‘Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading the newspapers,’ said the American writer Ben Hecht, ‘is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.’ This is as true of commentary as of news, and presents a Fleet Street commentator with a dilemma.
‘Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading the newspapers,’ said the American writer Ben Hecht, ‘is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.’ This is as true of commentary as of news, and presents a Fleet Street commentator with a dilemma. Useful commentary needs perspective. Perspective is gained by standing back. A good way to stand back is to wait until the hullabaloo has died down. But the end of the hullabaloo usually coincides with a story’s passing from the news, and from public interest.
It’s no good us columnists getting too precious and complaining about that. But when our indignation lingers after the fuss has subsided, we should notice and, perhaps, revisit.
I remain resentful on Carol Thatcher’s behalf at the bucket of media censure that was poured on her head when some insensitive remarks made privately in a BBC green room were sneaked into the press, and she was subsequently dropped from the One Show. That happened two years ago this week, but continues to niggle me. Twelve years ago this week came the dropping of Glenn Hoddle as the England football manager because, asked about his personal philosophical beliefs, he told an interviewer he believed in reincarnation according to how you had lived your life, and that disabled people were being punished for wrongs committed in a former life. This episode, too, still rankles with me, not because Mr Hoddle’s beliefs are not absurd, but because many religious views are insulting, but he was entitled to hold them. That Tony Blair, then prime minister, climbed onto this bandwagon and called for Hoddle’s dismissal for peddling superstitious nonsense, was uncharacteristically shallow, even for Mr Blair — as I remember reflecting when, years later, I chanced upon the former prime minister in a Westminster Cathedral queue to venerate relics from the thigh and foot of St Thérèse of Lisieux.
Perspective, then, is valuable for what it does not screen out, as well as what it does. And nearly two weeks after the sacking of two Sky Sports presenters for private prejudices, privately expressed — and after the issue has dropped entirely from the news — I remain seriously discomfited by how little attention was given, amid the furore, to the distinction between private remarks of doubtful seriousness, and things said professionally and in public.
The latter are plainly capable of being disciplinary offences. I do not say that the former — private remarks — can never become a matter of public concern; but that a great deal more tolerance should be given to what we may say privately, and often lightly and carelessly, because people are entitled to a private sphere of both thought and speech, and the breaking down of walls between the public and the personal seems to me to invade a domain that any culture should respect.
I’m uninterested in football, do not myself understand the offside rule, and have absolutely no brief for Richard Keys or Andrew Gray; they sound like pretty boorish company to me. Nor do I think such vulgar and insultingly sexist remarks are acceptable (in the sense that I would accept them) in any context, including private conversation; I would think the less of a man after such banter.
Nor, if pressed, do I hold that people who speak unpleasantly in private have any right to prevent those who may overhear them from publishing the fact. I dislike the onward march of privacy legislation because I distrust any yardstick for legal censorship beyond the question whether what was published was true. The moment you stray into questions of whether something was ‘appropriate’, ‘tasteful’ or ‘necessary’ you are in a quagmire which the rich and powerful have always been able to navigate to their advantage.
So: I don’t think it was right that Keys and Gray said what they did; and don’t think it was wrong that (given that someone sneaked on them) their remarks were reported. What I’m uncomfortable about is treating remarks intended privately as though made publicly.
It becomes all the more important not to blur the distinction between private inappropriateness and public misdemeanour, if we are to argue that both may be reported. The logical conclusion of our creeping French-style legal protection of privacy would be a world where the news media were banned from reporting private conversations. The logical conclusion of our creeping Orwellian intrusion into people’s inner lives would be a world in which any private conversation was subject to censure or sanction. The logical intersection of these two tendencies would be a world in which private conversations were subject to official sanction, but so was reporting them. Sky Sports presenters would suddenly disappear, with no reason given.
And a final irony: it may be because of our aggressive human rights and employment protection laws that the impression arises that privately un-PC remarks are the subject of a relentless official searchlight. It’s increasingly difficult to remove an employee on grounds of age, incompetence, incapacity or the need for a fresh face. But a wandering hand at an office party or a private quip when the cameras are off may be lighted upon by management looking for a complaint that an industrial tribunal will entertain. Andy Gray is reported as believing he was ‘set up’ because his employers wanted to remove him. Thus, through the law of unintended consequences, could employment protection lead to the hounding of an employee into the private sphere — and a growing media assumption that this is normal and right. It isn’t, and we shouldn’t have let it pass without protest.
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