Is the news just a matter of opinion?

Too often, what passes for reporting is intended to discredit prominent individuals. The Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane warns against advocacy journalism

The must-read for political journalists in the US is the new book by David Brock called Blinded by the Right:The Conscience of an ex-Conservative. Brock was the star of the conservative media in the 1990s for his reports about the White House, claiming endless illegal or corrupt deeds and non-stop abuse of power by the Clintons.

Many of Brock's stories about the Clintons were relayed in Britain by right-wing papers, such asThe Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. Now Mr Brock reveals that his stories were lies, half-truths and innuendos designed to destroy Clinton's presidency. The Republican right used journalism to destroy Democrat politicians. Brock was given documents or introduced to "witnesses" who were paid by right-wing powerbrokers, who refused to accept the legitimacy of a non-conservative government. He describes how his copy was carefully sub-edited so that it appeared to be truth-seeking reporting, mixing fact and allegation in easy-to-read narratives.

That the former US president and his wife provided ammunition by their behaviour, decisions or statements for legitimate criticism was not the issue. Brock was the chosen vehicle for the daily discrediting of elected politicians.

Are these techniques now crossing the Atlantic? Traditionally, we have reporters on news pages and commentators on the op-ed pages. Now we can turn to a news page in many of our papers and find opinion-laden articles that tell us what the journalist thinks, rather than facts and quotes attributed to a named source.

As David Brock's book argues, we now have, in addition to reporting journalists and comment journalists, a new third category – advocacy journalists. They are out not to find truth, but to destroy opponents. The complex nuances of grown-up government are too boring for them. They cannot be bothered to report Commons debates or get on-the-record quotes.

The advocacy journalists – right and left – are hostile to a Labour government, old or new. Advocacy journalism now predominates in our tabloids and increasingly in our broadsheets. We do not have a tradition of discussant journalism such as one sees in The New York Times, or in Europe in El Pais or Le Nouvel Observateur. Westminster political journalism is increasingly dominated by the fox-hunting tendency, which wants to see its quarry torn to shreds and humiliated in public.

How many ministerial heads need to be up in a trophy room before the public tires of the sport? Is there no other way to chastise those politicians who deserve it? Is it possible to discuss issues of state with room for opposing views, but without personal abuse or allegations of improper motives?

New Labour cannot be pious. We enjoyed advocacy journalism when it hurt John Major. But revolutions always devour their children. The application of "spin" has turned back to gouge holes in its Labour creators. But when Alastair Campbell was writing as an advocacy journalist, at least the Conservatives had a phalanx of loyal Tory papers to rely on. Now the once- Labour papers, such as the Daily Mirror, use advocacy journalism to play in the same anti-Labour team as the Mail and Telegraph. The Government has made mistakes, but Labour enjoys a clear democratic mandate and presides over one of the more successful eras in recent British history.

The best way for Labour to see off the current onslaughts of advocacy journalism is to pray that the Conservatives become a serious party again. Unlike the broad pro-Euro centrism of the parties of the right in France, Spain and Germany, the hard-right policies of the British Tories render them unelectable. And political nature, abhorring a vacuum, fills it with advocacy journalism. A moderate, post-Thatcherite Conservative Party would give Labour a political run for its money by filling the news pages with argument and policy.

Meanwhile, the Government should govern. In the end, advocacy journalism self-destructs, as editors who want to govern the country make fools of themselves, just as politicians who believe they have a right to decide what goes on the front page end up out of office.

Denis MacShane is the Labour MP for Rotherham and a minister at the Foreign Office. He is a former president of the National Union of Journalists