The Daily Novel

I have been doing a quick check on how newspapers have been dealing with the Prince Harry story on their web sites. In Britain they mostly the top slot. Most of them have revealed that the news of him serving on the front was kept under wraps thanks to a secret agreement with all the mainstream media. But only The Times makes it explicit that it was party to that agreement. (Although it has yet to editorialise on its own behaviour.)

The Telegraph gives huge prominence to the role of the American web site, with a story headlined, ‘Matt Drudge: world’s most powerful journalist.’, telling his story at great length; how he went from showing Bill Clinton with his trousers down to Prince Harry and his uniform on. (my paraphrase).

The New York Times and the Washington Post rely on Associated Press for its reportage. AP discloses it was party to the secret cover-up along with the British Press. The Post story also reports that the story was first broken by an Australian magazine in January and then by a German newspaper. But it is only after the Drudge Report carried the story today that it hit the headlines.

Drudge, as I mentioned in my post about his Obama in Muslim dress story, has much in common with the British Private Eye. He reads the mainstream media and talks to its journalists, but he highlights the strories their bosses are most nervous about.

That is not eye witness reporting. And it does not make him the world’s most powerful journalist.

But on this day he deserves praise from all journalists. He is is the one who has not forgotten the truth of that old cliche - news is what people in power don’t want printed.

Predictably the British tabloid press poured out the pooled coverage that resulted from its self censorship and found their own angles. The Daily Mail tells us that Prince William told his brother that his mother was proud of him. The Daily Mirror, apparently went right to the top for their angle which was that the Queen herself broke the news to Harry that he was being sent to Afghanistan.

 Even The Independent, whose founding editor declared he was not going to waste space in his newspaper by giving any coverage to the Royal Family had the story high up on its web page.

The Financial Times seems to have managed to ignore the story altogether. When I did a search for Prince Harry on their web site just now, the story that came up was from last May about him not being sent to Iraq.

A shameful day in the history of the BBC.  Just seen the BBC 10 o-clock news. Even worse than the early evening bulletin on which I blogged earlier. The Prince Harry item lasted 15 minutes, half the length of the  whole bulletin. And nearly all of it in the same gung ho vein of the earlier news. With the additional news that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has issued a statement saying everone in Britain will be proud of Harry’s behaviour.

Most of the television time was given to the action pictures.  But in this bulletin the BBC reveals, what I had suspected earlier. The BBC had  agreed to go along with the Ministry of Defence not to mention the story because of an explicit agreement that they would have film and reporting rights on the story as it was happening. So long as they agreed not to use that footage until Harry was safely back home. Or unless the the story was broken by other media.

Not only that the BBC story says that this agreement applied to all the mainstream media. So the BBC’s shame is shared by all the media.

The real story, and it would have been worth half the length of the BBC News, and half ITN news, is what is the mainstream media doing making agreements like this? Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq are wars of national survival. Presumably all the people who went along with covering up this story - and they must have included the Prime Minister and probably the cabinet, as well as the media, did so, because of a belief that the prescence of a Royal Prince on the front line would be good for ‘morale’.

Even if that were true, which I doubt. (Quite a lot of soldiers are deeply sceptical of such royal parading.) It is based on a fallacy. In the past the troops were inspired by that other Harry leading the troops on the battlefields of Agincourt and Prince Rupert galloping ahead of his cavalry in a later war. But this so-called strategy had as its key priority stopping the news getting out. So the majority of the troops in Afghanistan was quite as ignorant as the folks back home, that Harry was out there with them.

The latest BBC bulletin story ended with an interview witth their Royal correspondent, who said rather sadly, that it was doubtful whether Harry could go on fighting in the mountains, now the news was out.

Hopefully, by tomorrow the BBC, and some of the other mainstream media, will have realised that the real story, is how on earth did he get to be there despite all the public disquiet which had been expressed about the possibility of him going to Iraq.

The BBC bulletin showed a clip of Prince Harry on the front wearing a cap, on which was imprinted the slogan, ‘We do bad things to bad people.’ Most of those Brits who opposed the war in Iraq and are sceptical about the continued Afghanistan intervention could not agree more.

The first ten minutes of the BBC 6 o-clock Television News tonight was spent with latest shocking news about the Royal Family. Whereas we all thought that Prince Harry, the second in line to succeed Queen Elisabeth II, was chasing the girls on the Mayfair party circuit, has been ’secretly’ fighting on the British front line in Afghanistan. There was a lot of publicity in November because the army deemed it was too dangerous to allow Prince Harry to indulge in war games in Iraq. But apparently they allowed him to go to the other war theatre in Afghanistan in December.

Given their past record on such matters, it is no surprise that the British press agreed not to tell the British public what was happening. More surprisingly the mainstream international media also agreed to keep it under wraps. Until today, when the Drudge report broke the story on its website.

The BBC was dutifully shocked by the irresponsible behaviour of these so-called journalists. Their ten-minute packagge included the boss of the army expressing his ‘diappointment’ at this dastardly behaviour. But most of it was devoted to BBC films of Harry on the front line, firing his gun with that inimitable soppy smile on his face. And extracts from a long interview with Harry about his desire to do his bit like an ordinary soldier.

 But of course he is not an ordinary soldier.

But what I find shocking is not Harry’s behaviour. It is the behaviour of the media in agreeing not to mention it. And the behaviour of the Royal advisers who don’t seem to realise that unlike that other Harry who led the troops at the battle of Agincourt, the presence of any member of the front line in 2008 is a drain on national resources and a distraction from defeating the enemy.

How many other troops had to be deployed to make sure Harry was in no real danger while he fired off his rounds?

And what on earth was the British press doing in agreeing to conceal what was happening.

Parliament and the people should surely be in on the debate about what our currently rather enormous Royal Family should be doing on our behalf. They could do far more for the economy if they went in advertising or television. They would be far better role models for the younger generation if they went into some of those less well paid public sector jobs, like the Civil Service or school teaching.

The media should be leading this kind of debate. But, of course, Royals in suits travelling on the tube to Westminster offices or teaching kids in schools in the East End do not make such exciting television pictures as men in uniform exploding shells against the Taliban in the beautiful mountains of Afghanistan.

Michael Bloomberg has once again indicated that he will not be standing for the US Presidential. But this time not in response to journalists’ questions but in a written editoriial posted today on the New York Times website. For some months now Bloomberg, currently Mayor of New York, has been denying that he would be run while his aides have been insisting that he is considering standing and was perpared to spend some of his billions by making a late entry as in independent candidate.

The statement does not leave any space for ambiguity. This is the quote:

 I believe that an independent approach to these issues is essential to governing our nation — and that an independent can win the presidency. I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for president.I believe that an independent approach to these issues is essential to governing our nation — and that an independent can win the presidency. I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for president.

But he goes on to say that he is going to be active in the fight. Another quote:

And while I have always said I am not running for president, the race is too important to sit on the sidelines, and so I have changed my mind in one area. If a candidate takes an independent, nonpartisan approach — and embraces practical solutions that challenge party orthodoxy — I’ll join others in helping that candidate win the White House.

Quite what this means is more difficult to guess. But it does read a bit like a job application. Of the three candidates left both McCain and Obama have been stressing the non-partizan approach; only Clinton is so closely identified with the Democratic Party machine that she is not a credible independent. So is this very public editorial an invitation to either McCain or Obama to woo him as a potential cabinet minister or even Vice President?

We now know that my wife’s purse was lifted from her handbag just outside the Haymarket Theatre three weeks ago. The thief must have been exceptionally light-fingered because she felt nothing but a strange sensation that her handbag suddenly felt later. But the purse has just been returned in a large brown envelope by none other than the Nat West Bank.

All the cards were there but the thief had taken the £70 in cash and her Freedom Pass. Presumably he, or she, must have thrown the rest on to the pavement in Lower Regent Street and made a quick getaway on the nearest bus. So watch out if you are travelling on London buses or trains. Our pickpocket can travel anywhere on the system for free until the end of March and exercise his skills without even getting his feet wet.

We think it was probably a Pole, because along with my wife’s cards in the purse which was returned to us was a religious Polish card. In the envelope returned by the police there was a piece of plain paper with a telephone number written on it. My wife had called it, but had great difficulty in understanding the limited English of the lady on the end of the line, until she put a  friend on the line.

Then it was  established that she had found the cards scattered on the pavement with the purse in Lower Regent Street. No she was not responsible for adding the Polish card. And she turned in the booty because she herself had had her purse stolen only the previous week.

So The Daily Novel will not be adopting Daily Mail attitudes towards immigration. But perhaps it is worth adding another question to questionairre for would-be British citizens.

 ’Who do you most admire, Fagin or the Good Samaritan? Answers on a 0 to 10 scale.’

The news today that Prozac works no better than a placedo (a pill coated with sugar) is no surprise to me. As one of those who have suffered from depression all my life, I have been tempted by the propaganda of the drug companies. Many times.

But mental illness is in the mind. So it is not at all surprising that depressives improve when they think that the sugar coated pill, they are ingesting, will make them better. Even though they are being conned.

Whatever you are suffering from Prozac makes you feel better. Just like alcohol, pot, cocaine, opium, etc etc.

The difference is that Prozac is pedalled be the doctors as the way depressives can help themselves. 

As if getting depressed were irrational. But there is plenty to be depresed about not only about people’s individual lives, but in what is happening in the world.

Drugs like Prozac make people feel better temporarily. As does cocaine. But if you take cocaine to make you feel better, you are breaking the law, whereas if you take Prozac, you are doing what ‘the doctor ordered’.  And not only that you can get if for free.

 But if you take cocaine you have to bargain with the drug sellers in Camden Markec. And it costs you even more than a packet of fags.

When I first met Rupert Murdoch, when i was working for the London Times, in the 1960s and he was trying to grab the British News of the World and The Sun, against much local opposition. The editor of the News of the World, in a famous editorial, wrote that his paper was as British as roasd beef and should not be sold to an upstart Australian or an Eastern Eurpean. (The other contender was the ‘controversial’ Robert Maxwell, born Jan Ludwig Hoch in what is now Czechoslakia.) .

What I learnt then is that Murdoch was a man not to be underestimated and that his reputation as a horror, fuelled by the many Australians in British journalism  who included several of my friends, was far too simplistic.

The fears of the editor of the News of the World were totally unfounded. Murdoch has continued the British as roast beef tradition of that newspaper, which is still full, as it was in my childhood, of the most salacious stories, about crime and sex and the interplay between the two.

Although the News of the World no longer sells 9 million and The Sun no longer sells 5 million they both sell enough to keep Murdoch’s bankers happy. And that also makes Rupert Murdoch quite happy, because it means his won bank account is quite healthy.

But that was a long time ago. And Murdoch now owns a chain of newspapers, television stations and web sites, which make him pots of money.

But the Murdoch I met in 1968, and the Murdoch who still lives today, is not a stereotype. He is quite complex figure.

He does not run his newspapers, like the late Lord Beaverbrook, who rang his journalists before they had their breakfasts, he expects his journalists to know his wishes. And to act on them. Else they are encouraged to find a job elsewhere.

Murdoch, although his political views are right of centre, and his religious views are closer to Jesus Christ, than to Karl Marx, wants his popular papers in the west and in the east to go on selling newspapers, and building up his bank balance.

But Murdoch, like almost every newspaper proprietor in history, also wants governments to do what he thinks should be done.

So despite his pragmatism he bought the London Times, and by now has probably lost far more money through owning it, even than Lord Thomson, the idealistic Canadian who tried to save The Times, and the cause of serious journalism.

The Sun and the News of the World sell newspapers, and swell the coffers. The Times, on the other hand, even now is taken seriously by governments and politicians.

But every journalist on The Times, worthy of his salt knows that their livelihood is dependent on them satisfying their owners. Like the journalists on The Independent, which was started as a journalist’s newspaper, but is now owned by the Irish tycoon, O’Reilly. Murdoch keeps The Times, although he has totally failed to make it profitable, because he wants to influence events.

And if he wants to influence events, Murdoch will not rely on his populist media, like Fox Television and the New York Post. He will want to influence the people who actually make the decisions. Who read the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Washington Post.

In the last two or three days the London Times has unmistakedly moved into the anti-Obama camp. Unlike Fox Television, which has been ambivalent, and the New York Post, traditionally the only popular newspaper which supported liberal views in New York City, has backed Obama.

Murdoch, as anyone who has followed his career will know, likes winners. And my own view is that he has still not quite made up his mind. Obama looks as if he might win, not only against Clinton, but the actual election. That would not be terribly good for Murdoch, because, although Obama’z policies are not ‘dangerously left wing’  viewed from Europe, And although Obama prays in a Chrisian church, he is not the kind of born again Christian that Murdoch has become.

So let me end with analysis. I think that Murdoch is trying to halt the Obama bandwagon, and that he is doing so, because he realises that it might harm his interests. But he is not disclosing his hand. Like a poker player.

Because if Obama actually does win and become President, Mucdoch will want to deal with him, in order to keep the money flowing in from his many highly profitable media properties.

Murdcoch does not want a new Franlin D. Roosevelt in the White House, who will consider whether the scandals and messes we have seen over the last few years demonstrate that governments should have the courage to call the bosses of these big busineses who have been paying themselves bigger and bigger salaries, while the poor in Britain and the US have been suffering the consequences.

If you want to know what Murdoch thinks today read the London Times which exists because Murdoch pays the losses. Not the New York Post or Fox Television, which makes pots of money, selling ‘news’ like hamburgers.

Barack Obama is getting a taste of the kind of scrutiny he will face if he wins the Democratic nomination thanks to an investigation published today by my old employers, The Times of  London. Their investigative sleuths have established that a British businessman, Nadhmi Auchi, lent Obama $3.5 million to buy the mock Geogian mansion in Chicago in which he now lives. This deal was done with the help of Tony Rezko, whom The Times describes as Obama’s bagman. At the same time Mrs Rezko bought a plot of land next door. The Times suggests that these two deals effectively gave Obama more assets than he had paid for. They further report that Mr Auchi has had his brushes with the police and that Rezko is going on trial in Chicago on 3 March on unrelated corruption charges.

Obama has already admitted his mistake in using Rezko as a fundraiser who brought millions to his campaign. And The Times has not found any proof of improper behaviour on his part. But it was certainly not prudent behaviour. And as Obama goes in to kitchen tonight, and gazes out at his huge garden, he must begretting that he did not buy a modest bungalow by the lakeside, with a small loan from one of the high street banks.

It is, of course, one of the ways that Obama is like JFK, some of whose funding came businessmen of questionable reputation with links to the mafia. But Jack Kennedy got a remarkably easy ride from the mainstream press about such matters.

Obama will certainly not get that. I have already highlighted the article by The Times chiief American journalist, Gerald Baker, portraying Obama as a dangerous left-winger. Such articles do not get written in Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers unless the writer believes that Murdoch would approve.

Today’s exposure adds to my feeling that Murdoch has decided that Obama is too left wing for his liking.

And of course Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, which has traditionally been a strong supporter of the Republican Party. And also employs a fine  team of investigative reporters who understand the intricacies of big business.

So, Barack, if you are feeling the heat when you go into the kitchen tonight. Just remember that this is just for starters.

Mrs Obama has also had a tough time from the media in the last few days. Maybe she will say at the dinner table that they should go back to the groves of academia. Except that they have done that, and probably found, as I did, that academic infighting can get quite as vicious as that in Washington and almost as dog eat dog as Fleet Street.

Barack Obama is the darling of the college kids, and increasingly he is making the still handsome Hillary Clinton look like an over-worked school teacher, who is desparately trying to get the children to listen to what she says. As he sweeps from victory to victory, he is demonstrating that a man in his forties can as well get votes from people old enough to be his father, but America’s oldies are fighting back.

Ralph Nader, aged 73 has just announced that he is entering the fray for the third time. He does not have enough money to pay for the advertising and press coverage necessary to give him a chance of winning. And, regrettedly, it is highly likely that most of America’s youf do not even know who he is. But many academics, as well as some journalists, have argued that his canditure in 2000, was a critical factor in getting George W. Bush elected. Nader’s reputation rests on his life-long campaign to make big business accountable to the electorae. Amongst his many other achievments as the champion of the consumer he pushed Detroit into making safety a selling point for cars, along with the more seductive features of speed and appearance. It was a platform bound to frighten away all decent Republicans. But it warmed the hearts of many Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrats, apart from the trade unionists, who thought that Nader in power might well mean that many of their member would lose their jobs.

This time he is making it even more explicit He is the candidate of the people, not the party machines, not the other candidates who are being in his view, much too lovey dovey with big business. This time around he will not be an effective spoiler, either for Obama or Clinton, if she emerges as the Democratic champion.

Why? For a short answer, the best quotes are those everyone knows, which happen to come from a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. You can’t fool all the people all the time. Powerful though his office is, the American President in 2009, cannot tell big business what to do. What I call, in shorthand, American consumer capitalism, is currently embraced by the Chinese, the Indians, and many of the Europeans. The giant international companies have many paymasters they have to satisfy. And they have become pretty expert in persuading their customers that their products and their world view is right.

Readers, you will all have read in the mainstream media, that Nader is running. But the point of this story is not, in accordance with the journalist training that those working in the mainstream media get, in the first paragraph.

It is the last paragpaph. Which will have to be a long one. And, as we all know, the mass readership only reads the first paragraph and the working classes don’t understand long words.

In the trawl for comments on Nader’s presidential bid, a CBS reporter asked Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor of New York, what he thought about it, at a routine press conference Bloomberg was giving about his business affairs. Bloomberg declared that every American had the right to stand for President. The message was go for it, Ralph. Additionally, as the CBS reporter dutifully reported, Bloomberg again denied that he was thinking of running himself for President. The CBS reporter worked hard and checked with the Bloomber supporters’ campaign. What they said is that Bloomberg will make his decision about whether he will run next week, after the results of the Texas and Ohio primaries.

Since I have written under the British libel laws, I would be the last person to accuse Bloomberg of lying. But I will say that his supporters know his mind better than he does! And I do think that Bloomberg could be a very serious contender. Not because I have not read my American history, and do not know of the long list of failed independent candidates. But because I believe that history never repeats itself.

But that is not a reason for not studying history.

Which reminds me, that the thing I am most proud in terms of my own personal biography is one of the things I did after I passed the British retirement age of 65, which was to start a new undergraduate degree is Journalism and Contemporary History at City University. All credit to City University for allowing, even encouraging me to start this degree. But my feelings about City University, like my feelings about most of the organisations I write about, are ambivalent.

Because a few years later City University fired me. (Message to the libel lawyers. This is journalistic licence. They did not actually fire me, they refused to renew my post-retirement contract, on the grounds, that, let’s face it, Bob, you are over seventy!)

But that’s just my own personal biog. So let’s return to the election for the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. The likely Democratic candidate is Obama, whom many still liken to JFK, for his appeal to youthful idealism. But they forget that the equally youthful George W. Bush, had made a pig’s ear of the job, so much so that anyone who stands for the Republicans is hobbled before he (or she, but so far there are not any she’s) has finished the first leg.

At the time I write, Obama is the clear front runner for the Democrats. On the Republican side there is no sign of a candidate who has any hope of stopping the bandwagon for McCain. His wife smiled at the press conference at which he was confronted with the New York Times suggestion that he had been fucking around with a blonde lobbyist. Quite different from Hillary Clinton, who looked distinctly uncomfortable when Bill was first being asked about Monica.

From my own viewing point, the sexual behaviour of the boss, is not the most important determinant. And, neither is it for the American electorate. Judged by the way people are voting, much of the American electorate does not vote according to prejudices about sexual preference, gender and race. This campaign has demonstrated that huge number of them are quite prepared for a woman or a black. (Whether they are ready for an openly gay President is still not indicated!)

And I don’t think they will blackball McCain because of the allegations that he has been an adulterer. Way back in the olden days, Palmeston acually won a British election when his opponents revealed his extra-marital affairs. Times change. But not too much. The journalists who followed Kennedy, knew all about his rather spectacular daily adulteries. They also knew that they doing in their own lives. Although they did not write about it.

But McCain has another problem, which has not been properly addressed by the mainstream media. He is 71.  And will still be ruling America at 75 if he wins. He is older even than Reagan, 69 when elected, and Eisenhower, 61. Eisenhower was still only 68 when I arrived to live in America in 1959, but he seemed much older. As does McCain.

Bloomberg in only five years younger, but he is more in tune with younger people. If he runs agaist Obama he might have a chance. McCain would lose a fight with Obama, but he would save the face of the Republican Party, because history would judge they had chosen a decent and honourable man (even if it is later proved that he cheated on his wife, because let’s face it, he is not alone on that score.)

BBC radio news just now has picked up just now on the latest infighting in the fight for the Democratic nomination for President. Apparently the Clinton campaign has been circulating a photo of Obama in Somali national dress on a visit to Kenya, in the hope that middle America will be reminded that Obama is really not much different from the slaves who came over from Africa in the last century. It is not likely to have quite the same impact a picture of Obama in a passionate embrace with a white intern.

It’s all a bit of a giggle. It is really a picture story which radio cannot do justice too. According to the Washington Post the story originated in the Drudge Report, which scooped the mainstream press with the Monica Lewinsky story, which caused more than a little embassment to husband Bill when he was actually in the White House.

I checked it out. Drudge treats it tongue in cheek. Along with the picture of Obama, is one of Hillary in her head scarf talking to a Muslim audience, Bush in some kind of native dress, and Bill Clinton similarly attired.

 Have a look for your yourself by following this link: http://www.drudgereport.com/flashoa.htm

Some stories are much funnier in print than on radio.