Media News

I fear The Daily Telegraph could be heading for defeat in its forthcoming libel case with George Galloway if it is forced to concede that the documents on which it based its claim that "Gorgeous" George was on the take from Saddam Hussein might be fakes.

According to this newspaper's esteemed Londoner's Diary, the Telegraph defence is not to insist that the story was true, but to say that it was a faithful report of what was in the Iraqi documents - and that even if they are forgeries it was in the public interest to publish what was in them.

Is this is going to wash? It certainly didn't when the BBC made a similar claim about its Andrew Gilligan story: we can't prove that what Dr Kelly claims is true, said the BBC, but the fact it comes from such an important source means it deserves to be in the public domain.

In fact, the BBC was in a slightly stronger position than the Telegraph since a respected source is clearly preferable to a dodgy document. But it was not good enough for the Telegraph, which took the BBC to task for broadcasting a story it could not prove to be true.

If the Telegraph is now reduced to the same public-interest defence I have no doubt Mr Galloway's lawyers will accuse it of double standards. It's certainly a far cry from the robust defence of the accuracy of the story I heard Conrad Black make at the Spectator's 175th anniversary party when he was bearded by Christopher Silvester, a Galloway ally. Of course, it's not Black's problem any more (whose it is will depend on litigation beginning in a Delaware court next week on the future ownership of the Telegraph).

Nor was there any doubt the story was true in the Telegraph editorials on the day of and the day after its "exclusive", which were written with a presumption of guilt and described the documents as "damning", Galloway's claims of forgery as "bluster", and talked of "treason".

Galloway, who was drummed out of the Labour Party for his extreme antiwar rhetoric but remains an MP, has already forced the Christian Science Monitor to retract and apologise for similar claims it made about him, based on different documents which turned out to be false. But America's ABC News recently reported a similar story.

Of course, ABC's documents could be forgeries, then this new story will not help the paper's defence.

The Telegraph will need to prove its documents are genuine.

Exclusive: scoops are strictly for journalists

The "exclusive" tag on a story has become one of the most devalued words in British journalism, bar the description "world exclusive" beloved of the red-tops, which these days can even adorn stories involving football players and lapdancers (they speak of nothing else in the world's chancelleries).

I banned the use of "exclusive" at The Sunday Times and we don't use it at The Scotsman or The Business - not just because the tabloids have made it unfit for use in serious newspapers, but because it implies that every other story in your paper is "not exclusive".

In the age of the internet, nothing stays exclusive for long anyway - maybe 30 minutes at the most. Not even that in America, where there is always some disloyal hack with an exclusive prepared to pump it through to the online Drudge Report before the paper even makes it to the newsagents.

In Britain the Press Complaints Commission could demand that newspapers are rather more rigorous in their use of "exclusive", but I'm not sure it should bother or that readers care: journalists put rather greater store by exclusives than the public. In British newspapers, where everybody quickly pinches everybody else's "exclusives" (The Sun got the Hutton Report but so did the final editions of every other paper), many readers have no idea whose exclusive it was in the first place.

So I'm with Mark Byford, the BBC's acting director general, when he says the Beeb should not get too hung up on exclusives. The BBC's primary purpose is to report and interpret with reliability and authority. Some people have Byford to mean the BBC should not even be in the business of exclusives. I'm pretty sure he's too much of a journalist to mean that - it's the prospect of the periodic exclusive that makes the daily grind of journalism so worthwhile.

Sun still out for Blair

I had a vigorous exchange with Michael Howard when he came on BBC2's Daily Politics yesterday, and as usual he gave as good as he got. I managed to catch him out at the end, however, when I casually asked him if he had a ticket for the IDS road show. He struggled for an answer.

"Would you like mine?" I enquired, helpfully. "I didn't know you had one?" he replied, playing for time. "If I had one, would you like it?" I asked with a smile.

I never did get a clear answer. But that was just a bit of fun. More worrying for the Tory leader is why Rebekah Wade's Sun all but ignored his keynote "British Dream" speech about how his Toryism was about opportunities for folks from humble backgrounds. A good theme for the populist Sun, you might think, but it only made a couple of paragraphs on page two.

When Howard became Tory leader there was much speculation that Tony Blair might no longer be able to count on The Sun's support. Add yesterday's evidence to the slavishly pro-Government way in which it covered the Hutton Report and it's clear Britain's biggest-selling daily is still in the Blairite camp.

Bush fails the TV test

I made a point of watching George Bush's big interview on US television on Sunday. It's not often major American politicians allow themselves to be interrogated one-to-one by broadcast journalists and I wanted to see how the President would fare.

Not well is the answer: he was hesitant, unconvincing and repetitive - despite the fact he was given a pretty easy ride by Tim Russert, who hosts NBC's Meet the Press every Sunday morning.

Russert is actually a pretty tough political interviewer by US standards, where there is no tradition of robust and persistent questioning. By British standards he was a soft touch.

He allowed Bush to waffle and repeat himself, rarely interrupting or trying to pin him down. It is one of the ironies in that most free-wheeling and non-deferential of countries that US broadcast journalists are far more respectful of, and deferential towards, not just presidents but all senior politicians than we are here.

It's how British politicians would like to be treated by us. I suspect the voters would be the first to complain.

Doing my bit for democracy

"Neil lends Tories a helping hand", was The Guardian's typically inaccurate and unhelpful headline reporting that I was to interview the shortlist of Tory hopefuls who want to be the candidate for the plum Kensington and Chelsea constituency when Michael Portillo stands down at the next election. And there was I thinking I was doing an unpaid public service to improve the quality of politicians who want our votes.

The Kensington Tories reckon that subjecting their aspiring candidates to the sort of broadcast interview by an independent journalist with no party affiliation that they will have to face if they become an MP will allow them to choose a better successor to Portillo than the traditional and often dreary hustings speech.

The big night is on 25 February in Kensington Town Hall in front of party members. It should be a full house. I will interview the three or four left in the race for about 10 minutes, followed by questions from the floor. The party faithful will then vote to choose their candidate.

It is only an experiment, but it's what American broadcasters are doing almost every week as Democratic candidates debate with each other for their party's presidential nomination. If it's a success I suspect the other main parties - and other Tory constituencies - will follow suit.

More work for political broadcasters - but we should happily do it for any major party as an unpaid public duty. We all have an interest in improving the quality of our politicians - but none more so than those of us who have to interview them on TV and radio.