12 September 2007

So the PR industry is gearing up for a scrap. Those masters of the dark arts will be compiling a whole host of tricks to try to hoodwink the UK Parliament’s Public Administration Committee that is currently looking into the lobbying industry.

Outsiders argue that the inquiry, which is the first Parliamentary investigation on lobbying since 1991, is long overdue. Since then, lobbying has been at the centre of sleaze and too many political scandals to mention.

But the fight back has begun. Key PR insiders are warning about how the industry needs to pull together to “salvage our reputation”. Writing in PR Week , Peter Bingle from Bell Pottinger, says that “there is no point rehearsing in public the view that we welcome the inquiry. We don’t. I have yet to meet a member of the industry who does.”

Nicholas Jones, 2 September 2007

(paper to Communication and Conflict Conference , University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. 7 September 2007)

If ever a serial offender was on probation it has to be the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He promised so much in preparing for office. He gave repeated undertakings that the Labour government which he led would end its reliance on spin and turn away from the dark arts of manipulating the news media. Yet, almost three months into his Premiership, Brown has still to show any real sign of delivering on a badly-needed programme of reform to restore public trust in what the government says; to reinforce the independence of the civil service; and to help Parliament rebuild its authority.

What happened was that events took over, the focus kept changing, drawing attention away from the abuses which need correcting. Within two days of entering Downing Street, a succession of potential disasters -- a failed terrorist attack, unprecedented summer floods and then an outbreak of foot and mouth disease -- gave the new Prime Minister an opportunity to project himself in a way which no-one had quite predicted. An arch control freak and manipulator was able, quite literally, to reinvent himself. Almost effortlessly, over the space of a few days, he assumed a commanding position and immediately began to dominate the political agenda, giving the impression that he had succeeded in discarding the political baggage of the past.

1 August 2007

When the Democrats’ eight candidates for US President took part in a televised debate answering questions posted on the video-sharing website YouTube, they contributed to an event which was a first for American political campaigning and which will inevitably be copied and developed further by broadcasters and political parties in the United Kingdom.

New forms of media are opening up new ways of participating in politics and Britain, with its rich history of robust electioneering, is well placed to take advantage of the rapid growth in the use of the web and what has already become a highly-innovative form of communication.

But while welcoming new opportunities to engage with a section of the electorate which has been notorious in the past for its low levels of voting, there is no certainty that future turnout will be higher, nor is there any guarantee that the world-wide web will provide fairer or more accessible forms of political reporting.

When that arch media manipulator Peter Mandelson pointed an accusing finger at unnamed officers in the Metropolitan Police Authority and blamed them for being responsible for a deluge of embarrassing leaks during the cash-for-honours investigation, he could hardly have paid a finer back-handed compliment to himself.

Here was an infamous former spin doctor, who was prolific in his own exploitation of leaked information, having the gall to castigate anyone else who had dared turn the tables and tried to undermine the credibility of Tony Blair and his closest colleagues.

Mandelson, like his fellow trader in confidential data, Alastair Campbell remains in denial about the damage his manipulative techniques inflicted on both the political process and the conduct of government; together they helped change the culture of Whitehall and Westminster and usher in an era where leaking has become a way of life within the state.

In the frenetic build-up to the release of Alastair Campbell’s diaries I kept wondering whether there might be any way of reconciling Gordon Brown’s desperate struggle to restore trust in the Labour government with a spin doctor’s confident assertion that the publication of his book would be "good for Labour and good for politics".

What also emerged through his pre-launch bluster and countless boastful entries about the Blairite chorus of approval for the "brilliant" job he was doing in Downing Street, was that Campbell remained in denial.

9 July 2007

Alastair Campbell’s pre-launch publicity blitz for The Blair Years was a text book example of the sleazy spin which so damaged the Blair government. Self-serving leaks to the newspapers whetted the appetite of reporters; broadcasters tripped over themselves in their rush to gain exclusive interviews; and barely any questions were asked about the ethics of how it was that a public servant could earn £1million by selling secrets gathered around the cabinet table.

But once the first, much-hyped extracts from his diaries appeared on his website even the spinmeister himself could not hide the truth: there, between the lines, was evidence of the way Campbell had driven a coach and horses through the code of conduct for politically-appointed temporary civil servants.

No wonder Gordon Brown promised in his statement on restoring trust to the political process (3.7.2007) that he would legislate to make sure that never again would a political appointee like Campbell be allowed to hold the power to give instructions to civil servants and get involved in the preparation and publication of intelligence information.

I have always admired Campbell’s ability to influence the news agenda and I acknowledge that the build-up to the publication of his diaries was masterful; I commend him too for his frankness, especially, for example, over his revelation in the book that in March 2003 all of Blair’s aides had "pretty severe moments of doubt" about Britain joining America’s attack on Iraq.

7 July 2007

There is much to be commended in Gordon Brown’s sweeping proposals for restoring trust in the process of government but when it comes to curbing the culture of spin which has become deeply ingrained in Whitehall and Westminster, meaningful commitments are few and far between.

At least Brown deserves personal credit for having kept his word and ensured that his most imaginative constitutional changes were not leaked in advance as tended to be the case with the contents of most of his Budgets in the ten years he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Advance trailing of announcements -- or in other words state-approved leaking -- is so institutionalised within government departments there needs to be root and branch revision of ministerial and civil service codes going far beyond anything which the new Prime Minister has so far suggested.

How Conservative bloggers are out in front in the blogsphere.

Speech by Nicholas Jones to Fondazione Farefuturo, Rome, 3 July 2007

For a political party in opposition, being ahead of the game in exploiting new forms of media might prove to be just as important in terms of fighting an election as devising an effective campaign message. It was the sure-footed way in which the Labour Party took advantage of the expansion in television news channels and programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s which helped to propel Tony Blair to a landslide victory in the British general election of 1997.

Ten years later, despite three successive election defeats, it is activists in the Conservative Party who are dictating the pace in using websites and blogs to promote and debate the Tory agenda. Initially the bloggers did not get much help or even encouragement from the party leadership, but there is now a better appreciation of their potential to improve the electoral chances of David Cameron while at the same time making life uncomfortable for the Labour government. And, perhaps more significantly, it is definitely bloggers from the right rather than from the left who are managing to establish themselves as a new generation of political commentators and pundits. Their views are increasingly being sought by the traditional news media, such as newspapers, television and radio. Their websites have become instant sounding boards for political opinion and as a result they are closer to the party membership

By Nicholas Jones, 20 June 2007 

Tony Blair’s belated acknowledgement in his Reuters speech that the growing dominance of the internet and accelerating media convergence might require a new regulatory framework only serves to underline his government’s lamentable failure to protect public service broadcasting.

Through his unseemly courtship of media magnates such as Rupert Murdoch, which continued throughout his Premiership, Blair weakened the BBC and has bequeathed a media regime which could threaten one of the country’s greatest democratic safeguards.

News coverage of election campaigns is a classic British compromise: we have a free press and newspapers can be as unscrupulous as they like in promoting whichever party they choose. But coverage on television and radio cannot be politically partisan; there are clear rules requiring television and radio stations to ensure a balance in air time between the parties.