out of 180 for press freedom and believes it is set to slip further. Its UK director Rebecca Vincent said this week “Such moves don’t only impact the UK; they are part of a global deterioration in press freedom that must be addressed.”
A cocked gun or a cock-up, Ms Bradley doesn’t have to pull the trigger but she can pull the plug.
John McLellan is director of the Scottish Newspaper Society.
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