At the buffet with assassins…
In my continued quest to be popular with my (ex-) colleagues, I say this to you: Don't trust journalists even if you have to talk to them.
Previously: * Layla plays *
The ruthless (and hilarious) sacking of Tucker Carlson shows that no one not named Murdoch is a made man at News Corp
I didn’t know my dad was an atheist until — aged about 10 or 11 — I came home from school and told him that I didn’t believe in god. He then explained why he was more than doubtful that a deity was up in the blue telling angels to get off its cloud. I do try to be as circumspect about telling my step-daughter my positions on contentious issues before she has come to her own determination on them but I almost always fail.
Walking home from dinner the other night, the topic turned to the police and we talked about my own experiences with them as a journalist, the realisation I had that the police are not ‘the goodies’ (prompted by the recollections of my own grandfather who was in the Met in the 60s and 70s and held the same sexist, racist, and misogynist positions that bedevil that broken organisation now), and what to do if you encounter them. Be polite, I told her, and tell them nothing.
I was thinking afterward that I should have given her a coda to that advice: Just as you should be wary with the police, you should — even if you have to talk — never trust a journalist. Hacks are scorpions asking the crocodile for a ride across the river; they are in the service of a good quote; they are engaged in the pursuit of “the line” — the mystical quality in a story that elevates it from something that is happening to “the news”.
Over the weekend, there were two prime stinking examples of how journalism works that illustrated how vital it is to distrust journalists as a point of principle. I realise this is the sort of statement that will make my current and ex-colleagues instantly bridle: “We speak truth to power!”, “A free press is vital!”, “No one tells me what to write!”. The sort of indignation they usually reserve for the moment after an expense claim is rejected or someone pulls them up on the headline slapped on one of their pieces.
Both the examples I want to look at today come from The Times/Sunday Times over the weekend; the first is a hack abasing themselves in front of power to undermine their own big scoop; the second is a profile in which the subject was set up to be humiliated and wandered into it like Sollozzo swanning in to eat spaghetti with Michael Corleone in The Godfather and being shot in the head.
Under the headline Did my Prince Andrew interview hurt his daughters? and showing concern for entirely the wrong women, Emily Maitlis wrote:
What is the duty of care you owe to those who trust you with their stories — particularly if they are in no position to answer back? And how could an interview that aimed to provide answers for vulnerable young women not end up hurting other vulnerable young women — his daughters — along the way? These were things I struggled with in the aftermath that still cost me a fair amount of thought today.
As we were putting together a new documentary on Andrew, I started to wonder if I hadn’t in fact missed the obvious answer to that most asked question. What if the prince was actually hoping to clear his own name in time for his daughter Beatrice’s wedding? What if he put himself through a rigorous hour of accountability so his own family could put it behind all of them? I don’t know this, of course — my speculation has no journalistic source, just raw gut instinct. Perhaps I am seeking to make sense of something I still don’t properly understand.
I couldn’t help but say, “Who gives a fuck?” This level of concern is rarely shown for ‘normal’ interviewees and people who become characters in news stories. But Prince Andrew — a man who has ducked questioning in the US and took millions of his mother’s (our!) money to make Virginia Giuffre go away — is given a simpering set of imagined excuses.
What if he was trying to clear his name before his daughter’s wedding? Once again: Who gives a fuck? Did he make himself accountable?! Of course not. An interview with a journalist — however ‘tough’ — is not even remotely in the same universe as an interview under criminal caution.
Maitlis comparing two princesses — with Potemkin jobs and vast trust funds — to the vulnerable young women at the heart of the Epstein cases is grotesque. Prince Andrew deserves no sympathy and Matilis offering him any, as well as doubting her own interview (which, as she recognises in the piece, made her more famous and more bankable), is depressing. If Prince Andrew were a less famous acolyte of a known sex trafficker, rapist, and abuser, Matilis would not be writing a chin-stroking, brain-twisting mea (nearly) culpa.
In similar, “why has this been written?” territory, was The Sunday Times profile of Jolyon Maugham — the KC, co-founder of the Good Law Project and the man who gained notoriety when he dealt with a fox attacking his chickens by killing it with a bat while clad in his wife’s kimono. It followed on from a shellacking in The Times’ book pages the week before (which just so happened to be written by a fellow of the eye-bogglingly right-wing Policy Exchange think-tank, and welcomed with indecent glee by prominent ‘gender critical’ voices who disdain Maugham’s pro-trans positions).
The headline — Jolyon Maugham, the fox-killing lawyer: ‘I identify with Gandhi’ — was instantly recognisable as the product of what I call a snare question (a trap designed to grab a quote that can be quoted plucked from context or that shortened or otherwise curtailed will give a bad impression). The lede — the introduction beneath the headline — was also designed to… uh… lead the reader to a predetermined conclusion through its construction:
He’s the ‘lawfare’ barrister who almost derailed Brexit — and clubbed a fox to death in a kimono. Is he the justice warrior the country needs or an egotist doing more harm than good?
You usually put the rhetorical question that you want the reader to settle upon last, e.g. Was Jesus Christ a peaceful prophet or was he a dangerous radical out to destroy pax romanica with his dangerous left-wing Middle Eastern beliefs? (Why not both?). On the Gandhi question, Maugham says:
[Glancy] butchered the answer I gave to a question about who inspired me (I said Monbiot. He then asked about historical figures and I said Gandhi and Martin Luther King) to omit Monbiot and facilitate this shameless, false and revolting suggestion I compared myself to Gandhi.
When Maugham complained on Twitter about the framing of Glancy’s piece and about the way he had used certain material and chosen to present certain lines, the journalist flipped into ‘what, me guv?’ mode, writing:
Jo, this Gandhi complaint is ridiculous, it’s a direct quote… the Gandhi line is a direct quote. I’m genuinely asking, Jo, because you’re making some pretty grave professional accusations here.
The quote may be direct but without the context of what Maugham was asked and why, it becomes distorted. It’s also clear that the headline writer — which, as hacks are always so keen to stress, won’t have been Glancy — used the Gandhi quote to set the reader up with the expectation that this is a pompous and vainglorious man to be mocked. Maugham is not without ego — no KC is — but the profile does not let his words speak for themselves or really admit that Glancy is offering a view rather than a definitive portrait of a man’s character.
Here are the actual Gandhi sections of the piece:
As the criticism grew in pitch, Maugham took inspiration from figures of legend. He has often compared himself to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, straddling a narrow bridge telling the fire demon Balrog that he cannot pass. “I identify with the great protesters in history, people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King,” he says…
…Really, though, Maugham doesn’t remind me of Gandhi or Hamilton so much as Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men, righteously convinced that society requires his protection.
Maugham using the analogy of Gandalf does not mean he thinks he’s a wizard any more than responding to Glancy’s request for historical examples means he thinks he’s like Gandhi.
The profile was drive-by on Maugham by News UK. He shouldn’t have agreed to be interviewed by The Sunday Times and especially not by Glancy. The closing paragraph of the piece is a late tackle and I guarantee you Glancy was nice to Maugham when they met:
Although he landed a few blows on the government during Brexit and Covid, I suspect his opponents have ultimately benefited from having this brilliant but bumptious bourgeois caricature as a useful enemy. When all is said and done, Maugham might have inflicted his worst damage on the poor fox.
Do. Not. Trust. Journalists. Interviewers will be nice to your face and slip a shiv between your ribs. If I’m interviewed for print, I record the conversation for my own records. You will be at high risk of being misquoted or quoted out of context otherwise.
Not every hack enters an interview with the intent to screw you over but you will not be able to tell at first sight what their intentions are. You cannot assume good faith. The primary desire when you are the interviewer — as I have been plenty of times — is to get good quotes. You are not there to make the interviewee look good. You’re there to ensure you get the pull quote and a headline angle.
You are not a team. You are not working together. Even if it feels genial, there is an adversarial undercurrent. Even if you think the food is good, you have to remember, you’re at the buffet with assassins.
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Further listening:
Wonder if Andrew was thinking of his daughters when he was knocking about with a convicted pedophile. Maybe Maitlis should have asked him, and then the subject wouldn't be costing her "a fair amount of thought today."