An exchange of emails with an old friend who is now a bit of a media insider, arising out of yesterday's reference to the fact that the Morning Star enjoyed Parliamentary Lobby access throughout the Cold War.
My correspondent agrees with my published view that the publications granted such access should be required
to be balanced among themselves, even if not necessarily within themselves.
Broadcasters having such access should be required to give regular airtime to
all newspapers and magazines enjoying the same access. Including both Tribune and the Morning Star, both of which the BBC pretends do not exist.
The lobby itself, meanwhile, has a very odd concept of the difference between a newspaper and a magazine, classifying as the latter anything published weekly but on a day other than Sunday. Tribune and the Jewish Chronicle are both newspapers, but they are both classified as magazines. Very odd. Very odd indeed.
Discussion turned to whether Press TV might have survived in Britain, and Russia Today might not be in such danger from the same Department of State that is in fact a wholly owned subsidiary of a criminal business empire (another wholly owned subsidiary of which kicks the sellers of rival newspapers to death in the street with apparent impunity), if the badge of relative respectability that is a lobby pass had extended to someone on the former and extended now to someone on the latter.
We are both of the view that Tribune or the Morning Star should make the necessary arrangements. (Honestly, if you only knew who my interlocutor was...) If that meant someone else making the necessary arrangements on behalf of Al Jazeera, then that price would be worth paying.
But we both tend to feel that, just as MPs' staffs ought not to have less access to the Palace of Westminster than is enjoyed by Lobby journalists, so any journalist, newspaper, magazine, website, agency or broadcaster ought to enjoy Lobby access if certified as acceptable by one or more seat-taking members, at least of the Commons, and possibly of either House. A certification which would of course be a matter of public record.
But broadcasters, with so much more clout than any of the others, would be bound to give balanced coverage when dealing with any of the others in particular: newspapers, magazines, websites, or whatever.
One for the post-Leveson world, we both feel.
We are both of the view that Tribune or the Morning Star should make the necessary arrangements. (Honestly, if you only knew who my interlocutor was...) If that meant someone else making the necessary arrangements on behalf of Al Jazeera, then that price would be worth paying.
But we both tend to feel that, just as MPs' staffs ought not to have less access to the Palace of Westminster than is enjoyed by Lobby journalists, so any journalist, newspaper, magazine, website, agency or broadcaster ought to enjoy Lobby access if certified as acceptable by one or more seat-taking members, at least of the Commons, and possibly of either House. A certification which would of course be a matter of public record.
But broadcasters, with so much more clout than any of the others, would be bound to give balanced coverage when dealing with any of the others in particular: newspapers, magazines, websites, or whatever.
One for the post-Leveson world, we both feel.
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