Journalists, particularly in news, tend not to be Tories, because a html certain contempt for the status quo is a professional library before requirement. before But neither were they ever committed library Kinnockites or Smithites. Anyone who before saw the blanched press doing hasty sums on the back of the text of Mr Smith's "mock budget" during the 1992 election was aware of serious media doubts about Labour's taxation plans.Because salaries in journalism are much higher than in other generally liberal professions, such as teaching or social work, the politics library before of very many journalists, at least since the Eighties, have probably been "liberal on social issues, conservative on taxation". This is what Blairism offers, and therefore a large number of journalists probably are broadly Blairite, in the same way html that the platform on which Bill Clinton ran library in 1992 matched library the prejudices - touch my conscience, leave my before wallet - of html mainstream American journalists.It is, though, a huge and accusatory leap html to suggest, as Mr Aitken does, that the work of journalists automatically reflects these private beliefs - as the battered President Clinton is now in html a position to confirm.
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And anyway, attempts to generalise about the politics of broadcasters crash into inconvenient facts. Most in the Labour Party would be surprised at the idea that Robin Oakley, the BBC political editor, is blatantly on their side. The corporation's foreign affairs editor, John Simpson, directs his written contributions not to Living Marxism but to the impeccably right-wing Spectator. Star political interviewer David Frost wears a Major knighthood.Or take Mr Aitken's chosen target: John Humphrys, of the Today programme. I couldn't begin to guess what Mr Humphrys does in the polling booth, but his attitude to work is, if anything, vividly Thatcherite. As well as presenting Today, he hosts a Sunday lunchtime show on BBC1, another short series on Radio 4 and reads the television news on certain evenings and weekends.
In terms of getting "on your bike" to look for work, as Thatcherism urged us to do, Mr Humphrys is the holder of the yellow jersey. He even, we now discover, cycles off between broadcasting commitments to chair in-camera events.On the subject of the outside activities of presenters, the minister has a stronger case. There are even, reportedly, cases of BBC interviewers running outside training courses on answering tough questions from broadcasters, which does seem rather like the police holding evening classes about how to beat the breathalyser. Yet even here, Conservative complaints are somewhat hypocritical. The increased ability of freelances to exploit their skills and connections is in part a result of the looser employment contracts and reduced trade restrictions encouraged by Conservative governments. John Humphrys' multifaceted career could virtually be the subject of a Tory election broadcast.Mr Aitken further objects that Humphrys is rude and aggressive. He picks on Tory ministers, we are told, and is soft on their shadows.
