Here is the full text of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Reuters speech on public life on 12 June 2007:
The purpose of the series of speeches I have given over the past year has been
deliberately reflective: to get beyond the immediate headlines on issues of the day
and contemplate in a broader perspective, the effect of a changing world on the issues of the future.
This speech on the challenge of the changing nature of
communication on politics and the media is from the same perspective.
I need to say some preliminaries at the outset. This is not my response to the
latest whacking from bits of the media.
It is not a whinge about how unfair it all
is. As I always say, it's an immense privilege to do this job and if the worst that
happens is harsh media coverage, it's a small price to pay.
And anyway, like it
or not, I have won three elections and am still standing as I leave office.
is not a complaint. It is an argument.
As a result of being at the top of the greasy pole for thirteen years, ten of them as
Prime Minister, my life, my work as prime minister, and its interaction with the
world of communication has given me pretty deep experience, for better or
A free media is a vital part of a free society. You only need to look at where
such a free media is absent to know this truth.
But it is also part of freedom to
be able to comment on the media. It has a complete right to be free. I, like
anyone else, have a complete right to speak.
My principal reflection is not about "blaming" anyone. It is that the relationship
between politics, public life and the media is changing as a result of the changing
context of communication in which we all operate; no-one is at fault - it is a fact;
but it is my view that the effect of this change is seriously adverse to the way
public life is conducted; and that we need, at the least, a proper and considered
debate about how we manage the future, in which it is in all our interests that the
public is properly and accurately informed.
They are the priority and they are
not well served by the current state of affairs.
In the analysis I am about to make, I first acknowledge my own complicity.
paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging,
and persuading the media. In our own defence, after 18 years of Opposition and
the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any
But such an attitude ran the risk of fuelling the trends in
communications that I am about to question.
It is also hard for the public to know the facts, even when subject to the most
minute scrutiny, if those facts arise out of issues of profound controversy, as the
Hutton Inquiry showed.
I would only point out that the Hutton Inquiry (along with 3 other inquiries) was
a six month investigation in which I as Prime Minister and other senior Ministers
and officials faced unprecedented public questioning and scrutiny.
was disparaged because it was not the one the critics wanted. But it was an
example of being held to account, not avoiding it. But leave that to one side.
And incidentally in none of this, do I ignore the fact that this relationship has
always been fraught. From Stanley Baldwin's statement about "power without
responsibility being the prerogative of the harlot through the ages" back to the
often extraordinarily brutal treatment meted out to Gladstone and Disraeli
through to Harold Wilson's complaints of the 60s, the relations between politics
and the media are and are by necessity, difficult. It's as it should be.
The question is: is it qualitatively and quantitively different today? I think yes.
So that's my starting point.
Why? Because the objective circumstances in which the world of
communications operate today are radically altered.
The media world - like everything else - is becoming more fragmented, more
diverse and transformed by technology.
The main BBC and ITN bulletins used
to have audiences of 8, even 10 million. Today the average is half that. At the
same time, there are rolling 24 hour news programmes that cover events as they
unfold. In 1982, there were 3 TV stations broadcasting in the UK.
are hundreds. In 1995 225 TV shows had audiences of over 15 million. Today
it is almost none.
Newspapers fight for a share of a shrinking market. Many are now read online,
not the next day.
Internet advertising has overtaken newspaper ads. There are
roughly 70 million blogs in existence, with around 120,000 being created every
day. In particular, younger people will, less and less, get their news from
But, in addition, the forms of communication are merging and interchanging.
The BBC website is crucial to the modern BBC. Papers have Podcasts and
written material on the web. News is becoming increasingly a free good,
provided online without charge. Realistically, these trends won't do anything
other than intensify.
These changes are obvious. But less obvious is their effect.
The news schedule
is now 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It moves in real time. Papers don't give
you up to date news. That's already out there.
They have to break stories, try to
lead the schedules. Or they give a commentary. And it all happens with
outstanding speed. When I fought the 1997 election - just ten years ago - we
took an issue a day. In 2005, we had to have one for the morning, another for
the afternoon and by the evening the agenda had already moved on.
You have to respond to stories also in real time.
Frequently the problem is as
much assembling the facts as giving them. Make a mistake and you quickly
transfer from drama into crisis. In the 1960s the government would sometimes,
on a serious issue, have a Cabinet lasting two days.
It would be laughable to
think you could do that now without the heavens falling in before lunch on the
Things harden within minutes. I mean you can't let speculation stay out there for
longer than an instant.
I am going to say something that few people in public life will say, but most
know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today - outside of the really
major decisions, as big as anything else - is coping with the media, its sheer
scale, weight and constant hyperactivity.
At points, it literally overwhelms.
Talk to senior people in virtually any walk of life today - business, military,
public services, sport, even charities and voluntary organisations and they will
tell you the same. People don't speak about it because, in the main, they are
But it is true, nonetheless, and those who have been around long
enough, will also say it has changed significantly in the past years.
The danger is, however, that we then commit the same mistake as the media do
with us: it's the fault of bad people.
My point is: it is not the people who have
changed; it is the context within which they work.
We devote reams of space to debating why there is so much cynicism about
politics and public life. In this, the politicians are obliged to go into self flagellation,
admitting it is all our fault.
Actually not to have a proper press
operation nowadays is like asking a batsman to face bodyline bowling without
pads or headgear.
And, believe it or not, most politicians come into public life with a desire to
serve and by and large, try to do the right thing not the wrong thing.
My view is that the real reason for the cynicism is precisely the way politics and
the media today interact. We, in the world of politics, because we are worried
about saying this, play along with the notion it is all our fault.
So I introduced:
first, lobby briefings on the record; then published the minutes; then gave
monthly press conferences; then Freedom of Information; then became the first
Prime Minister to go to the Select Committee's Chairman's session; and so on.
None of it to any avail, not because these things aren't right, but because they
don't deal with the central issue: how politics is reported.
There is now, again, a debate about why Parliament is not considered more
important and as ever, the Government is held to blame. But we haven't altered
any of the lines of accountability between Parliament and the Executive.
has changed is the way Parliament is reported or rather not reported. Tell me
how many maiden speeches are listened to; how many excellent second reading
speeches or committee speeches are covered. Except when they generate major
controversy, they aren't.
If you are a backbench MP today, you learn to give a press release first and a
good Parliamentary speech second.
My case, however is: there's no point either in blaming the media. We are both
handling the changing nature of communication.
The sooner we recognise this,
the better because we can then debate a sensible way forward.
The reality is that as a result of the changing context in which 21st Century
communications operates, the media are facing a hugely more intense form of
competition than anything they have ever experienced before.
They are not the
masters of this change but its victims.
The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by
"impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above
the clamour, can get noticed.
Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the
accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact.
It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them
down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an
impulsion towards sensation above all else.
Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly
the same pressures as broadsheets.
The audience needs to be arrested, held and
their emotions engaged. Something that is interesting is less powerful than
something that makes you angry or shocked.
The consequences of this are acute.
First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down.
rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light.
Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not
enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own
to examine the consequences for journalism of standing one conspiracy up.
What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct.
misconduct is what has impact.
Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts
in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and
reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.
Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new
technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the
So - for example - there will often be as much interpretation of
what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the
interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken
This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large
amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears
little or no relation to what was intended.
In turn, this leads to a fifth point: the confusion of news and commentary.
Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be
separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part
of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of
In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine.
The metaphor for this genre of modern journalism is the Independent newspaper.
Let me state at the outset it is a well-edited lively paper and is absolutely entitled
to print what it wants, how it wants, on the Middle East or anything else.
was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news. That was
why it was called the Independent. Today it is avowedly a viewspaper not
merely a newspaper.
The final consequence of all of this is that it is rare today to find balance in the
Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life's usual grey
is almost entirely absent.
"Some good, some bad"; "some things going right,
some going wrong": these are concepts alien to today's reporting. It's a triumph
or a disaster. A problem is "a crisis".
A setback is a policy "in tatters". A
criticism, "a savage attack"
NGOs and pundits know that unless they are prepared to go over the top, they
shouldn't venture out at all.
Talk to any public service leader - especially in the
NHS or the field of law and order - and they will tell you not that they mind the
criticism, but they become totally demoralised by the completely unbalanced
nature of it.
It is becoming worse? Again, I would say, yes. In my 10 years, I've noticed all
these elements evolve with ever greater momentum.
It used to be thought - and I include myself in this - that help was on the
New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the
increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media.
In fact, the new forms can be
even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory
multiplied by five.
But here is also the opportunity.
At present, we are all being dragged down by
the way media and public life interact. Trust in journalists is not much above
that in politicians. There is a market in providing serious, balanced news. There
is a desire for impartiality.
The way that people get their news may be changing;
but the thirst for the news being real news is not.
The media will fear any retreat from impact will mean diminishing sales. But the
opposite is the case.
They need to re-assert their own selling point: the distinction between news and
And there is inevitably change on its way.
The regulatory framework at some point will need revision. The PCC is for
traditional newspaper publishing.
OFCOM regulate broadcasting, except for the
BBC, which largely has its own system of regulation. But under the new
European regulations all television streamed over the internet may be covered by
As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television,
it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability
based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way.
How this is done is an open question and, of course, the distinction between
balance required of broadcasters but not of papers remains valid. But at some
point the system is going to change and the importance of accuracy will not
diminish, whilst the freedom to comment remains.
It is sometimes said that the media is accountable daily through the choice of
readers and viewers. That is true up to a point. But the reality is that the
viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being
told. In every other walk of life in our society that exercises power, there are
external forms of accountability, not least through the media itself.
So it is true
politicians are accountable through the ballot box every few years. But they are
also profoundly accountable, daily, through the media, which is why a free press
is so important.
I am not in a position to determine this one way or another. But a way needs to
be found. I do believe this relationship between public life and media is now
damaged in a manner that requires repair. The damage saps the country's
confidence and self-belief; it undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions;
and above all, it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions, in the right
spirit for our future.
I've made this speech after much hesitation. I know it will be rubbished in
certain quarters. But I also know this has needed to be said.