When I Were A Lad...

Gawd bless Wikipedia. Without it, when reading an article such as this, I would get to a reference such as ‘Savonarola’, realised I had no idea what it meant, assume the piece was too high-brow for me, and move on. Now, I can find out within two minutes that Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican priest, known for religious reform.In moving on from that article I would have missed out on an interesting opinion piece. In it Simon Jenkins (former Editor of The Times), argues that the current pining for the ‘Golden Age’ of journalism is harking back to a period that never was, and that the corporate ownership of newspapers that we currently have is not the awful thing some have claimed it to be.

He contends that in fact, investigative journalism is in far healthier spirits than before and is “probably better and certainly bolder” than we have ever experienced, providing examples such as The Sunday Times exposés of cash for honours, and The Guardian’s research into Saudi arms deals, as well as less one-sided coverage of war. Moreover, when you look at the newspaper industry compared to internationally, it has a great more diversity that elsewhere.

What, however, the piece skates over is the dichotomy of standards we now have, where the broadsheets are doing all he claims they are, but the tabloids are descending further and further into celebrity tattle and muck. He does accept that newspapers are “often sloppy, inaccurate and short on dignity”, but makes no comment on the intrusiveness of the gutter press, and they way in which they have now become a major part of, and often the creator of, the stories they are covering. Tabloids in the past have had a crusading role in supporting the working classes who made up their readership, yet now look down, belittle and condemn these same people. Perhaps because they aren’t buying papers anymore.

I would agree that newspapers provide a great regulatory role on our government and other organisations, but just as he argues the lack of a golden age in the 1950s and 60s, so I would disagree massively with a Golden Age attributed to a period in which a footballer cheating on his wife is front page news for a week.