Michael Gove’s shameless debate stunt marks a new low for politicians undermining the media

From dodging interviews to posting doctored videos, politicians are eroding trust in the media at every turn. But Michael Gove bringing his own film crew to the Channel 4 climate debate takes things a step further

Michael Gove enjoys a good stunt, doesn’t he? We all know this by now, so we shouldn’t have been too surprised to see him swing by the Channel 4 studios in an obviously staged attempt to insert himself into Channel 4’s climate debate.

Strangely, Gove was accompanied by Stanley Johnson, father (paternity not in dispute here) to the prime minister. Even more bizarrely, the MP brought his own camera crew along to document Channel 4’s supposedly “shameful” shunning of the Conservatives. This was followed by a predictable and unconvincingly plaintive video, and some veiled anonymous threats to shut down Channel 4 after the Tories win the election. Gove himself tweeted: “Tonight I went to Channel 4 to talk about climate change but Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon refused to debate a Conservative.”

For their part, Channel 4 could not resist their own stunt, placing ice sculptures representing Johnson and Nigel Farage on the podium, and allowing them to drip away, melting iceberg style, through the programme.

As Ed Vaizey, friend of Gove in the Notting Hill set and ex minister said on the BBC Today programme, there is some wrong on both sides here. These two stunts show that relations are getting badly out of control between our politicians and our broadcasters.

The Channel 4 iceberg was a stunt was arguably a step too far, but threatening to penalize the broadcasting jewel that is Channel 4 is another, more sinister move from the government. In the same vein, it was probably unnecessary (because it’s so obvious) for the head of News at Channel 4, Dorothy Byrne to call Boris Johnson a “known liar”, and equally absurd (because obviously wrong) for Johnson to deny, after a fashion, that he never sought to deceive anyone. Heavens above, ask anyone of his editors, any of his party leaders, or a certain Jennifer Arcuri…

The BBC also mounted an official complaint against the Tories, telling them to stop manipulating their material on Facebook. The Tories have so far refused to relent, having also faced criticism for “doctoring” ITV footage of Labour MPs Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips.

But it’s not just the Tories who are disrespecting the press. This week the Liberal Democrats were also called out for distributing bogus local “newspapers”. The Lib Dems and the SNP also unsuccessfully took ITV to court for not allowing into the Corbyn-Johnson head-to head debate.

Of course, the media and the politicians have never really gotten on. This is natural, because their interests are, and should be, diametrically opposed. Indeed, the dangerous thing is when newspapers become propaganda sheets (an obvious point, but worth making) and political reporters get all chummy with politicians, allowing themselves to become tame hacks furthering the cause of some patron with an agenda.

Peter Mandelson used to be rather good at that, but nowadays it’s the Tories giving their best stuff continually to the Telegraph and the Spectator (aka former employers of Boris Johnson). And no one seems to want be in the same room as Andrew Neil, given that Johnson is reportedly chickening out of a one-on-one interview, which he’s been doing ever since his leadership bid was launched in the summer.

There have been many prime ministers who have loathed the media, and especially the BBC and Channel 4. Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell’s rows over the “dodgy dossier” and Iraq led to the resignation of the DG and the chairman of the BBC. If you recall. Margaret Thatcher deeply resented the way the BBC reported almost everything she did, but especially its balanced coverage of the Falklands War in 1982 and the bombing of Libya in 1986. In an earlier age, Harold Wilson once got to the stage at the Labour party conference to make his leaders’ speech and thanked the audience, knowing it was being broadcast live, for “what the BBC will no doubt report as a hostile reception”. When the time came for him to appoint a new chairman of the BBC he chose a Tory who had regulated ITV, and who was thought to be sceptical of its virtues.

Yet all of these figures agreed to the usual ritual set-piece interviews on Panorama and the like. They willingly submitted themselves to the likes of David Dimbleby, Brian Walden and Robin Day. Thatcher and Blair may have hated the broadcasters, to varying degrees, and tried to pull a few stunts of their own. Yet they were not actually frightened of facing questions of an hour or so.

Unlike Johnson and his cabal of reality-distorting cabinet ministers, these leaders were rather good at handling themselves in front of the camera. They also never stooped to the level of bringing their own camera crews, or putting material into the public sphere that frames events in a manner that is contrary to the truth. Following Gove’s viral social media video, Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy insisted that it “wasn’t accurate” and called it a “stab in the dark”.

I have a feeling that if Johnson wins this election and pursues some extreme and deeply damaging policies, we won’t see him – or Michael Gove – in any hurry to bump into Andrew Neil. Or, for that matter, any other broadcaster who scrutinises them. Because, disturbingly, running from scrutiny and using stunts to spread their own narrative has become a much easier path for today’s politicians to tread.