Don't Blame the Lobby - It Doesn't Really Exist

William Perrin has written a very insightful piece on local newspapers and the future of local news on his newish website.

One point which caught my eye, although he only mentions it in passing, is his reference to "the curious complicity of the Lobby", which I suspect is inspired by the Damian McBride affair and Guido Fawkes' complaints about the Telegraph supposedly colluding with Downing Street.

Nobody should get too hung up on the lobby. It doesn't really exist in the way people imagine.

The Lobby is the name given to the journalists who report on politics at Westminster. That's basically it. It no more has strange working practices or a special hold over the way news is reported than the education correspondents or crime correspondents. The only difference with the Lobby is that it has a weird name, while there's no collective noun to describe the nation's transport correspondents, for example.

This was illustrated when Alastair Campbell hatched a plan to end the power of the Lobby by ending briefings for them in Downing Street and, instead, having the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman hold press conferences which any journalist could attend.

The result was that exactly the same UK journalists attended the press conferences as before, behaving in exactly the same way as before. Because the people who attended were simply the journalists hired by editors to report on politics.

The one thing that did change is that some foreign news organisations, who did not have full-time Westminster correspondents, sent their staff along to these briefings. But I don't think that lasted long. Frankly, Lobby briefings (or whatever they're being called) are rarely very interesting.

Some organisations like the Press Association may have staff at Westminster who are not considered to be Lobby correspondents, but this reflects the role given to them by PA. They are Parliamentary reporters who report strictly on what is said in the Chamber of the Commons.

It's perfectly true that the Lobby tends to collude, discussing story ideas and angles to take. So do other journalists - education reporters may well get together in a huddle after a press conference to discuss what they've just heard.

It's also true that they can, perhaps, get too close to the people they write about. But again, that can happen with any other reporter.

Damian McBride did not send poison text messages to "the Lobby". He sent them to trusted journalists he was close to. Or at least, so I am told. I never got one, despite being a member of the magic circle.

The criticisms made of political reporting may or may not be valid, but to blame them on the Lobby is missing the point. The Lobby is just a name.

                   

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