My Trade by Andrew Marr
reviewed by Michael Smith

“Brave, intelligent, probing journalism is so important that it is now impossible to imagine a decent society surviving without it,” declares Andrew Marr, in his engrossing book My Trade, subtitled A short history of British journalism. Marr, the former editor of The Independent who became the BBC’s political editor, is a familiar and popular face on British television and the winner of major prizes for his outstanding journalism. He traces the rise and influence of journalism, for good and ill, with alacrity and diligent research.

He also puts some old canards into perspective: “It is often said that journalists as a class are less respected than any group except estate agents and politicians; but it isn’t as simple as that.” According to a YouGov opinion poll in 2003, it all depends on which section of the media you are talking about. Journalists for BBC News, ITV News and Channel 4 News were trusted greatly by 81 per cent of those polled, just below family doctors and head teachers. Broadsheet journalists were trusted by 65 per cent but those who worked for ‘red-top’ tabloids “were indeed down there with estate agents at just 16 per cent”. Hack journalists, says Marr, are seen as “characteristically venal, untrustworthy and prurient. Is there something in the trade and the people it attracts which makes us like this?”

Some of Marr’s comments may raise eyebrows. Journalism, he says, is “able to stand outside established authority—the world of rank, predictability, professionalism and deference. It is why the term ‘responsible journalism’ should be shunned. Responsible to whom? The state? Never. To ‘the people’? But which people, and of what views? To the readers? It is vanity to think you know them. Responsible, then, to some general belief in truth and accuracy? Well, that would be nice.” He could, of course, have said responsible to one’s own sense of integrity.

But he does robustly outline the problems facing British journalism (and probably not only British) “that everybody needs to talk about”. The first is that of trust. “If politicians have issues of trust so, by God, do journalists. Our problem is less direct lying than slimy misrepresentation. Some hyping is inherent in journalism…. How many quotes by anonymous experts or sources are invented, or at least ‘improved’?” Journalists, writes Marr, “are seen as untrustworthy, particularly by sources or victims”.

Then there is the reluctance to correct stories. He believes this is hard-wired into journalism simply because another day is another story. “It’s done one day, and the next day is blank, fresh, waiting for a new story. Yet in the mess and confusion of life, hardly any stories are like that… Very few stories are simply statements of fact that lead nowhere. So correcting them, adding to the reader or viewer’s knowledge, ought to be a regular daily act… Instead we have a habit of leaving loose ends everywhere. We don’t go back often enough and ask: were we right; what actually happened next?”

There are problems of tone, especially exaggeration, such that a medical doubt too easily becomes a plague, and questions about a politician’s motives gets treated “as the moral equivalent of a serial killer”.

And then there is the “culture of a completely implausible self-righteousness”. “The classic headline ‘Is this the most evil/depraved/shocking….?’ can almost always be answered, ‘actually, no’.” (Elsewhere in the book Marr advises against the use of questions in headlines anyway, as they almost always invite a cynical answer from the reader. His description of how papers are put together, and the styles of various renowned newspaper editors, is a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight.)

Such problems in newspapers are reflected in declining sales: a million down over the past five years in the UK. “The solution,” suggests Marr, “is in the brains and hands and soul of the British journalist, and nobody else.… If it becomes accepted in the trade that a loss of trust and an increasingly hackneyed emotionalism are actually losing readers, then the owners and practitioners of journalism will react. They need to.” Especially, owners need to put enough money into paying enough for the most talented journalists. And Marr’s chapter on the role of foreign correspondents and comment columnists—“the two aristocracies”— is especially enlightening.

He concludes that he is still in love with the trade. “Sometimes it seems a rotten job; but it’s better than all the other ones. On a good day it is heaven.”

‘My Trade’ by Andrew Mar, Macmillan 2004, Pan paperback, 2005.