Guido and the Right to Publish

Yup, I'm jumping on the bandwagon and asking the question "was Guido right to publish his story about Hague and his aide?"

Now, my thoughts on the right of politicians to have a private life can be found here and here and I've got little to add; the fact that I don't approve of our salacious desire to see behind the net curtains of our political class doesn't mean I want it to be banned. After all, there's lots of things in Britain today that I don't approve of but that continue regardless; Jamie Oliver, EastEnders, chugging. I, and many others, may not like muck-raking, but it will carry on regardless.

And Guido is a muck-raker. His site isn't, has never been and never will be, about high-brow political debate conducted with sensitivity. It is a tabloid blog - which is precisely why it is so successful. People can visit the site to vent their frustration and anger against politicians, and because Guido is prepared to publish stories that the mainstream media is often wary of (the Hague story being a great example) those visiting the site will sometimes be treated to genuinely breaking news. It is a simple, unsophisticated format, but it works.

The Hague story was the sort of thing that was right up Guido's street, particularly since the mainstream media were dancing around the story without actually taking the plunge and publishing it. So Guido can claim that he was doing a public service by publishing info that no-one else would. This I get; this I can agree with. The problem lies not so much in the fact that the story was published, but rather the content of the story.

I'd have quite a bit of sympathy with a story that questioned whether Hague's SpAD was actually capable of doing his job - given said SpAD was being paid from the public purse, I'd say this is a legitimate story. The problem is that Guido's story, and much of the speculation around it, didn't centre on the question of the SpAd's ability. The at times overpowering undertone had nothing to do with the question of competence; it was all about the homophobic innuendo. For example, the claim that Hague and the SpAD shared a twin room in the election campaign was met with almost audible schoolboy sniggers, despite the fact that people of the same gender can share twin hotel rooms without having crazy monkey sex all night long. The legitimate question about the adviser's competence ended up being lost beneath an avalanche of innuendo.

Which means that the SpAD didn't go because he wasn't competent, but rather because of a homophobic whispering campaign. And we're left with no real evidence of any sort of an affair between Hague and his adviser, and legitimate questions about Hague's judgment in hiring some who, on face value, was not the best choice for the role have been lost behind statements about miscarriages.

So yeah, Guido was right to publish - however the tone of his story and the subsequent speculation about Hague's sexual orientation have robbed his story of its initial legitimacy. The real questions go answered because the story ended up going down the dead-end route around sexuality, rather than questions about competence. Guido may now be trying to redirect the story, but the resignation of the SpAD and the embarrassment for Hague had little to do with questions of competence, and everything to do with innuendo.

Anyway, enough already. The SpAd's gone, we know about the Hagues' miscarriages, that's (more than) enough. There are other stories out there that warrant, if not demand, discussion.