Clarke attacks 'poisonous' media
Charles Clarke attacks media reporting of anti-terror laws
Tuesday, 25, Apr 2006 12:00
Charles Clarke last night attacked the media's coverage of the government's law and order agenda as a "pernicious and even dangerous poison" in British society.
The home secretary said many journalists had vastly overreacted to the anti-terror laws and new powers to tackle anti-social behaviour, to the detriment of the truth.
In the absence of many "genuinely dangerous and evil totalitarian dictatorships to fight", Mr Clarke said the media had transferred to the UK and the US in particular some of the worst rhetoric of these regimes.
He told a speech at the London School of Economics (LSE) that they used "misinterpretation and deceit to try and strengthen their case".
"So some commentators routinely use language like 'police state', 'fascist', 'hijacking our democracy', 'creeping authoritarianism', 'destruction of the rule of law', while words like 'holocaust', 'gulag' and 'apartheid' are regularly used descriptively of our society in ways which must be truly offensive to those who experienced those realities," he said.
"As these descriptions and language are used, the truth just flies out of the window, as does any adherence to professional journalistic standards or any requirement to examine the facts and check them with rigour ...
"My appeal this evening is to urge our media to come to terms with the modern concept of rights and responsibilities in our society."
Shadow home secretary David Davis rejected Mr Clarke's comments, saying that things had been enacted by the Labour government in the name of defending security that "have actually done nothing to protect the people".
"It is remarkable that he has chosen to blame the media – especially as his whole strategy seems designed to achieve good headlines for the government rather than effective policies to protect the citizens of this country," he said.
However, Michael White, who recently stepped down as political editor of The Guardian – one of the newspapers Mr Clarke singled out for the most vitriolic coverage – has welcomed the home secretary's comments.
"I read cringe-making attacks on mild and cautious public policy-makers most days of the week," he wrote in his blog.
He added: "Governments make mistakes, but so do we, and governments are far more accountable: to parliament, the media and to judges, to public opinion as impatiently expressed in the polls. Most newspapers will apologise for error only when lawyers force them to."