A decidedly Swiftie business

Breaking down The Sun's 'scoop' on Taylor Swift receiving a police escort in London.

The Sun’s front page story about Taylor Swift receiving a police escort to her concerts at Wembley Stadium is a classic example of using anonymous sources and a healthy dose of spin to create a scandal out of thin air. The revelation that Sun crime reporter Mike Sullivan and its Political Editor Harry Cole fashioned into a splash this morning was the subject of mild interest in Reddit discussions three months ago.

In print, the headline reads Exclusive: Cops’ Fury After Mayor & Home Sec ‘Pressed Met To Give Swift Royal Blue-Light Escort’ | Look what Taylor made us do but it’s the online version that immediately illustrates the shiftiness at work here — TAYLOR-MADE EXIT Top Labour politicians ‘pressed’ cops to give Taylor Swift royal-style escort to Wembley gig – then landed free tickets. The implication is that the free tickets — which the politicians shouldn’t have accepted in the first place — were given in return for police protection.

The story opens with an example of a familiar tabloid figure — the phantom accuser:

TOP Labour politicians have been accused of pressing police to give Taylor Swift a royalty-style blue-light escort to Wembley. 

Cops were reluctant to grant her the VVIP service — which comes at a huge expense to the taxpayer. 

Top Labour politicians have been accused by whom? Well, it’s The Sun making the accusation and balancing it on quotes from anonymous police sources.

The story continues:

Swift’s mum and manager, Andrea, is said to have threatened to axe the August shows unless a police convoy was provided.

It followed a foiled suicide bomb plot in Austria the previous week.

Senior cops agreed to it after personal interventions by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

VVIP protection is usually for senior royalty and politicians.

“… is said to have” is a very useful phrase in a tabloid news story. It doesn’t mean that someone actually did the thing they’re accused of but rather that someone says they might have. Swift received police escorts to her concerts in Cardiff and Edinburgh but the issue in this case is the particular unit that provided the one supplied in London:

The Special Escort Group of motorcyclists has a strict policy of not being used for private individuals.

It is understood that chiefs opposed providing protection for billionaire Swift, 34, and her entourage. 

The fact that the Special Escort Group is part of the Met’s Royalty and Specialist Protection command is what allows The Sun to lay it on thick with references to a “royal-style escort” and “VVIP protection” as well as noting that its nemesis Prince Harry is no longer entitled to similar treatment. But it even admits late in the story that Swift got police escorts at her other UK dates after the foiled plot in Austria. As the copy continues, it becomes clear that the main source for the scoop is a cheesed-off cop within the SEG:

A source said: “At this point, Mayor Khan stepped in and contacted the Met. The Mayor had apparently been contacted by the Home Secretary’s office and Swift’s management. The involvement of the Home Secretary and Mayor effectively amounts to applying pressure. The SEG finally agreed to make an exception to their policy and the Vienna terrorist arrests were used to justify the decision. But there was no specific threat to Swift and the SEG were not happy about being used as her ­private bodyguards. They feel their position and role has been undermined.”

Seen through a different ideological prism, the decision to provide a police escort to Swift could be seen simply as a public safety measure. Cancelling the gigs would’ve had major economic and logistical implications. Sullivan, in a box-out accompanying the news story, acknowledges that…

The special police escort provided for Taylor Swift will divide opinion. On the one hand, the Home Secretary and London Mayor deserve congratulations for helping to ensure the US singer’s concerts went ahead in August.

… but having covered that potential criticism returns to the more hyperbolic angle:

But the flip side of the coin entailed sacrificing the principles and protocols of the Met’s elite Special Escort Group. Their role is to serve the state and provide professional - and often armed - mobile protection for Royalty and senior Government ministers. Using them as traffic assistants for a pop star denigrates their purpose.

Now Sullivan dismissed the Vienna plot (“the bomb-making material found was crude and unviable”) but at the time The Sun reported on it as a “chilling plot” that “aimed to kill thousands of fans”.

The placement of quotes in news stories is always worth looking at. Responses from the Met (“The Met is operationally independent. Our decision-making is based on a thorough assessment of threat, risk and harm and circumstances of each case.”) and a Home Office Source (“This was an operational decision for the police. Of course, when events of this scale take place you would expect the Government, the Mayor’s office and the Met Police to work together to ensure they can be held safely and securely.”) appear right at the end of The Sun’s story.

By placing those denials so late in the copy, The Sun ensures that most readers won’t see them and those that do will already have accepted the narrative constructed in earlier paragraphs. This kind of news story also provides the opportunity for really easy follow-ups. Once you’ve got the claim, you can then run more stories on the inevitable condemnations from political opponents (‘SWIFT ROW RAGES Home Secretary has ‘questions to answer’ after she ‘pressed’ cops into Taylor Swift a ‘royal’ escort, top Tory blasts’) and further denials from ministers when they’re inevitably asked about the issue during broadcast rounds:

The government gave this particular story legs with its calamitous handling of the freebies story. In the interview above, you’ll notice that Kay Burley leans heavily on “the optics” of the claims — how it looks — rather than the actual substance of them.

Pick apart The Sun’s tale and what you find is an ‘elite’ police unit aggrieved that it had to do a job that it considered to be beneath it. The Prime Minister, the Mayor of London, and cabinet ministers shouldn’t have taken free tickets to see Swift but the notion of “undue pressure” on the Met is more spin than substance. If The Sun was backing the government, its angle could just have easily been — Look What You Met Me Do: Brave Elite Cops Protect Swift from Terror Threat.

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