Latest / UK Column Radio / Eugenie Verney Remembers Journalism

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Eugenie Verney Remembers Journalism · UK Column Radio

0:07
Hello and welcome to the UK column viewers and listeners.
0:10
A beautiful day here in Plymouth, really lovely.
0:14
And you can see from my backdrop that it's looking good.
0:17
We've got lots of blue sky, a bit of clouds, but it is really
0:21
a lovely day and of course that's always a boost.
0:25
Now each guest I have is always special, but I have a lady
0:29
today, Eugenie Vernie, who I have known for some time.
0:34
We've had some interesting conversations because she's had
0:38
an extensive career as a journalist and I'm really,
0:43
really pleased that today she's agreed to join me to talk about
0:49
her professional life and also how she sees things, sees things
0:53
in the press and media world. Eugenie, thank you very much for
0:57
agreeing to come on with me on the UK column.
1:02
Totally my pleasure Brian. Nice to be here.
1:05
OK, lovely backdrop you have there Eugenie.
1:09
Absolutely fascinating books and and the mirror in the background
1:14
works really well. I think I can see a little bit
1:17
of sunshine coming through your window now you're north of the
1:20
border and if you're happy to say where you are, that's great.
1:23
If not, but it it looks as though you've also got a nice
1:26
day up there. Is that right?
1:29
No, that's that's a trick of the mirror I suspect.
1:32
No, we have what I refer to as grey Dome here with light
1:38
drizzle and it is currently 16° so a bit different from down
1:45
South. Oh.
1:46
Dear All right, Well, I'm really sorry about that.
1:48
I, I tried some, somebody sent us a little card about a week
1:55
ago, I think, and, and it shows a poor cartoon individual
2:00
standing under quite a downpour and lots of grain, great clouds.
2:06
And the caption is, has, has every, has anybody tried turning
2:10
the weather off and on again to see whether it sorts the problem
2:15
out? And I thought that was quite a
2:16
good cartoon. Anyway, there, there we go.
2:21
Eugenie, I'm going to say again, thank, thank you for agreeing to
2:24
this because we've had lots of interesting conversations and
2:29
I've prompted quite hard for you to excuse me, come and join me.
2:33
Because when, when we've had discussions on what's happening,
2:38
you've always been going back into your career.
2:40
And I think it would just be so fantastic for the UK column
2:44
audience to hear a little bit about what a journalistic career
2:49
is and all the things you've experienced before before I just
2:53
give you a prompt to get starting on that.
2:57
Wary of discussing ages and things, but I did notice that
3:00
your start year is exactly the same as my start year.
3:05
Am I allowed to to mention that that year on on camera?
3:09
Is that OK? That's absolutely fine.
3:12
Yeah. I mean, we are, we are absolute
3:13
contemporaries. I think I'm a wee bit older than
3:15
you, but I think we are we are the same vintage.
3:18
Well, we're just sticking the year.
3:20
The year is 1954. So you were born in 1954, as was
3:24
I What a great year that was. The world was obviously
3:28
dramatically improved from that day on.
3:31
OK, OK, now you, you were coined enough to send through ACV,
3:39
which I I've read and I've found absolutely fascinating.
3:43
Just to pull out a few bits is that you come from a from a left
3:48
wing background and you describe yourself as being hard left
3:52
wired, but in certainly in the present day, you're marooned
3:58
politically. Just tell us a bit about how,
4:01
how it was that you, you not only went through school, but
4:07
you came into your journalistic career with, with such a, a
4:10
strong lean to the left. So much depends on the family
4:16
that you're born into and you, you can't choose that.
4:19
And I, I was born into a family. I'm I'm an only child, but with
4:27
parents who had come through the 30s and the 40s very much to the
4:33
left of politics. They'd both been members of the
4:36
Communist Party of Great Britain, at some point, members
4:39
of the Labor Party. My father was a walking
4:42
encyclopaedia on the Spanish Civil War.
4:45
I mean, when he died, I had to sort through about 50 books on
4:48
the topic. He knew a lot about the politics
4:51
from the 30s and 40s and that's what shaped their world view.
4:55
And so I was born into that. And so you kind of really don't
4:57
know much different until you, until you get you, you, you
5:02
start exploring a bit more. But I continue down that route
5:06
and I, and I, I kind of feel that and I still do feel that I
5:11
time, I, I'm on the side of the underdog, but my whole view of
5:17
what an underdog and an overdog, if you like, looks like has
5:22
changed. But I took that through into my
5:25
work and I dropped out of school and I joined the Labour weekly
5:31
Tribune for a year. The deal was with my mother that
5:35
if I, if I dropped out of school, which she was not happy
5:39
about obviously, and worked at Tribune for a year, then if I
5:45
after that I went to secretarial college, then we had to deal.
5:50
So that's what I did. I dropped out of school halfway
5:54
through my A levels because clearly there was nothing more
5:56
to learn. I knew everything, so why stay
5:59
at school? I had a brilliant year at
6:01
Tribune and learnt tonnes about how journalism works and about
6:05
how production works and then went to Secretary of college
6:11
which lasted for literally 2 days.
6:14
Two days sadly, because I realised that that was not going
6:17
to work, kind of. I kind of regret not getting the
6:21
shorthand, but hey. Eugenia, you started off off
6:25
there in in the days of literally lots of paper moving
6:30
and spinning and you're in the days of proper printing
6:35
processes. Just set the scene a little bit
6:38
about what was it like to to be inside a building in with people
6:45
involved with the press. You're in typewriter day,
6:51
telephone day. I can imagine a lot of people
6:54
smoking as they worked. This was real old school
6:59
journalism. Just tell us a bit about what
7:02
you remember about the environment and what it was like
7:05
and and the people. Yeah, parking to your weekly
7:09
paper and obviously a bit different and there was less
7:12
urgency about it. Working on daily newspapers back
7:17
in the 70s and the 80s was just just an amazing experience
7:23
because there was a really huge vibe about it all.
7:27
There were a lot of people, obviously lots of paper because
7:29
everything was paper, Telephones ringing all the time, people
7:33
answering phones. And as the night wore on on a
7:37
daily paper and you were getting nearer deadline, the whole
7:41
momentum speeded up and up and up and up and up.
7:44
And then when you were what was called off stone, which is also
7:48
to do with hot metal, because it was still hot metal in those
7:51
days, you could say I've gone from hot metal to AI if you
7:55
like. That's, that's my, that's my
7:57
career. The whole vibe would change
8:01
again because then you would hear the printing presses start
8:04
to start up and then you. Yeah, and the whole building
8:08
would move. Particularly notice that further
8:12
on at the Morningstar, I could notice that Guardian slightly
8:15
less natural career at the Daily Express in Manchester.
8:20
The whole building moving when the presses started up was
8:25
really tangible and you kind of felt that you were part of
8:30
something that was important. And I have no, because I haven't
8:34
actually worked in a newsroom for quite a while now.
8:39
I don't know whether that still applies, but I somehow suspect
8:43
that that particular vibe and urgency and sense of, I was
8:48
going to say carpus, but let's let's not go there, but sort of
8:52
a joint endeavour, I suspect that may have gone.
8:56
A real feeling of teamwork you're in in that environment.
9:00
And what came into my head, you're talking about those
9:04
printing presses firing up and the machinery.
9:07
And then the thing begins to go. It's a bit like firing up a ship
9:11
to go to sea. And the moment you feel that
9:14
vibration through the vessel, the whole thing literally does
9:18
come alive. And, and, and you know, you're a
9:20
team of people, Eugenia, that that time, well, actually
9:25
through its career, I think the Morning Star, the Tribune and
9:29
the Morning Star, although they've been small niche
9:33
publications, have actually done some pretty good journal
9:37
journalism in their day. And they've certainly been
9:40
fearless in going into areas that the Porsche papers wouldn't
9:47
get involved in. Can do you have any particular
9:51
stories back from those days that you can remember and you
9:54
think, gosh, we did a good job or was that, is that a bit too
9:57
far in the in the distant past? I think that probably is to try
10:03
and pull out anything in particular, but that is
10:06
absolutely the case that both Tribune and the Morning Star,
10:13
the quality of journalism was exceedingly high as it was on,
10:20
on, you know, when I went later I moved to the Guardian and, and
10:24
on the Daily Express, I mean the Guardian over here, the Daily
10:27
Express over there. But I think what what United
10:33
Newspapers, whether indeed the Morning Star, the Daily Express,
10:37
the Guardian in the 70s and 80s was just the quality of the
10:43
journalism. You would start with the same
10:46
ingredients and of course all proprietors would spin later.
10:50
All had their agendas. And as journalists you were
10:53
completely aware of who your proprietor was and what their
10:55
spin was. But what I sense has changed
10:59
from the quality of what's being sort of churned out now is that
11:05
there's no discernment, there's no desire to find what we could
11:11
loosely label the truth, although truth is one of those
11:13
words that is very, very difficult to actually define
11:17
because everybody's truth looks very slightly different.
11:20
You can pick up the facts and you can move from about.
11:23
But I think if I give you, if you, if I give you an example of
11:29
of the process that took place together to get a story into a
11:36
paper back then compared to what's happening now, I think
11:41
that that probably gives you some context.
11:43
Would you like me to do that? Absolutely.
11:46
I was going to try and prompt you to head in that direction.
11:49
You've got onto it now. Let's go for it.
11:51
This is this is really what we want to know.
11:53
What what was it like then And and what was good, what was bad
11:57
and how do you see it now? This is yeah.
12:00
Great area. OK, so, so the process, and this
12:04
was the same process that give or take with with, you know,
12:09
nuances and adjustments, that was that that applied to the
12:12
Morning Star. Not so much at Tribune because I
12:15
said that was a weekly, but let's look at the Morning Star,
12:18
look at the Guardian and then later I joined the Daily Express
12:22
in Manchester. So you've got three very
12:26
different publications. The thing that really united
12:29
them was how the the news would actually end up in the paper and
12:35
parking the spin. OK, it's just the process.
12:38
So you have a story. Now this can either originate
12:42
from the news desk or it can originate from the reporter.
12:47
Either way, you have a story, and the story would be written
12:52
by the reporter, researched. They would go out of the office,
12:56
which hardly ever happens anymore.
12:58
They would go out of the office, they would meet people, they
13:01
would put the story together. They would write the story.
13:04
They would then file the story with a typewriter and hand it
13:09
across to the news desk. The news editor would then look
13:13
at it, look at it against the brief they'd been given, see
13:17
whether it covered everything, if there were gaps, go back to
13:20
the reporter and say, well, you've missed this, this, this
13:22
and this, and can you stand that quote up?
13:25
Because I don't think you've stood that up.
13:26
Where's that come from? Where did you get this from?
13:29
Make it stand up. It it needs a bit more
13:31
substance. Reporter might have to have
13:34
another shot at it. And then the story would go back
13:37
to the news desk. And when the news desk was happy
13:40
with it, they would pass it across to the production team,
13:43
which is where I came in because I worked as a production
13:45
journalist on all these titles. I did a bit of writing as well,
13:49
but that was mainly features writing.
13:51
We're talking about hard news production now.
13:54
So it would go across to a journalist known as the copy
13:58
taster. And this is exactly what the
14:00
copy Taster would do. And I've had my share of that.
14:03
So you look at the story and you would assess whether it how
14:08
newsworthy you thought it was in terms of the space you got and
14:11
so on and so forth. And you cross it off your list.
14:15
Basically, you were expecting it.
14:16
You would then hand it across to the chief sub editor.
14:20
There will be other people as well, but let's simplify it.
14:22
Chief sub editor would take it and say, right, that's going to
14:26
be a page lead. So the main story on an inside
14:31
page, not on the front page, but on the inside page.
14:34
So they would then decide what style it had, how long it had to
14:39
be, etcetera. At that point it would be put
14:42
out to down what known as down table sub editors, which is
14:47
where obviously I started out as a down table sub editor.
14:51
And it is with some pride that I can say that I was the youngest
14:55
female journalist on the Guardian when I got that job.
14:59
Very happy with that. It was good.
15:01
Well done. Yes, it was good.
15:04
And so you then get the story and, you know, depending on the
15:08
time of day, you have more or less time to turn the thing
15:11
around. You know, if it's the start of
15:13
your shift, which would usually be early to mid afternoon, you
15:17
had plenty of time to play around with it, Polish it.
15:20
Often it involved rewriting things.
15:22
Often it involved going back to the the reporter.
15:25
It usually goes direct to the reporter.
15:28
And you know, among the people whose copy I, I edited were the
15:33
likes of the woman who defines grumpiness, Melanie Phillips,
15:39
and also Alan Rusbridger, who went on to become the editor of
15:43
the Guardian. But I was there in Peter
15:44
Preston's days, very different. Anyway, so you, you go through
15:50
this piece of copy. This is, remember, there's no
15:53
computer screens, nothing, nothing, none of that, just bits
15:56
of paper. You then have to cut it to
15:58
length. So you have to actually do word
16:01
counts on it. There are ninja ways of doing
16:03
that. So you have to maybe cut 10
16:05
centimetres out of it, but keep, keep the sense, keep all the
16:09
best bits and so on. You do all that, write your
16:11
headline, etcetera. And then you'd hand it over to a
16:15
very, very important person who as far as I'm aware, has long,
16:20
long, long since gone. This was the revised sub editor
16:23
and this was the province of Grumpy Old men.
16:25
Wherever I wrote Grumpy Old Men and they would, their job was to
16:31
basically do a quality check on what the sub editor had done to
16:37
make sure that the job had been done properly and to pick up on
16:40
anything that had fallen through the net.
16:43
Most of the time you were fine. But if you cocked up then you
16:48
would be called across and and say come here.
16:52
The one on the Guardian, his name is Morris.
16:54
And he had a pipe because yeah, everybody smoked in those days.
16:57
So have fun of his pipe. Come over here.
16:59
And it's oh God, now what? So did you mean that?
17:04
No, I didn't mean that. It's and there we go.
17:07
Finally, finally, after he'd had to go at it, it would then get
17:11
into the system and it would be set in hot metal, which is a
17:15
whole different story. And and then it had may have to
17:20
be cut again. And that would be the job of the
17:22
stone sub editor. And that was a really
17:24
interesting experience as a woman on a very, very, very male
17:29
dominated, very misogynist environment.
17:33
But it has its moments as well. It was good fun as well.
17:36
So you, you that would be real pressured, but very, very
17:40
different from what happens now, obviously.
17:43
But at that point you'd get what's known as galley proofs.
17:47
So the, the story would just be in a long piece of news printed
17:52
on a long piece of new Sprint. And at that point it would go to
17:56
the lawyer. Yes, lawyers looked at stuff in
18:00
those days and particularly anything.
18:03
They would crawl all over stories that were going to be
18:04
controversial, but they would look at everything.
18:08
And so from the reporter to it actually appearing in the paper,
18:13
you had all these quality control mechanisms going on.
18:18
That's gone. And you can see it in what's
18:21
what's in what gets published. You can see what happens now.
18:24
There is no quality control. Whoever is putting the story
18:27
together, and for a lot of a lot of stories that's now press
18:32
releases which are barely changed, it just goes from or
18:36
loosely call it the reporter straight on onto onto your
18:40
screen. Eugenie.
18:42
Into your paper. Eugenie It makes that move very
18:45
often with with typos and really crass mistakes and all all the
18:50
papers are doing this. I mean, UK column team,
18:54
obviously for a long time we would have to qualify, classify
18:58
ourselves as amateurs. But even, you know, we hated it
19:02
when we realised that a, a typo had gone through or you'd spelt
19:07
something incorrectly. And if you're just handling your
19:11
own work, that can be very easy to do.
19:13
But I've over the last, certainly over the last five
19:17
years, there seems to me to have been a dramatic increase in the
19:20
in the in blatant mistakes and and incorrect spelling, typos,
19:29
sometimes blocks of text have been left in.
19:33
And this is not just, you know, the smaller, cheaper papers.
19:37
This is the big boys doing this. And it must indicate that the
19:41
overall professional standards have dropped and their own due
19:45
diligence inside the papers dropped.
19:48
Absolutely. I mean, quite recently there was
19:51
a story in the Telegraph which got quite a lot of coverage
19:54
everywhere else, which is about this, this power couple who were
19:58
complaining that they that because VOT had been bunked onto
20:04
private, private school fees that they could no longer afford
20:07
5 holidays a year. And it was accompanied by stock
20:11
photos it emerged. But then it emerged that the
20:14
entire story was fabricated. I'm probably generated by AII,
20:20
don't know whether that's actually been nailed or not, but
20:23
the whole thing was a complete lie.
20:24
This is the Daily Telegraph, which not.
20:28
It's never been one of my favourite publications, but you
20:32
know, it used to have a reputation for being reasonably
20:35
good newspaper of record. But this was a complete lie.
20:39
And they had to, and, and they actually said in the, in the
20:43
apology that they had to publish, which was in the last,
20:46
in the last week or so, they, they said we've now checked the
20:50
facts. Well, hello, I've just explained
20:53
how facts used to get checked. Do you not do any of that
20:57
anymore? So I'm now at the stage where I
21:00
actually don't believe anything I read in the mainstream media.
21:07
And one of the things that I, I truly respect about UK column
21:13
and and and and and and other independent sources of news is
21:18
that you, you provide your sources, you know, you actually
21:24
list them. So, you know, if I'm looking at
21:28
something, say what, what that, that, that, I'm not sure about
21:32
that. And I'm not sure about the spin
21:33
so and so has put on that I can go away and check it.
21:39
And you used to be with, you know, newspapers used to
21:42
attribute far more than they do now.
21:47
It was much harder to find the source material.
21:49
Of course, now, because now you can actually find the source
21:51
material, ironically, much is much more easily than you could
21:55
say 30-40 years ago. But there's a massive mismatch
22:01
now. And I honestly think that
22:03
mainstream media is spiralling down the plug hole so fast.
22:12
And yeah, it and I just, yeah, there's a yes.
22:16
Is there some rose tinted glasses stuff going on here a
22:19
bit? Because we do tend to philtre
22:22
stuff and we pick out the good times.
22:24
And yeah, there was, you know, there were things about how the
22:28
media worked then, how it worked in the interim that were not
22:34
good. You know, you look certainly
22:36
look at the history of some of the tabloids, you know, and
22:40
looking at it from a woman's perspective, there was a lot of
22:42
misogyny. There was a lot of issues around
22:44
that. But overall, as you say, you
22:51
just look at this stuff. It's so badly written, it's
22:53
sloppy. It's not been checked, and you
22:57
can't trust it. So that's where we are.
23:00
That's where we are. And then of course we're in a
23:02
big pond where we have the media itself complaining and warning
23:08
about the dangers of misinformation and
23:11
disinformation and how we need accurate truth.
23:15
And then we have an army of so called truth checkers, fact
23:20
checkers, most of whom seem to be completely self appointed
23:25
with qualifications to their own satisfaction and not necessarily
23:29
anybody's out also. So the papers go downhill in the
23:33
quality of the reports and the accuracy of the reports.
23:37
And then those same papers as sort of talking to us, the
23:41
general public and warning about the dangers of, of poor
23:46
information. It's it's obscene really to see
23:50
this this happen. Having made that comment and
23:54
while it while it's in my head just to press on the business of
23:57
of the earlier days and reporters going out.
24:01
This to me seems to be one of the key things that each paper
24:05
down to local fam, excuse me, family owned local papers was
24:11
sending a person out, man or woman, a reporter to go and find
24:16
the story. And finding the story meant
24:19
actually being able to talk with the individual connected to that
24:24
story and then going to talk to other human beings in order to
24:28
build the story. It was all absolutely around
24:32
interacting with people in order to get the story.
24:37
And we we know today that particularly young journalists
24:41
who've perhaps just come in from university and they've got their
24:45
basic journalistic qualifications.
24:47
They are sitting in a room and they're tasked with producing so
24:52
many stories a day and they only source information for the story
24:58
from the Internet itself. That's that's what I have been
25:02
led to believe and you can correct me if if I'm wrong on
25:05
that. No, that, that, that is exactly
25:07
how it would appear to be working in, I'm not going to say
25:11
every single case because obviously there are still
25:14
examples of, of journalists who who do dig and delve and do find
25:19
good stories. But the whole cost cutting, cost
25:22
cutting, cost cutting and, and moving away from print, which is
25:27
inevitable, sadly. Although interestingly, what is
25:32
interesting is that there has been a big upsurge in sales of
25:37
what I would call specialist print magazines, You know,
25:41
hobby, hobbies and special interests.
25:45
That whole area of print journalism continues to thrive.
25:48
But in terms of news, it's quite clear that nobody gets their
25:53
core news from newspapers anymore, whether that's local or
25:58
national. And yeah, I mean, what, what?
26:02
And, and, and the whole, the whole the COVID recorded that
26:08
the COVID, I think put further nails in various coffins, one of
26:14
which being newspaper proprietors say, whoa, all these
26:19
dudes are working at home. We can get rid of our offices
26:22
now. We can have them all sitting at
26:24
home. So not only do you have
26:27
journalists not going out unless they're freelancers and and
26:31
trying to find stories, but if they're employed journalists,
26:36
you have them sitting at their own laptops because they no
26:40
doubt will have provided their own kit now.
26:44
And as you say, just getting all that information from elsewhere
26:49
on the Internet, not going out and meeting anybody, maybe
26:53
making a few phone calls. And crucially, which circles
26:58
back to, you know, what I was talking about before about the
27:01
whole atmosphere of being in a newsroom.
27:03
One of the things that was so important was bouncing ideas off
27:07
other people. And if you're just sitting at
27:11
home and that's all you're doing and your, your, your output is
27:17
virtually measured by the centimetre, you haven't done
27:21
enough. You haven't done enough.
27:22
Come on. More stories, more.
27:23
We need more clicks. We need more click bait.
27:27
You're never going to. Your skills are never going to
27:30
grow. Except your skills for actually
27:33
turning out crap faster, I guess.
27:36
But you're not having any, particularly if you're a local
27:38
newspaper, you have nothing to do with the community in which
27:40
you're based. And that's even exacerbated
27:43
further by big proprietors like Reach, which is an ironic name
27:48
for it because they now consolidate their news
27:52
operations in hubs which serve enormous geographical areas.
27:58
So you'll have reporters, you know, based in city A covering
28:02
city B who know, absolutely sold all about City B and yeah, and
28:08
and it's it's and the other, the other crucial.
28:11
I just checked this in as well. The absolutely really, really
28:15
important thing when you're looking at in terms of
28:19
maintaining any semblance, semblance of local
28:22
accountability and local democracy is the demise of the
28:26
local court reporter and the local council reporter.
28:31
Gone, gone, gone, gone don't exist.
28:35
We have this amazing situation where the BBC, which is such a
28:41
huge monopoly, is now putting the so called democracy
28:47
reporters into into local papers.
28:50
So when you're dealing with the local paper, you can't even be
28:54
sure it is local because if you delve behind it, you can find
28:58
the behind the title is the name Breach.
29:01
And and then you can have ABBC reporter embedded as the local
29:06
democracy reporter, which now means that the BBC's got its
29:10
fingers right into the local community with all of its
29:14
processes. So we're seeing, it seems to me,
29:19
you know, a massive grouping up a centralisation of, of news in
29:25
the country that actually instead of having and your day
29:31
when you started out there would have been at the lowest levels
29:34
still quite a lot of family owned local papers producing
29:39
papers, maybe at a District Council level.
29:43
Of course they would cross the sort of administrative borders,
29:46
but very local catchment areas. Those family papers were still
29:52
there. Then we had a selection of
29:54
smaller titles and then we started to go through the grades
29:59
up to the big boys, Telegraph, Guardian Telegraph and and
30:03
Times. But at least there was a
30:04
spectrum. Now this is all being gathered
30:08
together with fewer and fewer people in control.
30:11
This is this has got to be dangerous Is well, isn't it?
30:15
I don't know. What do you think?
30:17
Yeah, I mean, you know, my, my route into journalism, as you
30:20
will have gathered was, was unusual.
30:23
But back in that day, back in the day, the normal routine
30:27
would have been to start out on a local newspaper and you would
30:30
have been doing the council, you know, going to the council
30:33
meetings. You would have been doing some
30:35
court reportings, which means that you had to have a, a basic
30:38
understanding of how magistrates courts or sheriff courts,
30:42
etcetera, in, in Scotland, how all that would work.
30:46
And you would also be expected to do the really unpleasant end
30:51
of of it, which is death knocks going and knocking on the doors
30:55
of people who've experienced sudden deaths or, you know,
30:59
tragic deaths and so on. You would learn a lot.
31:01
You'd learn a lot about how people respond, how, how, how
31:06
to, how to craft questions, how to look out for patterns and
31:11
you'd make contacts. So if you were, you know,
31:15
certainly I witnessed this because I also worked for the
31:21
pressing general in Aberdeen for some years.
31:24
And yeah, I mean, I was, I was, again, I was a production
31:29
journalist because that that's just the trajectory in my
31:32
personal career took me on. But you know the the guy who did
31:37
all the council reporting, who ironically eventually to judge,
31:42
jump ship and go and work for Aberdeen City Council.
31:45
But at the time that we were both working for that paper, his
31:49
knowledge and understanding of how the local councils in
31:54
Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire worked, who the key players
31:57
were, where the power lay, crucially where the power lay,
32:03
where the decision, real decisions were taken was
32:06
absolutely outstanding. And that's all gone that that
32:11
the media's ability to say with any degree of confidence that
32:15
this is actually what's happening inside your council.
32:18
And I worked at Aberdeen, this is connected.
32:21
So I'm going to go off on this little tangent.
32:23
I also worked at Aberdeen City Council as a corporate
32:25
communications officer and the local evening paper that the was
32:32
on our case day in, day in out, day out.
32:37
You know, every single day would start with another call from
32:41
from the evening paper asking we've just heard this, we've
32:45
been tipped off about this, is this true?
32:48
Can you tell us about this? Because their reporters had
32:52
contacts within the council who were telling them about things
32:57
that they felt needed exploring. Now, you know at least 50% of
33:04
them are wild goose choices and really annoying for us as
33:06
corporate communications officers.
33:08
But quite often you were doing an awful lot of reputation
33:12
management because local journalists had actually
33:16
unearthed stuff that the council didn't want you to know about.
33:20
Nobody's doing that as far as I can see anymore.
33:24
It's certainly being done less. And as, as you're talking
33:28
through that, I was thinking back to sort of my earlier days
33:32
of challenging Plymouth City councillors to what was
33:35
happening with money in the city.
33:38
You know, my story is I, I became aware that large amounts
33:42
of money that was coming into the city, principally as
33:45
regeneration grant money, much of it from the EU, was being
33:50
misappropriated. And it was never getting to the
33:53
project it was designed for. Or it was sort of syphoned off
34:00
to support some, some other project or indeed in some cases
34:04
what seemed to be personal initiatives.
34:07
But at that time, local papers had enough.
34:12
They were strong enough, they were robust enough that their
34:15
journalists, investigative reporters, they had
34:18
investigative reporters were also asking questions.
34:23
And, and so when I was in the midst of this, and it did get
34:29
quite heavy at one point, but it was reassuring when you actually
34:33
started to see some of the truth coming up to the surface in the
34:37
local paper. And then I was to watch as to
34:40
how this was closed down. And we, we won't mention
34:44
anybody's names, but one of the journalists who was clearly
34:47
doing his job as an investigative journalist was was
34:52
taken away from investigative reporting and moved across to
34:57
another specialisation. So I read into that, that
35:00
clearly there'd been some underhand dealing bully boy
35:04
tactics probably between the local council and the local
35:08
paper. So I, I'm going to say that
35:11
when, well, when am I talking? I'm talking probably 2005 up to
35:15
2015, that sort of period. I absolutely saw the power of
35:22
the local newspapers squashed. How that was being done.
35:27
I didn't understand all of it, but it was clear that the local
35:31
council seemed to have the power to, you know, stop things being
35:37
published or if they were published, the article was
35:40
greatly toned down. And that was then.
35:44
And since then we've moved on hugely and we've got these huge
35:49
single organisations like Reach controlling the whole of the the
35:53
media. Yeah, so this is, this is a sad
35:58
loss because it gave us an outlet for the truth, didn't it?
36:02
Yes, it did. And I and I, and I think I mean
36:05
again, you know, let's take taking my roast tinted glasses
36:09
off here. All media organisations have
36:14
been, how shall we say is subject to external pressure,
36:20
all of them. And of course, you know, we, we
36:23
have the official, the official, what can we call it, device of
36:27
the D notices which are just slapped on stories that you're
36:30
not allowed to touch. That's more at national level,
36:33
but certainly at at local level. Yes, there would, there would
36:38
be, there always have have been compromises made, stories that
36:43
have been pulled. But I think the key thing is
36:47
that the stories were written in the 1st place.
36:50
They were researched and written in the 1st place before they
36:52
were pulled. What I see very little evidence
36:56
of looking at my own local paper.
36:59
The local ones where I'm based in Perthshire, I look at them
37:04
and I I can't see any evidence of digging below really the top
37:11
layer the the, the the top soil. I can't see anybody digging
37:15
underneath that. Now, that is also a function of
37:18
the fact that there aren't enough bodies, you know, there
37:20
isn't the luxury of time to actually go away and investigate
37:24
this. But if I cast my mind back again
37:26
going up to national level, I think the time that it took to
37:31
unpick, you know, for example, I was at the Guardian when the
37:34
whole Jeremy Thorpe story blew open with, you know, with with
37:39
his his affair, which would nobody would.
37:41
I don't think batten eyelid really too much out now.
37:45
But what was his name? Norman, Norman, Norman car,
37:49
it'll come to me. But you know that all that was a
37:51
lot of a lot of that was guardian research and the whole
37:55
story, you know, blew open and eventually it went to trial.
38:00
But you know, that took them I would say six months to a year
38:04
to actually actually, how should we say cement that story and
38:10
that I can't see that happening anywhere anymore.
38:13
Just doesn't doesn't happen. Eugenia, there is so much to
38:18
talk to, sorry talk about. As we're as we're discussing
38:23
these things, there's more and more bits popping into my mind.
38:26
So I'll do this, this one just because it's a bit of fun.
38:30
Is that on the one of the walls here in the UK Com studio we
38:35
have a framed letter. And that letter came in from
38:38
Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail.
38:42
And the reason we have this very nice letter from him with a, a
38:45
lovely wet signature, which is another thing that seems to have
38:49
gone, is that back in the day, we're talking about 2010, we
38:56
sent him information about the political charity Common
39:00
Purpose. And that of course was a charity
39:03
that we'd been doing considerable investigation into
39:06
their activities and warning that there were many areas where
39:11
we thought it was up to no good. So the reason we sent this to
39:15
Paul Dacre is he was being challenged as things started to
39:21
come to a head with the Media Standards Trust.
39:24
So this is when suddenly we started to see the idea that the
39:28
press wasn't working properly and there needed to be greater
39:31
controls on the press and they'd they'd been unethical by
39:38
breaking and hacking into people's phones.
39:41
So there was a lot of controversy Where that came from
39:45
would be quite interesting to discuss, but I'll stick with the
39:48
story. So we, we read that Paul Dacre
39:52
had been given quite a grilling by these people and we sent him
39:57
a little package of information saying, are you aware that
40:00
there's a, a connection between many of the people who grilled
40:04
you? They're all.
40:05
Part of a specialist organisation called Common
40:08
Purpose and we of course had done our research and so we sent
40:12
in factual documents, documents mainly that we've received as a
40:18
result of Freedom of Information requests.
40:22
And it all went off. It went quiet for a couple of
40:26
weeks and then we received this very short but very polite
40:29
letter back thanking us profusely for the information
40:33
that we sent. And it was signed by the man
40:37
himself with his ink pen. And it was such a nice letter.
40:42
It's on the wall. But of course what happened was
40:45
everything went quiet for about I think it was about 3 months.
40:50
And I thought to myself, well, I sent all that information off
40:53
and nothing happened. And then one Saturday morning I
40:56
went over to my the local shop and to buy a paper.
41:00
And there on the the counter was the Daily Telegraph.
41:05
And the front page was a massive headline about common purpose.
41:10
And I had to buy the paper. And when I got it home and was
41:13
looking with at it with my cup of coffee, inside was no less
41:18
than 10 full pages on common purpose.
41:22
And the Daily Mail had really, really got stuck into the
41:27
article. I'd never seen 10 pages on one
41:31
particular a topic like that from the Mail.
41:35
And I was absolutely over the moon because that was clearly
41:39
going to do a lot of damage. And just coming to the end of
41:43
this later, I, I was able to meet an independent journalist
41:50
who'd worked with the Daily Mail team on producing that article.
41:54
And I said it's fantastic article.
41:56
We did give you quite a lot of information.
41:59
It would have been a nice to have had a mention.
42:02
And he looked at me and there was a pause and he said, well,
42:05
you know how it is, Brian. So.
42:09
And that was of course that we weren't quite in the club.
42:12
The UK column was was there, but we weren't in the club.
42:15
But the point I really want to make out of this is that when
42:18
the Daily Mail was given factual information and a lot, a lot of
42:23
it, they were not frightened at really ruffling, ruffling the
42:27
feathers. But I I sense that now papers or
42:31
even more scaredy cat of actually getting in and doing
42:36
the business when they find something's wrong.
42:39
Or is that is that a bit unfair, Eugenie?
42:42
To be honest, I don't know, because I'm not part of that
42:45
world anymore. My sense is that journalists
42:54
the, the, the most courageous journalists are the freelancers
43:02
like Vanessa, like Vanessa Bailey, who, you know, perform
43:08
proper brave journalistic functions.
43:13
There's an awful lot because I'm, I should say that I've,
43:16
I've, I've was an energy National Union of Journalists
43:20
activists for a long time as well, while I was a working
43:23
journalist and I'm in fact a life member.
43:28
And what I see now in my union is an awful lot of attention on
43:35
DI and equality and protecting people and being nice to people
43:44
banging on about misinformation, disinformation, malinformation.
43:49
We must, we must support the BBC as a public service broadcaster
43:54
and a kind of really top level naivety about how the world
44:00
actually works. And you know, and despite my
44:04
best endeavours, I've still to get my union to explain to me
44:08
what their different, what their definition is of misinformation,
44:13
disinformation, malinformation. Nobody's provided me with that
44:17
yet. And I think that even among
44:20
those who are not members of the NUJ, because it's, it will be
44:24
the minority who are there, is this kind of, it's there's a
44:32
lack of, I think there's a lack of bravery and I think there's a
44:36
lack of rigour. And I don't, you know, I'm very
44:42
glad that my daughter did not decide to be a journalist, let's
44:46
put it like that. I wouldn't have ever discouraged
44:49
her. And I think she would have made
44:50
a very good, very feisty journalist.
44:53
But I'm very glad that she's chosen a different half because,
44:59
and I know every generation will say this, you know, about what's
45:04
come since. But I think in terms of the
45:07
media, and that applies to broadcast media as well, I think
45:13
that we are in a, we are in a definitely in a, we're
45:21
definitely in a worse place. I mean, I was listening because
45:23
I forced myself to do it. Marianna Springs takedown of
45:26
Kate Sharima Shamarani Shamarani on her Mariana down Marianna in
45:35
conspiracy land thing. So basically they've they've
45:38
unpicked the Panorama 1 and repurposed it as as A5 parter B
45:44
for BB for Radio 4. And I was just listening to that
45:47
and thinking, where's your basic journalism here, Madam?
45:50
Where is it you refer to? I've spoken to experts and they
45:55
say, well, sorry, who are these experts and why aren't you
45:57
quoting them directly? And it's it's this, this is the
46:04
level that we seem to be at now that it's people pick an agenda
46:08
and they. I mean, yeah, as I say, it's
46:10
complicated because back in the day that Guardian or the Daily
46:14
Express would pick an agenda and to a certain extent you would
46:17
manipulate the news into it. But it was always underpinned by
46:22
much higher standards of research, writing and common
46:26
sense, frankly. Yeah, Eugenie, if we may, can we
46:31
just go a little bit into ownership and bias of, of the
46:37
media? Very early on, as we started
46:41
talking today, you, you mentioned proprietors and, and
46:44
that they had a natural spin and you, you, you, the newspaper was
46:49
aware of that. And I, I think we'd all say yes,
46:53
we, we understand that. So we, we can have sort of
46:56
political spin across the papers.
46:59
So we could be left left wing with the Star or the Tribune,
47:04
and then we can, we can move supposedly right wing across to
47:08
whatever you want to choose the Express and the Daily Mail.
47:12
And then we have the, I'm smiling as I say this, but the,
47:17
you know, the Times and the Telegraph that try to sell the
47:22
idea that they're above all that and what they're saying is
47:25
absolutely true. But of course they're also
47:27
controlled. The Guardian has, has has long
47:32
sat and said, well, we're controlled by an independent
47:37
board that that that was the Scott Trust if I remember
47:41
correctly. And therefore you can trust the
47:44
Guardian because because we're not pulled in One Direction or
47:47
or the other. But there has always been
47:52
control, particularly through powerful individuals such as
47:57
Murdoch for example. But now we've got something
48:02
else, it seems to me at work. I've mentioned the grouping up,
48:07
but it's as though there's a unified political control coming
48:11
over the press and media so that it's not even going to go in the
48:16
direction of left and right, Conservatives, Labour.
48:21
It's simply going to go on what we should believe.
48:25
And this is if we take global warming as one subject, it's as
48:30
though all the papers now will only print the line that the
48:37
United Nations or the World Economic Forum say we should be
48:41
following over climate change. So the control of the papers
48:47
seems now to not even be a fragmented control.
48:51
It's a centralised control, not even in UK, it's higher than
48:57
that. It's a global control.
49:00
Is that a bit of a, is that a bit of an over over the top
49:03
analysis? How do you see the the press
49:07
today in this issue of Bias and Control?
49:11
I It's really difficult to know how much of that has always been
49:19
there. I mean, certainly there have
49:23
been stories and certainly around the topic that the UK
49:26
column, you know, you have, you have been pursuing forever,
49:31
which is, you know, about child abuse, paedophilia, etcetera,
49:34
etcetera. The the reluctance of UK media
49:41
to go anywhere near that left or right in the middle.
49:47
That has certainly been, you know, that that has been my
49:50
experience of that, not necessarily first hand of seeing
49:54
stories being buried, but just an awareness that we don't go
49:58
near that. OK.
50:01
So I think that that has there's always been elements of this,
50:04
what's really, as you say, in your face now.
50:07
And of course, we experienced it first with, with during the
50:11
COVID years. Well, we didn't know, we didn't
50:15
experience it first, but we most really starkly when literally
50:19
literally every media outlet, digital print, whatever was
50:24
saying exactly the same thing and questioning nothing, which I
50:29
think, you know, I, I had been sceptical and wondering about
50:33
what how the world works all my life, but that really shook me
50:37
to to the core. Oh my God, it's just this is
50:43
just 100 karat propaganda with nobody making any effort to
50:47
disguise it. And as you say, now we have the,
50:50
you know, the boiling climate and, and, and this extraordinary
50:54
narrative where, you know, it's going to hit 30°.
50:57
You've all got to stay indoors and close your close your
50:59
curtains because you're going to die.
51:01
Yeah, next week you're going on holiday to Turkey.
51:05
Don't get it. Again, what I don't know,
51:06
because I'm not an insider and haven't been for a long time, is
51:11
whether this is just an understanding or whether it goes
51:18
deeper than that. And there is, yeah, as you say,
51:23
it's being fed down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down,
51:26
down. And it's coming from, as so much
51:30
else appears to be, is coming from somewhere that is, that is
51:34
well outside our control. You know, I've worked for
51:38
various proprietors. I've worked for Robert Maxwell.
51:41
I've never worked for Murdoch. I can never bring myself to work
51:44
for Murdoch. And I worked for Maxwell, I
51:48
worked for various iterations on the Daily Express because I was
51:51
there for five or six years. I've worked for the Guardian,
51:54
which has always been the Scott Trust and still is the Scott
51:56
Trust, although it seems to have compromised itself massively
51:59
with the sell out of the Observer to Tortoise.
52:03
And yeah, I mean, it's, but now it's yeah, everybody's.
52:09
And you almost think, well, OK, has somebody put out a press
52:13
release somewhere that says you've all got to publish this
52:17
about the global warming today? This is today's spin on We're
52:22
going to boil. And that's how that is actually
52:26
how it now feels. The other thing that I was
52:28
talking about was somebody quite recently is the stories will
52:31
appear and then completely vanish.
52:37
Does nobody ever follows up anymore?
52:39
Nobody follows up. Back in my day, if you had a
52:43
good story, you'd follow the bloody thing up, you know, you'd
52:47
find out, you know, a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks down the line.
52:50
Well, what became of that story? Did it, did it come?
52:53
Was it, was that the outcome or was that the outcome?
52:56
Now they just disappear. Nobody follows up.
52:59
I've challenged mainstream journalists on that, that, that
53:03
subject and said to them, yeah, but the problem is you never,
53:06
you never follow up, you never stay on the subject.
53:08
And in fact, the Daily Mail did not follow up on its 10 pages
53:14
on, you know, on common purpose because their 10 pages
53:20
demonstrated that they'd clearly seen risks and, and problems
53:25
with the organisation of what it was doing.
53:27
And if you, if you put 10 pages into a Saturday, I'll qualify.
53:31
I think it was 9 1/2 but I've called it 10.
53:34
But we're talking a lot. If you've done that on a
53:37
Saturday and you've really grabbed people's attention.
53:41
There should have been spin off stories for the next two years
53:46
but it didn't. It all it all went quiet to the
53:48
extent I wondered whether even Paul Dacre and his team had been
53:52
bought off or pressurised. Listening to you saying that, I
53:57
was thinking, OK, quite possibly they ran it and obviously kept
54:04
it to themselves in the run up to running it.
54:07
They ran it and then possibly it hit the fan after that and
54:13
whoever was pulling the common purpose strings at that
54:16
particular point said to to take care.
54:20
Isaiah, Paul, Oh boy, none of no more of that.
54:23
Thank you very much. We'll just call draw a line
54:26
under that, but please don't revisit.
54:28
I'm sure you're right, because common purpose at that time was
54:32
was absolutely involved in creating what I regard as
54:36
censorship organisations for the press.
54:39
Full fact was in there, the Media Standards Trust, and that
54:43
was the whole reason that the Daily Mail printed the article
54:46
in the 1st place. But yeah, wheels within wheels.
54:50
The other thing which I can't resist mentioning is because
54:54
you've talked about the child abuse subject and there does
54:58
seem to be a wall of silence over this.
55:01
You'll get isolated reports, but nobody takes it any further.
55:05
But I recently was able to talk to, well, it was actually a
55:10
couple of journalists in the Telegraph and one of them was
55:17
following up on a a family court case, horrific, where a mother's
55:22
lost her twins. And they, they were clearly
55:26
interested in the in the case, but in, in our, you know,
55:30
discussion, what what then took place was them saying, well,
55:34
yeah, but the trouble is that the, the mother's evidence is
55:39
all contained within family court documents and we're not
55:42
allowed to read those documents. And I said, well, isn't that the
55:47
start of your story? The fact that that the mother
55:52
who's trying to defend herself can't defend herself because of
55:55
family court rules on what, what can be said and what can't.
55:59
And the fact that you, as a national newspaper can't report
56:02
the truth because it's been censored by the Family Court,
56:06
isn't that where you start? And there was this pause.
56:11
And I thought, yeah, that one hit home, but I didn't get it.
56:13
I didn't get a response. And then when we discussed a
56:18
little bit more, of course. Well, the trouble is, even if we
56:20
do get through that barrier, then we've got to get through
56:22
the editorial team. And then we're going to have to
56:25
get through the legal team. And the legal team are going to
56:27
say, oh, no, we can't break. We can't break the law.
56:30
We're going to have to ask the the local authority to release
56:34
those family court papers, which of course they're never going to
56:38
do. So I just, I just found it
56:41
bizarre that I was there talking with heavy hitter journalists
56:45
for the key newspaper and and they knew something was wrong,
56:50
but they couldn't seem to get a story out of it.
56:53
And the second journalist was really interesting because they
56:58
contacted me because families had said if you want to know
57:01
more about the subject, you talked to Brian Garish from the
57:03
UK column. So I get a call.
57:06
We had a very nice discussion. I tried to be really helpful,
57:09
but I got to the point where I said, well, the problem is you
57:13
can't deal with the story because you don't even know the
57:15
questions to ask. Their knowledge was so limited.
57:19
And, and at one point there was a bit of a rebuttal and they
57:22
said to me when I'd said, well, there's no reporting from the
57:25
courts. Oh, yes, journalists can go into
57:28
the family courts. And I said, well, they can now
57:31
occasionally, but their reporting is still controlled by
57:36
a solitary judge in a court with no jury, so it's censored.
57:41
I provided them with a lot of information, you know, to help
57:45
them. I didn't even receive a thank
57:47
you back. So I'm going to say at the
57:50
moment the Telegraph has dropped very low in my, my, my book.
57:55
But this is this is not unusual, Eugenia, I don't think.
57:59
I don't think it is as again, I will just caveat to say that I
58:02
am not obviously in the midst of that anymore.
58:07
But certainly, you know, that sounds pretty spineless.
58:12
And yeah, I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking, well,
58:16
there's the story right there. The fact that you that you can't
58:19
you can't you can't investigate the story you want to
58:22
investigate because you're not allowed to.
58:24
By the way, the family courts are configured and what's
58:27
allowed, you know, what's sub judice etcetera.
58:32
There's a story isn't that isn't that worth an investigation?
58:35
How do we get here? What happened?
58:37
At what point did the law change that this had, you know, that
58:40
family courts basically became private.
58:43
Why? Whose decision was that?
58:45
You know, it's a massive story there.
58:47
But no, they they will not touch that.
58:51
And partly they won't touch that because they don't have the
58:54
resources enough bodies to do it justice.
58:58
But that is exactly the type of story that possibly not that one
59:03
for the same reasons that it never got looked at properly
59:07
back in the day. But those sort of questions were
59:11
the sort of questions that investigative journalists in the
59:15
70s, eighties, 90s would have asked that type of probing
59:20
question. And those are the questions that
59:22
you guys ask. You understand investigative
59:25
journalism in a way that I don't see any evidence of.
59:29
You know, as I say, circling back to Marianna Spring, she's
59:32
supposed to be an investigative journalist.
59:34
I don't see any evidence of that.
59:36
And I'm trying to be generous here because she, no, she's
59:39
incredibly irritating to listen to, but I don't see any, any
59:43
evidence whatsoever that she understands what being an
59:48
investigative journalist and looking in every direction you
59:53
can for your for the evidence before you start compiling your
59:57
story. I don't see any evidence of that
59:59
She got. It seems to me that what she's
1:00:02
done with Kate is basically it landed in her lap.
1:00:07
It sounds to me as though that it's all personal family
1:00:10
dynamics going on in the background here.
1:00:12
No idea. Guessing she was The story
1:00:16
landed in her lap and she's made the facts fit into absolutely
1:00:21
well. The facts fit the narrative that
1:00:25
she has been tasked to deliver and there is no, it's not
1:00:31
underpinned. You know, I, I have no issue at
1:00:34
all with people coming to conclusions that I don't agree
1:00:36
with, none at all, provided the evidence is there that they have
1:00:41
actually researched it and they've stood the story up.
1:00:46
And this is there seems to be so much of this way something
1:00:49
appears to be an investigation and then when you actually look
1:00:51
at it, it isn't. Yeah, I was at a music festival
1:00:57
at the weekend. Sounds beautiful in Dorset,
1:01:00
really lovely weather, lovely environment, lovely people
1:01:04
there. And amongst the people there,
1:01:08
there was a lot of discussion going on at various points about
1:01:12
Marianas, Marianas Springs attack on Kate Chamerani and
1:01:17
people were I, I, I was surprised people don't like
1:01:23
Marianas Spring because they regard her as underhand in the
1:01:30
way she does things. But my goodness, people really
1:01:34
did not like the way what they they believed is that she'd gone
1:01:39
in and manipulated what was a highly personal thing for Kate
1:01:45
Chameroni and her family. All families have problems and
1:01:49
divisions at sometimes, but Marianna Spring twisted that and
1:01:53
used it to get the story she wanted, and people picked up on
1:01:58
it. So if Marianna Spring was
1:02:00
unpopular previously, I picked up a new level from from just
1:02:05
that environment over the weekend where people said what
1:02:09
this woman did was outrageous. So maybe people are beginning to
1:02:15
get tougher and, you know, call this thing, this sort of thing
1:02:19
out, which would be really good news, I think.
1:02:22
It definitely would if if people out, you know, sort of out with
1:02:24
the the, you know, the the more, the more the better informed
1:02:32
among us if people, people did listen to that.
1:02:35
I mean, I'd say I haven't seen the TV programme and I actually
1:02:38
don't need to now having listened listened to her drivel
1:02:42
on for five episodes. But yeah, I mean, hopefully
1:02:48
people will, will, will who, who do listen to, to, to, to what
1:02:53
she's been saying will think, well, OK, fine and dandy.
1:02:57
But you've, you've basically positioned yourself in the
1:03:00
middle of a family tragedy and you've found reasons to use it
1:03:06
to pursue your own agenda and nothing more, you know?
1:03:14
And yeah, let's just hope that there are, even if it's a few
1:03:18
dozen people that they merge with that that would be good.
1:03:22
That would be good. We're heading for the top of the
1:03:25
hour, but just a couple more questions because I can't resist
1:03:28
it. You, Jimmy, what's the first
1:03:33
one? The first one is colleagues,
1:03:35
other colleagues of, of your of your year, maybe younger that
1:03:41
you're still in contact with. Are you a completely lone voice?
1:03:45
Are you alone in the way you see things?
1:03:47
Or have you got other former journalists and reporters who
1:03:52
who are starting to see the world as you see it now?
1:03:56
I'm actually not in touch with that many people who who I
1:04:01
worked with, I tended always to be among the youngest.
1:04:05
And so unfortunately, chronology has seen off quite a lot.
1:04:11
But what I have noticed and what I find incredibly disappointing
1:04:17
among among those of my contemporaries with whom I am
1:04:20
still so connected on Facebook and where I've stuck my head
1:04:24
above the parapet, which I did a lot, particularly in 2021 going
1:04:29
into 22. And still now, you know, I still
1:04:31
do it. Now I get shot down.
1:04:35
And these are by people who I worked alongside who've come
1:04:39
through the same, the same environment, you know, learning
1:04:43
environment as journalists as I did.
1:04:46
And they shoot me down the, the, the whole vaccine debate in
1:04:51
particular. And, and I personally, I've been
1:04:55
a, a vaccine sceptic actually since before my daughter was
1:04:57
born and she's 32 now. And I was doing my research way
1:05:00
back there and I'm actually writing, I was doing research
1:05:04
for articles that I was writing for sort of the health press,
1:05:09
consumer press back then and asking questions, which was
1:05:14
much, much, much harder to do this sort of research back then
1:05:17
because there was no Internet or a very basic one.
1:05:23
And you know, now whenever, whenever I put anything
1:05:29
questions safe and effective, I will get probably one of these
1:05:36
former colleagues. We've never complete, we've
1:05:38
never formally fallen out over it, but one of them will jump
1:05:41
all over me. And they're publishing all kinds
1:05:43
of things at the moment. Particularly they're picking up
1:05:48
the inevitable tropes on RFK Junior and just publishing them
1:05:52
without comment. And that's the other thing that
1:05:54
I find really depressing is the number of, of, of journalists
1:05:59
who will just run with other stuff.
1:06:01
They've seen people stick on Facebook or Twitter or whatever
1:06:07
X or whatever and just cut and paste it.
1:06:09
Sorry. Well, we taught to actually go
1:06:12
and check your sources, which I always do.
1:06:16
I, I will not, I will not cut and paste and copy anything
1:06:19
without checking the the core sources and the number of times
1:06:22
I go back into Facebook and say that's wrong and nobody really
1:06:27
takes any notice because the moment has passed.
1:06:30
You're still clearly seen as a rebel, which is where we, we
1:06:34
started in the interview. I, I'd like to say I've you've
1:06:40
got a background there, left wing background and and
1:06:44
Communist Party. I particularly look back and
1:06:49
think to myself, well at least when we had the left wingers,
1:06:53
the genuine left wingers, and particularly when they were very
1:06:56
strong left wing MPs, you've used the expression that you've
1:07:01
always supported the underdog. But that's what I sensed about
1:07:05
them. I might not agree with all their
1:07:07
politics, but at least they did have some strong values and they
1:07:11
were trying to do their best for the ordinary man and woman, the
1:07:16
ordinary family. So I I still have huge respect.
1:07:19
And I think the fact that we've lost some of those strong left
1:07:24
wing people in in parliament, certainly we've lost them
1:07:28
within, you know, the limp, limp wristed Keir Starmer type Labor
1:07:35
Party. I think it's a real loss.
1:07:37
We need some of that that drive. I agree absolutely.
1:07:41
I mean, you know, you will remember the Dennis Skinners of
1:07:44
the of, of you know, of your and these were, I mean, I think the
1:07:49
absolutely key thing about the the yeah, the limp wristed a lot
1:07:53
right across the board is that most of them have never had a
1:07:56
proper day job. So, you know, back in the 70s
1:07:59
and 80s and, you know, and I have, as you will not be
1:08:04
surprised to learn that I was not exactly over the moon when
1:08:07
Margaret Thatcher was elected. But what I do remember about her
1:08:14
is at least she's had a day job. She had some experience of
1:08:17
industry. I mean, albeit I don't think her
1:08:19
policies serve British industry at all well, but she had, you
1:08:24
know, she had that experience and, you know, and on and, you
1:08:29
know, within the Labor Party, you had the likes of Dennis
1:08:31
Skinner, who'd been a working miner.
1:08:33
He knew what he was bloody talking about.
1:08:35
Now they, they get their, their, their degrees from uni, they
1:08:39
start off as researchers, they become spads and suddenly their
1:08:42
MPs. And that is right across the
1:08:44
board. They have never had day jobs.
1:08:46
They do not actually know what it's like to run a small
1:08:50
business to, to run, to be part of a big organisation, to do
1:08:56
some do manual labour. I mean, they, they don't know,
1:08:59
they have no idea. So it's which I think is in
1:09:03
large measure explains why there's a a real lack of empathy
1:09:07
between MPs and the people they purport to represent.
1:09:12
Absolutely. And finally.
1:09:17
Well this is absolutely true. I, I regard it as an honour to
1:09:21
be here talking to you because you are the full career
1:09:25
professional journalist. I, I'm here very much as a, a
1:09:30
self taught person who still can't quite believe that I've
1:09:33
ended up doing what what I do. And so for you to be engaged
1:09:38
with the UK column is yeah, it's an honour.
1:09:41
So I'd like to thank you for that.
1:09:43
My question though is how did he actually find the UK column and
1:09:46
when? When was that?
1:09:48
Oh goodness, it was sometime. It was sometime, sometime in
1:09:53
2020, and I can't remember exactly how.
1:09:57
I mean, I rumbled. I rumbled the whole COVID thing
1:10:01
pretty early. And I have AI, have a master's
1:10:04
degree in employment law, which is a whole separate story.
1:10:08
And I had a look at that coronavirus bill and I looked at
1:10:12
it and I thought, this guy over 400 pages, there's no way
1:10:15
somebody wrote this over the weekend, which was pretty much
1:10:19
what Boris Johnson was suggesting to us.
1:10:21
Oh, we've put this together and it's all ready to go.
1:10:24
I thought, no, you haven't. That's been sitting on a shelf
1:10:26
waiting to be dusted down and tweaked.
1:10:29
And it flowed from there. And I started and I real and I
1:10:32
was being bombarded with propaganda.
1:10:36
And what am I? What am I listening to?
1:10:39
What am I reading here? This is, this is nonsense.
1:10:43
You know, where, where's the other side of the story?
1:10:45
There must be another side to the story.
1:10:47
So I started digging and delving and at some point I obviously I
1:10:54
came across the UK column and you know, my, my hardwired lefty
1:11:00
thing, say, oh God, are these all right wing extremists?
1:11:06
And then I realised, no, you're just looking to see if you can
1:11:10
find out what's going on, basically what is actually going
1:11:15
on in this country, what's going on in the world?
1:11:18
Why are we following this insane agenda?
1:11:24
You know, the insanity of where, where you had intelligent grown
1:11:29
up people wearing a mask to go into a pub, taking the mask off
1:11:33
to sit down, standing up to go to the loo, putting their mask
1:11:37
on. Yeah, you were the you.
1:11:40
And yeah, not just you, but others were the ones asking the
1:11:43
questions. And so I gravitated to that and
1:11:47
I did, I worked with Dan Aston Gregory for a while as a
1:11:50
volunteer doing some of some of the the grant work on his, on
1:11:55
his episodes when he was doing the pandemic podcast.
1:11:58
And it was just really that, and I've, and this is this is where
1:12:02
I so quite Oh my God, I found my tribe in this world of insanity,
1:12:08
but I can't tell you exactly when.
1:12:09
I don't know what the trigger was.
1:12:11
Well, whatever we are, we're very glad that you did find us,
1:12:15
Eugenie. And it's it's been great to talk
1:12:19
to you today. Really interesting.
1:12:21
Lots more questions we could ask.
1:12:24
Maybe there will come a point where maybe we should have a
1:12:27
look at a Part 2 or something. But yeah, the press media, very
1:12:32
important. The so called 4th estate, isn't
1:12:35
it? And, and we do need to know
1:12:38
what's happening to it, what it's doing and who's controlling
1:12:41
it. So I think there's probably a
1:12:42
lot more questions to ask. Thank you for joining me.
1:12:46
Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
1:12:48
Let's not play the angered out honour you, but it has been an
1:12:52
honour and a privilege to to be able to share some of this and
1:12:56
hopefully throw a bit of light on what it was like then, on
1:13:00
what it's like there, what it's like now.
1:13:03
Great. Thank you.