Slop will eat itself

The clash between Isabel Oakeshott and Cathy Newman was a real scrap in the British media's professional wrestling antics, but truth was still the loser.

Previously: The scorpion’s scoop
Do not be confused: The Telegraph's 'Lockdown Files' are not journalism; Isabel Oakeshott is not a journalist.

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She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.
Be careful, courteous, and cool.
Never trust a journalist...

... Should you tell her who you’ve kissed,
You’ll see it all in print, and you’ll
Never trust a journalist... 

... Hostile, friendly, sober, pissed,
Male or female – that’s the rule.
When tempted to confide, resist.
Never trust a journalist.

— ‘How to deal with the press’, I Don’t Know (2001), Wendy Cope

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Friendly fire — ‘unintentionally’ killing someone on your side in a battle — is one of the most dishonest and oxymoronic phrases in military terminology, a world where slippery euphemisms and blunt descriptions collide uncomfortably. But there is an even more bloodless way of describing a bloody business: Members of Nato¹ tend to refer to “blue on blue” incidents; it comes from exercises during the first cold war² when Nato forces wore blue pennants while those ‘playing’ Warsaw Pact forces were identified with red flags.

Isabel Oakeshott’s appearance on Cathy Newman’s Times Radio show last night was a blue-on-blue incident: two factions of the conservative media and political class clashing. Though it was more like witnessing an attempted fragging than ‘friendly fire’.

The anger behind Newman’s questions wasn’t about the shabby ethics of Oakeshott’s reporting, but that the shabbiness was sold to the Telegraph and not their shared employer News UK. Newman wielded the rhetorical Tommy gun on behalf of the Murdoch mafia; Oakeshott should get into bed carefully for the foreseeable lest she lands on a ‘misplaced’ horse’s head.

Conscious as I am of overdoing the analogies, Newman vs. Oakeshott was also the media equivalent of a ‘shoot’ (the professional wrestling term for when a real event occurs during the scripted action). Usually, British journalists abide by a sort of kayfabe — working from a shared script and abiding by established characters on air, while interacting as their ‘real’ selves in the polite environment of the green room — but this interview broke that.

For most people, the interview frames Newman as the ‘face’ (hero) of the clip and Oakeshott as the ‘heel’ (villain). But like a professional wrestling match, both characters work for the same ultimate boss; in the WWE, it would be the odious Vince McMahon, at News UK, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Newman’s own record is not free from heel antics: In 2015, she had to apologise after claiming she had been “ushered out” of a mosque; video footage showed she had not been.

Here’s the section of the interview that best illustrates how different the conversation would be were News UK not livid at Oakeshott for wrestling in a main event for the Telegraph’s rival promotion.

Newman: The reaction from some of your colleagues has been slightly less charitable… you were touring the studios; you turned up at TalkTV; there was an interesting conversation in the green room with News UK colleagues, wasn’t there? 

Oakeshott: Well, I don’t think it’s of interest to our listeners for me to talk about how my colleagues react to my scoop. You know that is very, very navel-gazing. It’s very media bubble. What matters is the content of these messages and what they reveal about the mistakes that were made, and the attitude and the power-hungry nature of the way we were governed behind the scenes. Honestly, I think a preoccupation with what’s being said about me… it’s not about me. 

Newman: No, no, no, you have hit the headlines and this slot is about you because you’re the one who’s in the headlines. There was a bit of a shouting match, I hear, with Harry Cole — political editor of The Sun — I just wonder whether you understand why he was exasperated given that you’re paid a reported £250,000 a year by TalkTV [Oakeshott interjects: “Now hang on a minute…”] Hang on a sec. Now producers and reporters  — who are paid a fraction of your salary — were having to put up with your sloppy seconds and follow up the story in a rival newspaper. It’s a bit galling, isn’t it? 

Oakeshott: I’m just not going to go down this route, Cathy. People don’t know the details of my work contracts. I’m just not going to go there. I just don’t think this is of interest to people. I think people are much more interested in what the investigation reveals. Most of our listeners won’t know the individuals you are referring to; I think it’s absurd that you should be quoting wild figures about my contract with any news organisation. That’s my business; it’s not yours.  

Newman: But I’m just interested in why you decided to go with the Telegraph when you do work for TalkTV which is part of an organisation with other newspapers… 

Oakeshott: Cathy, Cathy, if your focus is on this angle, I will terminate the interview now because this is not what I’ve come on here to talk about. 

Newman: I’m talking about you hitting the headlines and this is part of the story, but let’s talk about what happened next..  

Oakeshott: My work arrangements aren’t part of the story. They’re actually nothing to do with it. 

Newman: So you have no qualms about taking this story to the Telegraph. You’re happy with how that went… 

Oakeshott: I’m going to terminate the interview. [Newman interjects] This is my last warning, okay: I’m going to terminate the interview. I have not come on here to justify where the story was placed or how I chose to go about that. I’ve come on here to talk about the story. And the fact that you have started wheeling out inaccurate figures about my contract or any working arrangement I have had; I think that is frankly unprofessional.

Newman: We’re talking about your story that has hit the headline… 

Oakeshott: (talking over Newman) You’re talking about my salary, that’s what you’re talking about… 

Newman: I’m not talking about your salary anymore. 

Oakeshott: …How much are you paid, Cathy? 

Newman: I haven’t hit the headlines, you have. 

Oakeshott: Well, maybe if you’d broken some stories, you would. 

Newman then went on to list Oakeshott ripping up her NDA with Hancock; burning a source that led to Vicky Pryce going to jail; basing her accusation about David Cameron and the pig’s head on a single source; and her release of Arron Banks’ emails, before asking: “How can any source trust you again?” Oakeshott made good on her threat and terminated the interview, but Newman delivered her finishing move regardless:

I would have liked to know the answer to that question… perhaps she’ll tell another news organisation. Or answer those questions on her TalkTV show.

Oakeshott signed for TalkTV in April 2022. News UK’s press release said:

Isabel Oakeshott, the award-winning journalist and broadcaster, is returning to News UK as commentator, panellist and International Editor for TalkTV. 

Isabel, formerly Political Editor at The Sunday Times, will become a regular commentator and panellist on the station’s major new evening news and current affairs programme, hosted by Tom Newton Dunn. She will also take the role of International Editor for TalkTV, reporting on key news events from across the globe. Isabel will also appear regularly elsewhere in the TalkTV schedule.

Private Eye — which will happily write about financial deals unless they involve Nick Cohen’s Observer payoff — reported that Oakeshott was offered a high five-figure deal by TalkTV but managed to get them to double it and then increase it again by suggesting GB News were willing to pay her more. The specific details of the contract haven’t been leaked yet³ but it would be very odd for a presenter on a radio station owned by the same parent company to quote a “wildly inaccurate” figure despite Oakeshott’s indignation.

In an alternate reality where Oakeshott did take Hancock’s WhatsApp messages to The Times or Sunday Times, Newman would have given her a very gentle time; it would have been promo for another News UK product. The ethics, if they were addressed at all, would have been skirted over; the ‘scoop’ would have trumped everything.

But there’s a reason that The Times wasn’t chosen by Oakeshott as the beneficiary of her hilarious Hancock-shafting treachery: It would have put lots of spin on the ‘revelations’ but not the specific variety of spin that The Telegraph has applied. Oakeshott isn’t a journalist anymore; she’s a political operative in journalist’s clothing (albeit not a trilby with a card marked ‘press’ in the brim). Just as relevant as Oakeshott’s contracts are her ‘romantic’ relationship with Reform Party leader Richard Tice and her longstanding connections to the ‘lockdown sceptic’ (subs to check, “septic”?) fringe.

Oakeshott told The Guardian that “she is only employed by TalkTV on a freelance basis and is, therefore, able to work for other publications”. It’s not an argument that cuts any mustard in the News Building. A source quoted by Guardian media editor, Jim Waterson, chimes with what I’ve been told:

One theory as to why she leaked Hancock’s messages is that her decision to co-write his book was causing problems for her as a rightwing pundit in the so-called culture wars. One News UK source said: “This liaison with Hancock was not good for her brand. Her brand is anti-lockdown headbangers.” 

“Anti-lockdown headbangers” is also the Telegraph’s brand (as well as possibly one for a new line of classic rock driving anthems CD compilations promoted by Nigel Farage). News UK is in no position to take the moral high ground — where Oakeshott has claimed to be chilling all week — especially when you consider the first voices calling foul were those of neo-nazi quoting front page pusher Tom Newton-Dunn, and former Muttley to Paul Staines’ Dickhead Dastardly turned Sun political editor, Harry Cole.

Oakeshott’s casual burn of Cole (“Most of our listeners won’t know the individuals you are referring to…”) will only add to the frustration at News UK; not only has she not brought her ‘scoop’ — that word is really taking a beating — to the company, but she’s ragging on its ‘stars’ and implying no-one listens to them. I don’t think we should listen to Harry Cole ever but then I’m not the one paying the nation’s most-committed cuckold’s contract.

The “people aren’t interested in how I got this story or where I placed it” line that Oakeshott took with Newman was also deployed in her earlier encounter with Lewis Goodall for Global’s The News Agents podcast. It’s a politician’s argument, not a journalist’s; how stories are broken, spun, and constructed is always worth exploring. You need to understand the reporter’s motivations and Oakeshott knows that which is why she’s trying so hard to avoid scrutiny of her own.

While News UK has demonstrated its mafia tactics, Oakeshott has repeatedly shown her own in interviews. Talking to Goodall, she again threatened Hancock…

I’m not going to deploy nuclear weapons… he should not poke the hornet’s nest.

… and trailed today’s stories featuring Rishi Sunak (and more to come) when the interviewer asked her why he had been absent from the coverage so far:

Goodall: … no mention of Rishi Sunak? 

Oakeshott: We’re in the news business… 

Every time she attempts to present herself as an angel of public interest, her grubbier instincts reveal themselves. In the same segment, she said, “I’m quite good at making money” after having had to “clarify” that although she keeps saying she was not paid to write Hancock’s book, she got a slice of the serialisation fee. She dances on a head of a pin in the same way whenever she’s asked if she was paid to hand over Hancock’s messages, denying she was but admitting she was handsomely paid for writing about them. It’s the same thing!

The Telegraph is engaged in selective, partial, targeted, and timed releases from the WhatsApp messages. That Matt Hancock deserves everything he gets — as do the rest of the tawdry cast — does not alter the fact that an unelected right-wing cabal (The Telegraph and friends) is engaged in a war with the right-wing cabal in and around government.

Newman was not given a platform to subject Oakeshott to scrutiny for our benefit but for the benefit of News UK and ultimately of Rupert Murdoch. Oakeshott is not given the time and space she is by TalkTV and the Telegraph alike because she is a truth seeker but because she is willing to rat fuck anyone and construct a useful ‘truth’ for the highest bidder. The original freelancers were mercenaries and she’s keeping up the tradition.

Today’s Telegraph stories about how Matt Hancock tried to massage his press coverage and deal with the aftermath of his affair being revealed are titillation trussed up as very, very important news. Not a single hack, politician, advisor, or ‘civilian’ is surprised that’s what he did. The Telegraph and Oakeshott want us to be terribly exercised about all this while telling us that how the story was made is not important and that we must not look behind their curtain.

Long may the unfriendly fire between News UK and the Telegraph continue; even accidentally it will reveal more about how the media works than the usual class solidarity ever will.

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Thanks to Ben, Rob, Wookiee, and Panicked for reading the draft.

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1. Btw. I hold with this explanation for writing “Nato” and not “NATO”

2. I say “first cold war” because we are in the midst of an increasingly ‘hot’ cold war.

3. If anyone at News fancies doing that leaking to me, I don’t Oakeshott my sources.