Blair takes the media out with him

The shoe was definitely…no, defiantly…on the other foot. For once, a world leader took to a public platform to capture attention and focus a searing spotlight on the media that are so used to wielding that sort of power against government leaders.

Britain’s media is like a “feral beast” that tears people and reputations to shreds, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday in his parting shot at journalists after a decade in power.

Once known for his slick and sometimes obsessive media management, Blair accused the media of sensationalizing facts, breeding cynicism and attacking public figures.

I heard this news on the car radio just as it was coming out. It was a stunning moment. With dead aim, the prey struck at the stalker.

“The fear of missing out means that today’s media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits,” he said in a speech at Reuters headquarters in London.

Journalists are “increasingly and to a dangerous degree … driven by ‘impact’, and this is driving down standards and doing a disservice to the public, he said.

“The damage saps the country’s confidence and self-belief … it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions,” argued Blair.

What a sharp, clear, bold and….scathingly accurate indictment.

Blair said many newspapers had become “viewspapers” with opinion overtaking fact and it was rare to find balance.

He suggested the way the British press is regulated would have to be revised soon as new trends, such as newspapers producing podcasts and TV channels having Web sites, blurred the once-clear distinction between newspapers and television.

It’s not just the British press, as we all know. But the media are very sensitive, when the blistering attack is against them. The New York Times wants to know if it’s…justified.

In the land that produced “Scoop,” Evelyn Waugh’s novel of journalistic ambition and ineptitude, it would seem unsurprising for politicians to criticize reporters on occasion. But was it justified, as Prime Minister Tony Blair did today, to call the press a “feral beast”? 

In seemingly full-throated roar, Mr. Blair used one of his last speeches in office before he is to step down in 15 days to settle scores with a press corps that he said has hounded, badgered, blustered and bludgeoned the nation’s leaders since he came to power 10 years ago.

A lot of people would like to settle that score with the press. But I don’t recall anyone in public office ever doing it with such premeditation, preparation, determination and exquisite punctuation.

He quoted from a past prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who borrowed an expression from Rudyard Kipling to equate the press’s “power without responsibility” to “the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”

Whoa…that’s telling ’em. Who else would have thought of that analogy?! 

Mr. Blair evoked the memory of two other former prime ministers, Gladstone and Disraeli, to vouchsafe that he was not the first leader to face “extraordinarily brutal treatment” in the press.

And he acknowledged that his speech might ruffle feathers among the very people responsible for relaying his words to the world.

“I’ve made this speech after much hesitation,” he said. “I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters. But I also know this has needed to be said.”

Yes it has. Bravo, Mr. Blair, for saying it.

But the question remains….will it make any difference?