Paul Dacre, the editor in chief of Mail newspapers is probably the most successful journalist of the last two decades. Forget John Pilger, Kelvin Mackensie, Andrew Marr or Polly Toynbee. This is the man who has Britain’s only growing national daily paper. The man who took on the killers of Stephen Lawrence when the justice system failed. And this is the paper which almost single-handedly has fought the good fight for conservative, right-wing values. It is a great read, full of real journalism and a vital part of the political process in this country. Last night Dacre delivered the Hugh Cudlipp lecture at the POLIS partner the London College of COmmunication. It was a tour de force of right-wing anger at the ‘cultural marxists’ at the BBC, the ‘subsidariat’ at liberal newspapers like the Guardian which have their left-wing views subsidised by the profits from commercial ventures like Autotrader. Even the Tory party under David Cameron isn’t conservative enough for Dacre. With Murdoch’s papers backing Blair, he claims that the Mail is the sole popular newspaper of any credibility that represents the Eurosceptic, free-market, family-centred, Christian views of the silent majority of the British public. He’s not wrong either. But if he wants greater diversity of views represented in the media – and by that he means more right-wing views – then, how?
Paul didn’t really have an answer for that. I suspect the answer is actually twofold. Firstly, right-wing views will swing back into media fashion with time to some extent, starting I would guess, with Murdoch backing for Cameron at the next election. Secondly, I suspect that digitalisation and online media will open journalism up to more views, among them the conservative voices behind ventures like 18 Doughty Street TV. Strange then, that the Mail should have been so slow to go online and take its conservative crusade into cyberspace.