A certain smugness prevails in the Lobby today that they have kiboshed the £2.6 million plan to bring Downing Street’s briefings into the twenty-first century. Forget all the spin: the reality is that it isn’t in the interests of hacks to open up the Lobby system or insist more often that quotes are on the public record. Intermediating allows them to more easily introduce their opinions into their news reports. Televised transparency would have devalued their role because information scarcity makes their possession of a spokesman’s phone number so much more valuable. Opening up the system of briefings in real time wasn’t in inky hacks’ interests…
To be fair, there was some reluctance also on the part of the communications professionals in Downing Street to risk the change; the newly-promoted Jack Doyle is a newspaperman, and like his predecessor James Slack, he was never that keen on televising the briefings. Alex Wickham this morning quotes an unnamed government official as saying “that regular televised press briefings were a ‘bad idea’ from the previous No. 10 regime of which ‘no good could come’” because whenever the government was having a difficult day, social media would have been a sea of gotcha clips. On the other hand, Allegra Stratton (an experienced broadcaster) believed it could be made to work better than the current system does now. A good spokesperson could get the message to voters over the heads of hacks with their own agenda. It would also have the benefit of allowing voters to see how the political news sausage is made, which did not show the hacks in a good light during the daily covid briefings.
Last year Downing Street told Guido: “For too long we’ve been running an analogue system in a digital age. People want to hear directly what the government is doing and to see it being held to account…”. Doyle on the other hand is keen to definitively end Downing Street’s war with the Lobby, so a full surrender on the analogue front will buy him some goodwill. It won’t last. Hacks will be able to spin the off-camera answers such that they don’t precisely reflect the actual answer given.
The situation now is that unlike in Washington, or even Brussels, the transparent interrogation of the executive by the media is done behind closed doors and off camera. This suits the inky-fingered hacks of the dead tree press, who are well-aware that they would be further downgraded if an unmediated livestream of the day’s questioning were available to voters. They’ll now be able to go on as gatekeepers setting the political news agenda, unseen by voters…
Breaking concurrently with the news of Johnny Mercer’s sacking is the announcement from Downing Street that Allegra Stratton’s planned televised briefings are to be scrapped. Instead, Stratton will become Boris’s spokeswoman for COP26. Taxpayers will be less-than-pleased to hear the £2.6 million briefing room will instead be used by the PM, ministers and officials.
Hat-tip: Steven Swinford
Yesterday the PM visited a primary school to promote the government’s new early learning review, during which he gave an interview to a PA pool camera, covering everything from vaccine passports to his need for a haircut.
The media tradition has been that because pool camera interviews are for broadcasters, there’s not a need for newspaper hacks to receive transcripts of what was said – a tradition that’s becoming increasingly annoying to some members of the Lobby. The Sun’s Kate Ferguson led the charge in the Lobby WhatsApp group chat last night, ranting it’s a “ridiculous situation” she should have to find out what Boris said via the BBC Politics Twitter account “at 530pm”.
Kuenssberg quickly stepped in to explain that, historically, “the broadcast pool is technically a broadcast arrangement” and therefore there’s not been a history of sharing transcripts. Though she’s happy to pass them on when it’s a BBC camera rather than PA…
The Sun’s Harry Cole wasn’t having any of it however, messaging “We are in different times tho… in the digital age its totally unfair for our online desks to be spotting new stuff going up 6 hours after the clip was shot that no one in print was even aware had been said”
The problem for the Lobby hacks is that with all platforms going digital they haven’t modernised their methods and in some ways are lagging behind Downing Street …
Peter Bone is leading counter-revolutionary demands to scrap the forthcoming televised Lobby briefings fronted by Allegra Stratton, which – if it hadn’t been for the third Covid wave – would have already begun broadcasting by now. It’s clear Bone has got the wrong end of the stick: this switch to broadcasting isn’t a move to empower journalists over the Commons, it’s a move to make the current briefing system more transparent. As Rees-Mogg eloquently explained, while dodging the request for a debate…
It has now been confirmed that Downing Street’s televised press briefings fronted by Allegra Stratton are to launch on January 11th, confirming what Guido revealed a month ago that the Lobby would have to wait until the start of the year thanks to the revamp of No. 9 Downing Street taking longer than expected to get it match fit for live briefings. Contrary to the current five-day-a-week Lobby schedule, the briefings with Allegra will only take place on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Seems the anti-transparency cartel will continue to get their way post-PMQs…
Yet more changes in the way that Downing Street handles the media were announced today ahead of televised briefings beginning in the new year. Following PMQs Allegra Stratton, in a joint briefing with No. 10’s new Head of Press, Jamie Davies, announced that she will speak to hacks on the record, changing the tradition of Lobby briefings by the PM’s Press Secretary coming from an anonymous “Downing Street spokesman”. The Press Secretary is not to be confused with the Prime Minister’s Spokesman, who has been on the record since Blair’s time.
The implication of all this is that there will be no off the record negative briefings from the main Downing Street officials who brief the media. This will be quite an innovation.
In another sign of the end to the previous regime’s attitude to the Lobby, Stratton told the gathered journos “The media has had a very good and powerful role during the pandemic so far”. Polling would beg to differ…
