FLEXIBLE FRIENDS - THE OBSERVER, THE INDEPENDENT, AND THE MYTH OF A MEDIA SPECTRUM

A Vain Search For Principle

In a BBC interview in 1996, Andrew Marr, then of the Independent, described the ’spectrum’ of media available to the British public:

“We have a press which has, it seems to me, a relatively wide range of views - there is a pretty small ’c’ conservative majority, but there are left-wing papers, and there is a pretty large offering of views running from the far right to the far left, for those who want them.” (http://www.zmag.org/Chomsky/interviews/9602-big-idea.html)

The “left-wing papers” Marr had in mind were the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday.

It is interesting to consider Marr‘s comments in light of the April 10 announcement that Roger Alton, formerly editor of the Observer, will become editor of the Independent in June. Alton resigned from the Observer last year after rumours of a ’civil war’ with the Guardian. There were also allegations that, in 2002, the Observer had suppressed important testimony on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (see below) even as it was publishing false stories from intelligence sources. It was claimed that Alton’s political editor, Kamal Ahmed, had helped Blair’s aides with one of their infamous “dodgy dossiers” on Iraq’s WMD - Ahmed also resigned. Alton and Ahmed have both denied the claim. Geoffrey Levy wrote in the Daily Mail:

“Alton's real mistake, it seems, was in supporting the Iraq war. This attitude never went down very well at Guardian House, and led to a more localised conflict, which has turned the two newspapers into what one senior journalist described as ‘hotbeds of fear and loathing’.” (Levy, ‘Fear and loathing in Farringdon Road,’ Daily Mail, October 25, 2007)

It is a bitter irony that Alton will soon be editing the Independent, which opposed the Iraq war.

In January 2006, Stephen Glover, the Independent’s media commentator, wrote of the Observer: “one looks in vain to its heart for that old voice of principle and conviction, as well as intellectual distinction. I am not sure that Mr Alton, charming and gifted man though he unquestionably is, believes in very much”. (Glover, ‘Colourful - and that's not just the Observer editor's language,’ The Independent, January 16, 2006)

So was the Observer under Alton really to the left of the media spectrum? In responding to the question of whether he would take the Independent further left, Alton commented recently:
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