Journalists hold a unique position in a democracy. They are the only people with the time, energy and hopefully a decent salary to investigate matters of public interest that the rest of people are too busy or exhausted to have the time and space to devote to it.
Their no hold bars investigations of dodgy politicians, the Royals, the entertainment industry, and business scandals fill our screens, print pages and social media every day. Undercover investigations expose malpractice and bad treatment of vulnerable people. The only caveat to that is some of the media spend loads of money pursuing celebrity gossip and tittle tattle that they believe the public are interested in rather than devoting cash to expose scandals from whistleblowers in the public interest .
But there is one area where there is a wall of silence and that is the media itself. Unlike everything else which is fair game, journalist practices are off limits.
Leveson’s second inquiry should not have been stopped
Now I am not one who wants huge regulation of the press by the state but I supported the Leveson inquiry and it was a mistake not to have the second part of the inquiry which would have examined in detail what happened over the phone hacking scandal that affected more than one national media organisation. Why couldn’t the media be put under the microscope in a judge led inquiry just like we are doing over the Covid 19 inquiry and the Post Office Horizon scandal.
In this column I have no intention of going into the detail of the Dan Wotton case – you can follow that by reading Byline Times – and his reaction to the stories on GB News and Twitter. I am upholding the right of journalists to investigate other media if people come to them with allegations of malpractice just like they would with any other area. And sadly most mainstream media avoids doing so.
Not only is malpractice not reported but the BBC tried for years to avoid scrutiny on how well it spends its money and protect its household name journalists and commentators from revealing their salaries.
You may have noticed in the last few weeks that the salaries of top BBC presenters have been highlighted in the news.
BBC’s attempt to avoid scrutiny
The only reason this has happened is because two successive auditor generals took on the BBC which claimed that it was a special case and could not be scrutinised by the National Audit Office or have to reveal the salaries of top people unlike other publicly funded bodies. The NAO was interested in both whether major capital projects like the setting up of Salford Quays and revamping Broadcasting House were value for money. The BBC sought to try and control what the NAO could investigate and even argued that its editorial independence was in jeopardy if the NAO had powers to investigate what it chooses. The defence was rubbish. Is the present auditor general going to spend time investigating whether the latest Panorama was value for money or whether the current BBC political editor, Chris Mason, has made biased reports? I don’t think so..
Misrepresentation of Byline Times by Dan Wootton
One issue over the present furore between Dan Wootton and Byline Times is the misrepresentation of what Byline Times is about by Wootton
At a recent Press Gallery reception in the Commons I had an interesting discussion about this with a Tory MP I have known for a long time. He asked what Byline Times was and was told by other journalists that it was a left wing publication. When I explained to him as a freelance journalist who regularly writes for them on Westminster and Whitehall that the editor, Hardeep Matharu, rightly expected me to get a response from whatever department was facing a highly critical report he was amazed. He had assumed that articles would be left wing polemics, not based on hard fact.
Dan Wootton has claimed Byline Times is a hard left blog. It is nothing of the sort. It is a growing multimedia publication , on line, in print and on TV.
Its determination to get the facts right and collect real evidence was tested when six years ago it took on the powerful Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail exposing journalistic malpractice. Here again there were dire threats to sue. But they came to nothing. Not a good precedent for the present media furore.
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Westminster Confidential 
Hello David,
I would like to thank you for all your work for the women born in the 50s, as I have to live off the kindness of family and friends as I have been denied my state pension, such as it is. I, therefore, can’t afford newspaper subscriptions, or indeed much at all.
I am writing just to say that it is only when someone famous, or very wealthy, like Nigel Farage, has a problem with the banks that anything is done about it. Normal working people are taken advantage of in this country, not just by energy, water, broadband and telephone companies and the banks, but almost every aspect of living in the UK is only affordable to the very rich.
For around 15 years I held a credit card account with a well-known company, which I was always happy with and built up a fairly large credit limit and all of my credit card spending was done on that card.
Then, in 2021, they closed all accounts that were managed online via a laptop or desktop computer and told customers to manage their accounts with a Smartphone app.
I am afraid that, not only did I not want to do anything financial on a phone, I couldn’t anyway as I have arthritis in my hands, I am in my 60s and I find phones very fiddly. On top of that, when I tried this, the app was useless and wouldn’t connect anyway. Also they always tell you to ring them and when you do they are either unavailable or accidentally cut you off or not understand what you are asking for.
I then got myself pretty worked up because I’d had a series of unknown transactions around 3 years prior to that, where people were buying things and charging it to my card and it took some time to sort out. It caused substantial problems as I was abroad at the time and contacting them was impossible. Unfortunately, at the same time, my bank account with another company had a series of unknown transactions also and I just couldn’t access money. It was very frightening!!!
When they closed the account I asked if I could have a loan account that I could see online and I explained my situation, but they refused. I then had to pay off the card because I didn’t know what was happening with the account and, with help, I managed to acquire a nil balance and close the account, which I had to email them several times before they would even do that.
The reason I think there is something corrupt going on is my credit score. Not only did my credit score plummet and I couldn’t get another credit card, the only offers that came up on my report were for their cards, which I couldn’t use. They have since, and are still, treating me as if I have no credit history even though I had that card for many years and paid it off.
After that the cost of living crisis began and along with the problems from the pandemic we were all struggling. I then asked my MP to write to them and I had a written response which wasn’t satisfactory and I pointed out a few things and my MP eventually came back to me and said he couldn’t deal with it because it was a legal matter. He said I had to go to a solicitor or the FOS.
I do find it difficult to know who to trust as I do feel that my MP could have been more helpful and at least pointed me in the right direction legally. I have since found out that he is actually a qualified barrister, so it may well be the case that rules for MPs don’t allow involvement in legal cases and he seems to be a decent person and he may have been fearful of dealing with them, but given all the corruption in politics at the moment, I am suspicious of people’s motives.
I tried to get help myself as I wasn’t going to contact the FOS as the ombudsman service is a complete waste of time. As I said, I was born in the 50s and I was cheated out of my pension and the ombudsman is still delaying things and has already tried to cheat us out of compensation. With all of that in mind I decided to try some legal firms.
At first I was lucky, as a very kind gentleman at one of the top London solicitors told me that it would need to be dealt with by a solicitor dealing with a particular aspect of the law, which he advised me on and told me to contact a local solicitor who would be able to help me and wouldn’t charge the huge fees that his own firm would charge.
Since then I have been ignored and had calls not returned and emails not replied to. One man was very rude and told me he would want a few thousand pounds up front, knowing full well that I couldn’t afford that because of the nature of my case.
I think that other people will probably have had the same problems as me and I really do feel that we ought to be compensated as I used up what little money I had paying the card off and now find that I can’t borrow again without being made offers with huge amounts of interest and/or companies wanting me to use their apps and if I have a problem to contact the FOS.
I was just wondering if, with your obvious writing skills, you could put this across succinctly in an article and see if anyone would be willing to do something about this as we are all being severely impoverished as it is and many people are dying or getting depressed and committing suicide. Things are just awful at the moment.
Any help would be appreciated.
Many thanks ReplyForward
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Take out a Subject Access Request to demand the company send you any information data or correspondence they have on you. They have no choice but to comply under the Data Protection Act.
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No holds barred. You have got to be joking. On my email file I have a response from one of these journalists threatening me with their Trade Union costs if I disclose to the Police a major piece of hard evidence which that journalist holds.
So sorry David some journalists are not the crusaders you make out they are. They are cowards who pick their less innocuous targets and victims rather than go after the poerful and the guilty. The Woodwood and Bernsteins are long dead in the UK.
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Talking of targets, I do not see a mainstream press crusade reporting on Islington Council and what they are concealing by now using ‘Support’ payoffs to CSA survivors of the historic Csa within the Islington child care system. Could it be the luvvies in the media elite are too cosy with the elected luvvies of Islington to go after this know story. £10, 000 per survivor would not cover the corporate Christmas bash at that Town Hall.
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An interesting article David. Journalists are indeed in a unique position to expose all sorts of wrongdoing and of course this should include wrongdoing occurring in media circles.
However, there is a wider issue here and that is the bias inbuilt in the human mind. In short, journalists can tend to report on issues which interest them and not always on issues that have wider implications for the public.
As you know, along with many other people badly affected by ‘the system’, I have been a critic of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s autonomy regarding the decision what or whether he will investigate. He also lacks powers to make Government Departments and the Health Service comply with his findings on the very rare occasions he manages to uphold a complaint from a member of the public.
Ombudsman reform was promised by Chris Skidmore in 2015/16 when he was in the Cabinet Office. That was kicked into the long grass and is unlikely to see the light of day. The reason is that the current situation suits politicians of all colours. Periodically, an MP will ask a written question to the Cabinet Office only to receive a bland reply the Ombudsman is independent of Government. (Basically that means he can do what he likes and is subject only to the annual toothless scrutiny of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee once per year).
In the meantime, this unaccountable quango continues to ply its woeful trade in exacerbating misery on the unsuspecting public who have already been harmed by the NHS or Government Departments. His involvement in the WASPI pensions scandal is but one example. Don’t take my word for it. Read the reviews on PHSO Trust Pilot and check out the blogs on PHSO The True Story.
The Ombudsman is part of the problem and not the solution. Time for a campaigning media to get involved.
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