Quotes of the Day
Those who brief, cajole, artfully misdirect or just plain herd the press on behalf of big-time politicians obey a few crucial rules of the road to keep their bosses (and themselves) out of trouble. Rule 1: Stay behind the scenes; the media adviser should never become the story. Rule 2: Don't be nasty; you may disagree with reporters, you may tussle with them, but browbeating eventually backfires. Rule 3: Under no circumstances attack the media as a whole. They are jealous of their prerogatives, and buy ink by the barrel.
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications and strategy, has staked his own career — and arguably the future of Blair's government — on exactly the opposite course. This week the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons will issue a report on whether Blair misused intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to sell the war in Iraq to a skeptical public. Campbell, enraged by a bbc report in May that claimed he had "sexed up" the major dossier on Iraqi wmd released last September, has launched a ferocious campaign not only to vindicate himself, but to attack the reporter responsible, the BBC and the standards and habits of much of British journalism. "Parts of our media see it as their job to undermine politicians and the democratic process," Campbell told Time last week. "They seem to think we [in government] get up in the morning thinking, 'How can we destroy the country and pull the wool over the media's eyes?' They think they're better than politicians and that people in politics are all liars. I think that's very dangerous."
Campbell speaks with the zeal of a convert; he's a former tabloid reporter who jumped officially to the Labour Party after Blair became its leader in 1994. But in this case he may have the weight of evidence on his side, since Britain's top spies appear to be backing Campbell's insistence that although he did suggest some small changes to the dossier text, they kept control of it, and in particular, originated the provocative claim that Iraq had WMD ready to deploy in 45 minutes. So most observers expect the fac to exonerate him of the "sexing up" charge, though he will likely take flak for issuing a second paper last February that mixed up new intelligence information with an old graduate thesis on Saddam's power structure that one of his aides plagiarized from the Internet.
And so Campbell is likely to emerge from the fray, still Europe's most powerful political image maker. But even his friends are wondering: Is he winning this battle but losing the war? He's the one in charge of getting voters to think well of the government — and increasingly, they do not. For the first time since Labour came to power in 1997, the Conservatives are starting to pull even. In a MORI poll released last week, only 36% of British adults considered Blair trustworthy, and 59% said he had failed to live up to their expectations. Critics, both in the Labour Party and outside, largely blame Campbell's style of news management — so combative and relentless that by now people dismiss as spin much of what the government says. Conservative M.P. Alan Duncan, shadow foreign minister, asked to compare Campbell's role with that of previous image makers, replies, "How much do you know about Dr. Goebbels?" and then, more seriously, says, "He's a very competent propagandist; none better. But he's lost his compass bearings on the truth. What we have seen is the sloganizing of British political debate, the reduction of all argument into positioning and language crafting." Peter Oborne, author of a judicious 1999 biography of Campbell whose attitudes have since hardened, says: "This government had so much good will in 1997. Alastair is the one most responsible that they have this reputation for mendacity, and have made so many unnecessary enemies."
In person Campbell seems an unlikely Goebbels. Breezy, articulate, charismatic, accomplished on the bagpipes and a lifelong supporter of the hapless Burnley football club, he gives off a blokish charm and confidence. Veteran reporters he has publicly tongue-lashed and undercut by leaking to competitors still tend to like him personally. As chief political reporter for Robert Maxwell's pro-Labour Daily Mirror when Neil Kinnock was party leader, Campbell became so close to Kinnock that he helped write his speeches and plan party strategy while praising him in the Mirror — a mingling of loyalties that does not shock in Britain's ax-grinding media culture. Seeing Kinnock "systematically misrepresented and tormented by a very vicious, powerful right-wing press," in Oborne's words, proved a searing experience for Campbell as well as many other Labour supporters of this period. It's a primal source of the determination he has shown as Blair's spokesman to exert iron discipline not only on the press pack but on Labour politicians who might be inclined to deviate from the centrally determined line. He won high marks from the press as Blair led Labour's comeback and first years in government: competent and sharp, a brilliant tactician and worthy opponent, able to represent Blair's views with total confidence (indeed, sometimes before Blair had uttered them).
But as the notion that the government, guided by Campbell, was addicted to spin — burying bad news, repackaging the same new spending announcements two or three times over, stifling not only backbenchers but Cabinet members — became a staple of political commentary, Campbell's own relations with the press crossed the line from pugilistic to toxic. The political historian Ben Pimlott argues this was inevitable, based on the record of previous spokesmen since the 1960s. The criticisms of Margaret Thatcher's spokesman, Bernard Ingham, he says, track Campbell's "almost word for word." (Ingham indignantly rejects the comparison). "Because of the enormous power of the Prime Minister in the British system," says Pimlott, "the person who acts as his antennae is seen as very powerful, becomes very resented, the butt of attacks from all sides."
Campbell tried to take the steam out of the spin debate by retreating into the background — letting civil servants handle the daily briefings and putting Blair forward himself in monthly televised press conferences, where he excels. Some Campbell watchers thought that by abandoning the daily contest, he was preparing himself for a graceful exit from Downing St. This year he ran a marathon which raised some €464,000 for leukemia research and wrote movingly about his own alcohol-fueled nervous breakdown at 29 (he hasn't touched the stuff since), which some viewed as part of a repackaging to make him seem less of a junkyard dog.
But the failure to find any WMD has once more thrust his combative side to the fore, because the charge that Downing St. oversold the case for war is potentially devastating both to Blair and to Campbell's own reputation. Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, says "Alastair and spin are the Achilles' heel of this government, because in every tight spot what gets revisited is that they're not very honest or trustworthy." Campbell gave his critics a big club in the February briefing paper that mixed unattributed excerpts from a graduate thesis with bona fide intelligence information, because it seemed to confirm a throw-it-and-see-what-sticks attitude toward facts despite the gravity of the subject. In defending its decision to air the report that Campbell had "sexed up" the more serious September dossier despite hearing it from only a single source, BBC news director Richard Sambrook said that "any decent journalist would inevitably question whether similar tactics had been used" and charged Campbell with systematic intimidation.
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It could be madness, it could be guile — browbeating reporters has got him results in the past — or it could be just inevitable, given who Campbell is. "I don't give a damn what the media say, because the public know a lot of it is nonsense," he insists. "What the papers can do is create a mood. Our job from time to time is to puncture that mood." He's confident that when it counts, during elections and big national crises, people will listen directly to Blair and other ministers anyway. So the chief communicator of a government that is having trouble inspiring voters is ready to take on the 24-hour broadcasters and 10 million newspapers a day. "Not for him the humdrum solution," says the former official. "He has the confidence and intelligence to be extraordinarily ambitious." Ambitions that grand can be punctured, too.
- J.F.O. McALLISTER | London
- Tony Blair's master of spin comes out of the shadows