The former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has launched a blistering defence of press freedom and an industry that he said “infuriates the rich and powerful” and “makes the world a better place”.
The chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, who stepped down as editor of the Daily Mail in the summer after 26 years at the helm, said newspapers faces an existential threat from the internet, whose “algorithms plunder our hard-earned journalism”.
He also said it was “not fanciful” to suggest the Leveson inquiry that followed News of the World phone hacking “was a calculated attempt by the Establishment to control the one sector of the media it couldn’t regulate” and that it was “pay back time” for a political class badly scalded by the expenses scandal.
But speaking at the Society of Editors annual meeting in Manchester for the first time in a decade, he said: “And yet, we’re still here, punching above our weight. Still setting the news agenda for the broadcasters, who rarely miss a chance to denigrate our industry.”
Calling on newspaper editors to “pull together” to improve the industry’s image when “so many self-interested people seem determined to bang nails into the collective coffin that is Britain’s free press”, Mr Dacre offered four predictions for the future of the media.
The BBC, he said, would “diminish in power as the ”streaming giants undermine the licence fee“ and a right-of-centre TV network will one day take root in the UK.
Internet giants will be regulated and just like the oil barons of the last century should be broken up as their ”monopolistic power is too great“ and ”that fundamental need for privacy will reassert itself“.
What I do care about is the future of newspapers and how we improve our image when so many self-interested people seem determined to bang nails into the collective coffin that is Britain’s free press.
Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre
Mr Dacre, in his first public appearance since stepping down, said there would also be a ”turning away from algorithm created news“ in favour of ”authentic, regulated, curated journalism“, which he said is created by ”brilliant minds that love pictures, headlines and words and possess extraordinary empathy with their readers“.
”Newspapers will have a longer future than the Jeremiahs predict, which is why I worry there is a danger that repeated morbid predictions of our death will become self-fulfilling,“ he added.
‘You know, I’ve had a fabulously privileged life in journalism’
Mr Dacre, who was awarded the society’s first ever lifetime achievement award, hit out at the judiciary, which he said ”doesn’t seem to understand the pure silliness of granting gagging injunctions in a digital age“ and ”mainly left-wing professors of journalism“
He said phone hacking, while restricted to two newspaper groups, ”shamed our whole industry“ and was ”disgusting, immoral and unethical“.
He reserved his harshest criticism for the Guardian’s former editor Alan Rusbridger’s just-published memoirs, and its ”almost visceral contempt of and disdain for the rest of the press“. The book was a ”masterclass in the art of sly omissions,“ he said.
”I don’t agree with the Guardian’s decision to publish Snowden who now skulks in the murderous kleptocracy that is Russia. The man was a traitor who should have been arrested and not sanctified,“ he added.
Mr Dacre said said his ”heart bleeds“ for ”dedicated young journalists“ who will be denied the opportunities he has enjoyed in his career through industry belt-tightening.
So there. I’ve stuck my neck out and indeed, with the Guardian, put it on the block. Well, frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn.
Paul Dacre
”You know, I’ve had a fabulously privileged life in journalism,“ he said, noting that he had watched his first story being set in stone in the bowels of the Manchester Daily Express in the 1970s.
He said he was ”proud of editing a paper for 26 years that didn’t hack phones“ and ”made billions in profits“, and of working for the Rothermere family, who granted him ”the freedom to edit without interference“.
‘So there, I’ve stuck my neck out. Frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn’
”So there,“ he said. ”I’ve stuck my neck out and indeed, with the Guardian, put it on the block. Well, frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn.“
He added: ”What I do care about is the future of newspapers and how we improve our image when so many self-interested people seem determined to bang nails into the collective coffin that is Britain’s free press.
“And is it now too much to hope that our industry – all of us – pull together to improve that image and, yes, confess that we make mistakes but also do much good which, more often than not, shines a light from the top of the lamp post and makes the world a better place.”
‘Westminster echo chamber hasn’t a clue about what real people are thinking’
Paul Dacre hit out at the “echo chamber” in Westminster that he said has decided that “Brexit is doomed and that the terminally incompetent Theresa May is toast”.
“Earlier this month, she was pronounced so dead that I’m surprised she was able to get up in the morning,” he said. “She is, of course, still here and will, I predict, take the Tories into the next election”.
But he added: “The problem with the echo chamber is that its inhabitants increasingly haven’t a clue what real people in Britain, outside the M25, are thinking.
He said those people ”do actually rather like Mrs May, whom they think is a decent woman trying to do her best in very difficult circumstances“.
”It is, of course, because the inhabitants of the echo chamber only talk to each other, that the referendum result came as such a seismic shock to them,“ he added.
