British Papers


December 1, 2001


BOB GARFIELD: The British newspaper The Guardian before September 11th typically would get between a hundred thousand two hundred thousand web site visits from the U.S. each month. Since then it has averaged seven hundred thousand. Why the sudden interest in the British point of view? Part of the explanation is increased news consumption in general, but one analyst believes the explanation lies in British journalism's less responsible and therefore more provocative coverage. Trevor Butterworth is a research fellow at the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, DC and he joins us now. Trevor, thanks for joining us.

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: So Americans seem to be flocking to British on-line newspapers. Is that true? What are the numbers?

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Well according to an interest consultant, the leading one, Jupiter Media Metrics, there are apparently in the region of 500,000 to 600,000 new read-- American readers going to visit the British web sites of papers like The Guardian and The Telegraph. Now -- caveat emptor when you come to Internet hits -- what does that actually mean? It may mean that there's a lot less people -- if they're counted as page hits. But there seems to be at least in the American press a view that interesting stories are being reported out of Britain that are not getting covered in the American press.

BOB GARFIELD:Well I, I must say on my own web site I look at Yahoo, and I often see a very provocative headline that sends me to The Guardian or to the Times of London and so forth. What's the difference between the American coverage and the British that makes it seem so tempting?

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Well, over the last 15 years, all the British papers have ratcheted up the drama quotient. They hector, they lure, they-- the market is so competitive that to simply state the facts in a neutral, slightly dull way is not enough. Most American newspapers are virtual monopolies. At most there are two newspapers competing for an audience. Now translate the British experience of 10 national dailies into America. You would have the equivalent of 45 national newspapers competing for advertising an audience in every town across America. Now that kind of free market pressure really erodes the possibility of quality journalism, because quality journalism is very expensive! So you can't devote resources to long stories or to elaborate fact checking or to putting loads of reporters on, on the beat. You tend to run with what is plausible!

BOB GARFIELD:Lurid headlines leading readers into unsubstantiated stories -- that's a pretty serious charge. What's your bill of indictment? What particular stories were thinly-sourced?

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Well in recent weeks we had The Observer claim that there was going to be an-- 48 -within 48 hours U.S. Airborne troops were going to go in and there was going to be a, a massive full scale attack. Of course it took a little bit longer for the air strikes to begin, and then-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

BOB GARFIELD: About 3 weeks after the story--

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH:Yes! And then only a, only a handful of commandoes went in! Then we had the Daily Times coming out with a story that said Osama bin Laden possesses nuclear material, and they spun this off into other stories, speculating about, you know, dirty bombs and you know, and they came out with a brilliant line--: "This is the leaden shoe that's been waiting to drop." And the trouble was that nobody else was running this story. Subsequent investigation and reporting by-- other news sources and of course subsequent statements by President Bush, you know, said well they're looking, but we don't believe they actually have any material. Now the point is The Times could be true, but when you open a newspaper in the morning, you don't want your time to be wasted on the merely plausible.

BOB GARFIELD:Well what's an American reader to do? How do you know whether you're reading a plausible but completely-unsubstantiated story or a -just a really good scoop?

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Check and see what The Financial Times is saying! They have an international reputation. They're appealing to an American market. They have kept faith with a sort of sober journalism that is the hallmark of journalistic quality in America and which used to be the hallmark of journalistic quality in Britain. So, you know, if they're saying it, I would be more confident. If they're not, I would be, you know, suspicious of, of the scoops that seem to come at a daily pace. I mean most f my friends no longer read British newspapers -the - who are in Ireland or in Britain. They just don't trust them. They think they're cartoons.

BOB GARFIELD: Trevor Butterworth, thank you very much.

TREVOR BUTTERWORTH: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD:Trevor Butterworth is a research fellow at the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, DC. Joining us now is Danny Schecter. He's the executive director of MediaChannel.org where he writes a daily column: The News Dissector. Danny, welcome to OTM.

DANNY SCHECTER: Pleasure to be here.

BOB GARFIELD: Now you read a lot of newspapers. What British papers do you read?

DANNY SCHECTER: I look at The Independent, The Guardian, The Times of London; also BBC, and occasionally even The Mirror which is the, you know, kind of tabloid daily.

BOB GARFIELD: So when you read stories in the British papers do you get the sense that you're experiencing a lesser kind of journalism?

DANNY SCHECTER:I don't think it's lesser. I think it's journalism as opposed to what we have in our country which is called reporting. Journalism allows a journalist, a person who is an observer and an analyst to give a reader a sense of whatever the story is that he's covering. The British journalists, the good ones, are, are fairly explicit and up front about their values and, and where they're coming from and anybody can see that. But they often have a much more critical perspective and a, and a perspective that doesn't march in lock step with the government as much as it seems that many of the major media outlets in the U.S. are doing.

BOB GARFIELD:We just spoke to Trevor Butterworth. He looks at scoops in the British papers and he regards them as typically thinly-sourced. Under the cover of news analysis are British journalists just taking the opportunity to take thin stories and exaggerate them beyond what the story deserves?

DANNY SCHECTER: A lot of it has to do with the particular story. I'm sure there are a lot of British stories that, that blow up a little bit of information or suspicions into-- stories, but the same thing is certainly true here! I mean you on this program have talked about Wen Ho Lee and a lot of other charges and allegations that were made in our distinguished newspapers by top journalists that turned out to be not true or at least not exactly what they appeared to be. In a war situation, when we have a lack of information available, right now, I've been surprised that the British journalists are actually getting information, hard investigative leads that do not appear often in the American press or they do a day or two later.

BOB GARFIELD:Is it possible that what you see as maybe more courage from the British papers gives them cover to be simply less responsible - to be less rigorous about sourcing?

DANNY SCHECTER: I, I, I think the source--sourcing issue is a canard. Now it may not -- it may be the case in certain specific stories that your critic here has studied in depth, but it's a climate of scrutiny -- the MediaChannel has 60 groups in the UK who are media-critical in one way or another. So, you know, I think the climate there is not a climate of just indulging inaccurate journalism. To put the British press down when they're doing a much better job of covering the war is missing, you know, the big story for the minutiae.

BOB GARFIELD: Very well. Danny Schecter. Thank you very much.

DANNY SCHECTER: Thank you. Pleasure to be with you. Tally ho.

BOB GARFIELD: Danny Schecter is executive producer of Global Vision and executive editor of MediaChannel.org.