Journalists, it's time you owned up

The Scottish public is constantly being told that much of its political information is tainted. Soon this will be taken completely for granted, with serious consequences for public trust. And strangely, it is journalists themselves who purvey this self- destructive tale.

Over the past year, the exposure of journalists' and broadcasters' links with politicians has become absolutely routine. But why, suddenly, are we being told so much? Do we need to know as citizens of Scotland's developing democracy? Or are we just witnessing another self-interested exercise with its own hidden agenda?

The affiliations game is now being played so vigorously because political journalism in Scotland matters as it never did before. The creation of Holyrood has changed everything. Without a parliament and an Executive, pre-devolution political reporting in Scotland lacked a proper beat and had far fewer practitioners than today. Now there is a political press pack of some 40 journalists regularly on the hunt for stories on the Mound, and competition for news lines has raised the stakes.

In the new political culture, stories about journalists' political connections have become an increasing part of the everyday war of position between the political parties. They are also weapons with which diverse media interests can attack each other. The game is played by telling certain kinds of story.

For instance, as soon as Henry McLeish was installed as First Minister, controversy about his media connections hit the agenda. The intention to "dump the crap" in Donald Dewar's legislative programme, and to change ministers' portfolios, was first revealed to the public at large by Tom Brown of the Daily Record, sidelining parliament. Quite properly, we all asked whether this was the right way to tell us about major policy change. Should ministers and commentators really be that close?

Around the same time, David Kerr, editor of the BBC's Newsnight Scotland, resigned to stand as an SNP Westminster candidate. He had been criticised for prioritising an interview with the SNP's John Swinney when Donald Dewar was on his death-bed. "Senior insiders" at BBC Scotland who moved Kerr to the sports desk were evidently concerned that this would damage the corporation's impartiality.

Questions were also recently asked about the the impartiality of Scottish Television, owned by SMG (the owners of this newspaper). When ITV's Ask The Prime Minister programme was networked into Scotland last December, shortly before the Falkirk West by-election, the opposition parties in Scotland complained that Labour had been given an unfair advantage. The Independent Television Commission decided that this was so and asked Scottish Television to broadcast opposition views. One newspaper report implied that the proximity of Labour to senior Scottish staff influenced the decision.

AND, for a change, there's the sleeping-with-the-enemy tale. The current best-known, oft-repeated, instance is the relationship between the Scottish Mirror's political editor, Lorraine Davidson, and the minister for parliament, Tom McCabe. What couple doesn't do pillow-talk, we are asked?

Assume that the stories are all true and their intended implications are correctly drawn. What is to be done about it? A simple answer is to find a way of getting journal-ists' affiliations openly and voluntarily registered on a regular basis in a publicly accessible way.

Of course, there will always be grey areas and questions about what should go in or stay out in any declaration of interests. Journalists are congenitally averse to making these, but are always prescribing them for other people. And, in fact, a precedent has been set in the declaration of interests that political journalists make when receiving accreditation at parliament.

Only a fool would ask for the abolition of connections between journalism and politics. These occupations are mutually dependent. As the historian EP Thompson once memorably observed, it's about the relationship between the pisser and the pissoir. Political journalists are consummate insiders: as Scotland headed towards devolution, the first thing they did was set up the Scottish Parliamentary Press Association. Then they lobbied very effectively for representation on the media panel that established the rules for reporting parliament.

Political correspondents must always have a seat at the politicians' table. But as exposures continue, the public is incessantly prompted to ask: are they also playing footsie? Citizens need to know whether they are getting spin or independent analysis.

Analyse it and you will find the school of exposure actually espouses some far-reaching general principles. This is what it is saying.

FIRST, we should always be told about a journalist's party membership. Agreed, a much greyer area is that of party affiliation.

Second, we should know about relationships with key sources that go beyond the purely professional, hard though that is to define at the margins. And third, we should know if someone's apparent political detachment is a cover for hidden beliefs that affect journalistic practice.

Pretty stringent stuff. But the very logic of the expose is that if journalists are to have public credibility, most or all of these principles need to be adopted. The typical stories doing the rounds imply that there are some ideal rules of the game that are being broken and, at worst, that there are conspiracies and cabals that fix the political agenda. All that I've done is to make these claims quite explicit.

The choice is that either we keep reading more accusations or that journalists themselves find an honourable and credible way to state their own political affiliations.

Professor Philip Schlesinger is director of Stirling Media Research Institute. His latest book Open Scotland? will be published in April

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