Trading Information

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Trading Information", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 7, pp. 631-633. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710776060

Unreliable information can take us in several directions – one is into liability and professional negligence, another is into bias and distortion, spin and deception. The second of these – the field of political information and communication – is one that Nicholas Jones has made very much his own with books like Soundbites and Spin Doctors and The Control Freaks. A journalist of long standing and a self‐confessed thorn in the side of Alastair Campbell (the director of communications for the UK Labour government until he resigned in August 2003), Jones is one of several commentators on politics today (others include Peter Hennessy, David Walker, Mark Hollingsworth, Peter Oborne, Andrew Sparrow, and Eric Alterman) worth reading on the subject.

Nicholas Jones is a specialist insider, a journalist who has “been there” and “seen it all” and “has the bruises to prove it”. Trading Information is his latest book (from that well‐known political list Politico's, an imprint of Methuen), and he argues in it that, while political power appears to rest on trust and confidentiality, and while whistle‐blowers occasionally reveal a darker underside to politics and corporate life, a lot – if not most – of the political leaks in recent decades of UK politics have been the responsibility of ministerial aides, political advisers, and politicians themselves. The Svengali was Alastair Campbell, who became the alternative news service of his time, trailing clues about future plans and policies, tipping‐off selected journalists and media likely to be sympathetic to the government and the party, and timing leaks for maximum impact.

Trading Information is a book packed with this insider knowledge, often anecdotal and auto‐biographical, drawing on his own diaries as well as interviews with other people and biographies about them, disclosing in often rich detail what happened when, say, Robin Cook used leaks, David Blunkett complained about them, Gordon Brown denied he used them, and Peter Mandelson said that the job of the politician was “to create the truth”. Political spin or deception, and the news management that follows from it, are now commonplaces in studies of politics. The territory Jones covers is familiar – Thatcher and Ingham, Westland and Tisdall, Millbank and Livingstone, the Iraq war and Dr David Kelly, leaks about immigration and David Mills – but he covers it with his usual dogged love of detail, of the twists and turns, as politicians lure journalists, as journalists flirt with politicians – both can gain because an exclusive leak is a scoop, and politics thrives on gossip.

The book covers the Thatcher and Blair years, highlighting how serial leakage was both used and condemned by the dramatis personae of contemporary UK politics. It is common knowledge that Jones himself came in the firing line. He explains how the press works, how stories grow and can be made to grow, who was involved and how things were explained at the time and nuanced in retrospect. Leaks take on a life of their own as leakers attack leakees, and as counter‐leaking takes place. It is no surprise that general public disquiet grew through the period, and remains today a significant factor in perceptions about politics. Other issues impinge too, like the changing balance between security and disclosure (represented in changes in and the changing effects of the Official Secrets Act), like another balance between government confidentiality and freedom of information (an interesting analysis of FOI legislation), and like a third balance between the rights of government and those of whistle‐blowers (coming through, albeit fragmentarily, in a discussion about the Public Interest Disclosure legislation).

Leaks, and concerns about leaks, and indifference to leaks, persist today in an age of terrorism (an argument for greater control?), immigration and rendition, and scepticism about public values and trust. This takes us to again‐familiar arguments about the role of the media in a democratic society, where the literature is extensive. Trading Information adds to the knowledge in its rich but idiosyncratic way, and will almost certainly be added to shelves of libraries where contemporary politics are taught and studied. It would be been a sharper book if key ideas had been brought out, especially at the end, which meanders: ideas like the differences between politicians who leak and whistle‐blowers, the perpetrators and recipients (politicians–journalists–chicken and egg?) of leaks, distinctions between news briefing and political leaks, where leaks are in the public interest (that can mean lots of things), where leaks inflict political damage and where they influence policy decisions, where civil servant neutrality is now, and where style wins over substance.

Perhaps I am looking for another book but Trading Information could have been so much better if it had clearly organized these things. They are all there generously, but you have to tease them out. Chronology could have been more systematic, too, because he goes round on himself from time to time, and then runs out of time‐line and steam at the end. I am sure that Jones would say that the end is just the start of the beginning of his next book, but readers about post‐Campbell, and not just about Campbell, are looking not for more of the same but for a sense that things might be different, worse or better. That said, Jones is wise enough to note that, where we get used to political leaks, and where neutrality is politicized and institutionalized, we come to care less about the truth and the reliability of information. People who tell us that meaning is socially constructed may well be right.

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