The ones that got away

GEORGE Orwell's 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air, is set in a terrified London on the brink of a new kind of war. The public is growing more frightened day by day of the coming Nazi bombings of civilians and the threatened chemical attacks. But everyday life goes on in a tense, truncated form, as does everyday news.

There's a sub-sub-strand throughout the novel of an Evening Standard story about the discovery of a pair of severed legs in London; in a new world menaced by appalling unknowns, this running story is a strangely comforting, old-fashioned reminder of how life used to be. So popular does the story become that news vendors only have to shout, "Legs, latest" to sell piles of newspapers - to a public that knows it will soon be legally required to carry a gas mask at all times.

Now that we've got semi-used to a new and frightening form of semi- wartime, non-World Trade Center stories are starting to appear in prominent positions. Important domestic stories, such as the terrible social services failures in the Victoria Climbi and Lauren Wright cases are getting their due space, along with such knockabout comedy tales as the Prince Edward-St Andrews debacle.

But what important news stories, as well as those comforting little slices of life as it used to be, have failed to find space, or been relegated to deep inside pages, in the days following the New York and Washington outrages?

Of the major world stories that would ordinarily have been enormous news, the one that would probably have claimed the most space in the broadsheets and middle-market papers was Robert Mugabe's apparent ignoring of the surprise deal Jack Straw struck with him in Nigeria on 6 September.

International stories which also failed to be reported with any great energy were the chemical factory explosion in Toulouse, which killed 29, injured 400 and flattened 500 houses. The murderous gun- and-grenade suicide attack in Switzerland last week, in which 14 plus the killer died, received far less coverage than one would normally expect of such a violent public crime.

The postponement of the raising of the stricken Russian submarine Kursk would also ordinarily have made a fairly major story rather than a few paragraphs, as would the reinvigorated enthusiasm the Israeli Army found in its excursions into the West Bank for a few days while the media's back was turned.

AS for the fate of the shipload of Afghan refugees refused entry by Australia earlier this month, or what is now happening at Holy Cross school in Belfast, it would seem suspiciously as if no one really cares any more.

(More than 200 of the former are now in New Zealand, the rest still on the island of Nauru. Coverage of the Holy Cross story, which began making world headlines on 4 September, completely disappeared, according to the Telegraph's website, between the 9 and 20 September and has received scant mention in the two weeks since then. But the nasty protests have continued.)

Two London stories which would have been natural front-page material were relegated to inside pages of this newspaper: the tragic discovery of the headless torso of a five-year-old boy in the Thames by a passerby on Tower Bridge on 21 September; and the arrest of a man in connection with the murder of Suzy Lamplugh - a sensational development in normal times - on 26 September. The Lamplugh story only made Page 17.

"That story fulfilled all the criteria for us," comments Evening Standard's news editor Ian Walker, "in that it was a breaking story in our time with a London element. I noticed the Daily Mail gave it just six paragraphs the next day. But what could you do, with the biggest story for a generation unfolding day by day?"

One of the worst news casualties of 11 September was the traditional Old Bailey court story. The public barely knows about the conviction for murder of John Johnson, a burglar from Blackpool, who stabbed John Pettit, a brave 60-year-old householder, through the heart with a screwdriver when Mr Pettit tried to tackle him.

Two fascinating stories of policemen on the wrong side of the dock in connection with drugs also failed to gain more than a brief mention, according to Scott Wilford, editor of Central News, the principal news agency at the Bailey.

A PC Ross Callaghan, based at Brixton, was fined 75 for possession of cannabis following a remarkable police "sting" operation designed to test his integrity. And two Heathrow Airport detectives, Sgt Alan Guerard and DC Christopher Carter, in a case still proceeding but that started at the height of the New York story, are on trial for perverting the course of justice and blackmail. The case involves the officers allegedly having flushed thousands of pounds worth of amphetamines down a toilet.

In many ways, the journalists faced with the trickiest problem in a world crisis of the severity of this month's are those on the red- top tabloids.

Judging when the taste has truly gone out of the public's chewing gum for gossip and scandal is every bit as difficult as the job the serious broadsheets had when Princess Diana died.

The Mirror, whose war coverage has been exemplary, thus had to consign its own terrific gossip scoop on ITV soccer pundit Ally McCoist's complicated double love-rattery to an inside spread with a mere taster on page one. (The ex-Rangers player was, for the uninitiated, having an affair with Patsy Kensit behind his wife Allison's back, while simultaneously cheating on both women with former air hostess Donna Giblin.) IF war has been hell for The Mirror, it's been even tougher for the Sunday Mirror, with all the difficulties faced by a weekly in a rolling crisis combined with those of a paper with a mandate to be light and frothy. News editor Euan Stretch explains how the Sunday Mirror, which last week was still featuring war news on pages 1,5,6,7,8,9, 10 and 11, had to post three top-class Sunday gossip stories to obscure billets.

"We had the first picture of Letitia Dean's new man, Jason Pethers - a natural, solid Page 3 for us. That appeared on Page 13," says Stretch.

"It was a particular shame because of how different he is from her screen husband, Phil Mitchell - Pethers is a suave company director, a posh bloke, effectively."

But if such a tragic waste of great stories saddens any red- blooded journalist, spare a thought for the unfortunate Bill Benfield, production chief of the Morning Star, who is still smarting nearly four weeks on from possibly the greatest journalistic embarrassment ever suffered.

For the biggest story the Star has failed to get on to page one as a result of the World Trade Center was, er, the World Trade Center.

As luck would have it, 12 September was the date for the 70-year- old paper's most important relaunch since 1945, when it broke away from the Communist Party. To coincide with the Trades Union Congress in Brighton, the paper was being doubled in size, its print run trebled, and colour put on the front page for the first time.

"It was such a big change in our fortunes," says Benfield, "that we'd been planning it for months. The editor, John Haylett, had said a few days before that only World War Three breaking out on 11 September would be able to harm us.

"I went down to oversee things to the printers in Bow, and we were actually printing the front page when my mobile went and I heard the news. It was the closest I've ever felt as a production editor to wanting to commit suicide."

As a result of this splendid and unwitting newspaper cock-up, the Star carried as its main story on 12 September the splash, "Unions gear up to defend schooling", while "Terrorists destroy World Trade Center" only made the second lead on Page 2.

"I'm delighted to say our circulation has tripled as we'd hoped," says Benfield, "but I'm a little bit more sure now that God isn't a communist."

Copyright 2001
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