Jeremy Vine, BBC R2, has a new book out in which he relates many a story about his contacts with the Blair spin machine….Alastair Campbell and Mandelson….ALL SERIALISED IN THE DAILY MAIL:
A piece in the Sunday Express ‘Cross Bencher’ reveals that the much vaunted BBC independence is easily sidestepped by the vigorous use of threats.
Vine’s new book ‘pulled no punches’ in describing events and Alastair Campbell, also with a book to plug, decided he should be on Vine’s show and emailed him demanding an appearance….‘You have no choice in the matter of my coming on to your show to promote my latest volume of truth.’
Arrangements were immediately made and Campbell duly made his appearance on the Vine show a week or so ago.
Even if tongue in cheek it does show that influence not only allows you to shoulder your way onto the BBC but also you get a free advert for your book.
Independent my *****.
Now that little diversion is out of the way we can look at what Vine said in his book.
It makes for interesting reading.
“At any point, Peter would be involved in about 20 highly personal run-ins with political journalists… The BBC’s Nick Jones pointed out the way Alastair Campbell and Mandelson worked as a pair — the baseball bat and the stiletto. ‘If they don’t like your story, Campbell screams down the phone at you while Mandelson quietly goes to the Director-General,’ he said.”
Nice to know you can just have a quiet chat with the Director General if you have a complaint and want it sorted out….just how many of those did Mandelson have with the BBC DG to influence the narrative of BBC output?
Of Mandelson: ‘The charm was still there. But it was simply the scabbard on the rapier. If you helped him, he’d pump you up. If you crossed him, he’d run you through.
And by the way, if you think history has done him a disservice with its dark and menacing caricature, I’d agree. He was far more dark and menacing than that.’
…and look at this little story….it suggests that somewhere in the BBC the Labour Party has a helping hand who is willing to prevent uncomfortable truths emerging to the inconvenience of Labour when Prescott reveals that there was a ‘Blair Labour Party’ and a ‘Prescott Labour Party’:
‘Yes, fine,’ I (Vine) said. ‘I’ll just be asking you about the speech, if that’s OK.’
‘OK, hang on.’ Prescott was stooping to see his reflection in the lens of the camera, running his hand across his fringe. ‘Actually, I got Tony to sign my copy of it.’
‘Really?’ I asked. Prescott was staring at himself in the lens, straightening his tie. ‘Yes. So I had a record of the moment he gave my party a stuffing.’
Campbell took a step forward. ‘That’s not for you.’
Nick Jones, a political correspondent who never went out without a full set of spanners to insert into the spokes of any party press operation…. eyes boggled. Within hours, he was on air saying: ‘At least one Shadow Cabinet member has described Mr Blair as “stuffing the party” with this speech . . .’
Retribution was swift. Campbell bulldozed into the press room. With dozens of journalists looking on, the communications chief berated my colleague, veins jumping in his temple, calling his story ‘b******s’ and ‘a load of f*****g c***’ and asking him how he dared report it when he had no way of knowing it was true.
‘But this is terrible,’ I told our producer. ‘Prescott himself said that thing about stuffing the party and we’ve even got it on tape.’
I went to the edit suite to fetch it. Everything was exactly as it had been left the night before. But where the tape had sat on a top shelf, my hand now probed a gap: it had vanished.
To this day, I have no idea what became of it.’
Finally the best is saved till last.
The BBC insists that Murdoch was the power behind the throne, if not the King himself…however Murdoch has said that he was often ‘summoned’ to Downing St much to his inconvenience, and Vine reveals the truth about how scared labour was of the Press:
‘The New Labour crew fought with unmitigated ferocity for control of every single paragraph, printed and spoken, hand-to-hand, tooth-and-nail. And they were very good at it.’
Does that sound like a Party that would roll over and play dead for Murdoch?
Murdoch was the messenger boy who jumped ship and they’ve never forgiven him for it.
What Vine had to say about Paxman confirmed what a deeply unpleasant person Paxman is. It seems like their are phalanxes of BBC stuff pandering to his ego.
What a shower of garden gnomes we`ve allowed ourselves to be saddled with as a “political class”…and what a shower of sadsucks we`ve allowed to write about that political class..
When the likes of Vine, Humphrys and Paxman are given shedfuls of pensioners IOUs, so they can rub goosegrease into the likes of Campbell, Prescott and Mandelson…we can only weep and rage at the third-rate Bristol Stoolies who infest the body politic like cheap lice.
As if anyone gives a flying fart about these nutjobs and weirdies and their spats…yet the BBC seem intent on giving us these cartoon clowns and punctured blow up dolls by way of “politicans and journalists”.
When the Soviet Bloc went in 89/91, some Czech said that all the stupid dolts went into politics..all the smart ones went into business.
How come we`ve got no banks or business worth a candle…and we have loads of dolts too?
Spot on . Thank God for this site, Guido, and a handfull of others, where the public can give full vent to their derision towards the chattering class and their masters.
I had a ‘full and frank’ exchange of e-mails with the editor of the Telegraph a couple of years ago. It was very apparent that he didn’t have a ‘shire Tory’ bone in his body !
Let me check if I’ve got this right – Jeremy Whine wants us to respect his courage in denouncing Alistair Campbell, years after any of this actually mattered?
Meanwhile, in so far as we now know for a fact that staff at our fiercely independent state broadcaster would rather destroy their own tapes than risk anything embarrassing to a Labour government leaking out, I guess that kind of destroys the idea that this whole bias thing is in the eye of the beholder, they get it about right, and who’s to say what the truth is anyway? Hell, at least the Chinese media operate under state censorship – Beeboids do it to themselves, then ask us to admire their plucky fortitude in speaking truth to power (Tories suck!!!!)
Almost exactly a year ago BBC political editor Nick Robinson found the courage to stick his head above the parapet and tell us what Labour was really like.
He wrote on his blog that he is owed an apology by those who doubted his claims of infighting within Labour.
The ‘highest rated’ comments posted by the public are priceless; criticising him for covering up for Labour at the time and mocking him for now claiming to be some beacon of truth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13725346
To all those who said journalists were making up, exaggerating or speculating about the rift at the top of the last Labour government it’s long past time for an apology.
I’m still waiting for Campbell to admit giving the intelligence service orders. Not the dodgy dossier ones. The ones that resulted in the death of Dr Kelly.
Poor Dr Kelly seems to have vanished down the memory hole. The Beeb know their guilt when it comes to this issue and will do anything to kill this story.
Beyond what the revelations suggest in their own right, I am interested in the choice of media for this expose.
Guessing that, in complement to the world’s most powerful (if not in holding to account terms) broadcast monopoly, the print title chosen for this serialisation was not the New Statesman or Guardian.
Could it be that when talking at, when money matters in ‘speaking to the nation, decisions on paper choice suddenly get more interested in ABC representation?
Another ‘unique’ set of standards there, Jezza.
It wasn’t until the Gulf War, after 6 whole years of Labour government that the BBC broadcast anything vaguely critical about Labour. Up until that point they had been entirely supportive – a combination of actual agreement with Labour policy, and a fear of being attacked by Campbell or Mandelson. Even the most “independent” of BBC journalists would go from fearless campaigner for the truth to quaking coward after a phone call from Campbell, encouraged no doubt by the knowledge that the director-general (Dyke) and chairman (Gavyn Davies) were Labour party members and donors and unlikely to lend them support.
One of the theories about why the BBC has been so anti-Tory since the last election is that it is a misguided and belated attempt to show editorial independence once again. They are embarrassed and ashamed about how they capitulated to New Labour and deserted every principle they are supposed to stand for – they think they can regain some self-respect by attacking the Tories. In reality it is no more than the equivalent of a bullied person picking on someone else to bully in an attempt to maintain some self esteem.
And it’s a misguided theory.
The bbc’s hatred of the Conservative party goes back a very long way.
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If nowt else, that one deserves full credit for cheek and cojones.
For years I have wondered about Vine’s relationship with the Daily Mail. It is just a little bit too cosy for it to be anything other than incestuous. This is demonstrated several times a week as story after story are plucked from the Mail for “discussion” (meaning, of course, that Vine will tell his listeners what to think) on his R2 programme with only the merest sprinkling of tales from other members of the Dead Tree Press Preservation Society.
All of my enquiries to the Daily Mail about their relationship with Vine’s programme (i.e. does the Mail receive tangible benefit for doing Vine’s legwork and so providing a goodly percentage of his material) have, not surprisingly, gone unanswered. FOI requests on the same matter are, of course, filed under the all-silencing “journalism, art or literature” we-don’t-have-to-tell-you-anything-mate get-out-of-bias-free category.
And here we have Vine’s pulp-fiction being published in the Daily Mail. Should I be surprised? I thought not.
No Daily Mail? No Jeremy Vine show!
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