If the facts are stranger than fiction, they will be included But if they are dull, out they will go. Newspapers are far more sophisticated, far cleverer, far better written than they were before; incomparably more entertaining and readable. This is not a matter of dumbing down; rather its opposite, wising up. In those days it was a newspaper which had no time for opinionated reporters, or indeed for opinionated leader or feature writers who were more interested in dazzling than informing the reader.My point is that in the media today truth is sacrificed to art (or at least artfulness); reporting to literature. Doubtless my learned dispatch reached hidden depths about the causes of the crisis lacking in those of my tabloid rivals, but in overlooking the corpses it failed to give the readers the essential here-and-now facts that it was a reporter’s duty to include The Daily Telegraph was not pleased.

Instead of keeping my eyes open in the bus on the way from the airport to the city centre, I had mine buried in some learned tome about the country’s history, with a view to showing off my new-found knowledge in the next day’s paper. As a result, unlike other reporters on the bus – few if any of whom, in those days, had a degree – I failed to notice the decapitated corpses lying by the roadside. Nowadays reporters are too busy reading between the lines to bother with the lines themselves.I ought to know about all this, having been one of the earliest offenders. I remember in the Sixties being dispatched by The Daily Telegraph – on which most of my journalistic life was happily spent – to report on some coup in an African capital. The newspaper’s writer-intellectual aspires to find the facts behind the facts: as feature writer to add a bit of colour to the facts; as columnist to explain the facts; as leader writer to say what the reader should make of the facts.

The journalist as writer or intellectual fancies himself as an artist – that is, someone who has a skill which enables him to improve on nature, as much in words as in paint, clay or music. There is an element of trickery in art – sublime trickery, at best; but trickery nevertheless.Not surprisingly, the journalist as writer-intellectual is not content to report a train accident straight – so many dead and injured; so many carriages wrecked – but must fill out the picture with speculation and colour, most of which tells us more about the author – what a good writer he is – than about the train crash. But what about reliability of the news, accuracy of the reporting, and the balance of comment – have these improved as well? Most certainly not. The journalist as aspiring writer or intellectual, rather than as hack, has little concern with “mere” facts, as Coleridge called them, if they get in the way of a more “comprehensive” truth that he is trying to make. In theory, such an influx of the brightest should have had the effect of raising standards; so far as the quality of writing is concerned, this has indeed happened. But what about the quality of journalism itself?Both the tabloids and the broadsheets in Britain have become incomparably more sophisticated, lively and well-written, as well as much more adversarial, mischievous and irresponsible; this has attracted an avalanche of new recruits. As the needs of the consumer have slowly changed, so have the skills required of the producer – which has suited the playboy editors Personally I have nothing to complain about.

If you want to know what they are like, look at the New York Times, which is the nearest equivalent today Nobody would read it for pleasure. It is dull, prolix and full of details – domestic and foreign (there are unabridged G7 communiques) – which no British newspaper would dream of printing.With the end of Britain’s great-power responsibilities, even the most educated newspaper readers began to look for gossip, rather than news; for pleasure rather than business; for speculation rather than facts; and, above all, for human interest stories rather than public interest stories. Upsetting the apple cart was easy; much more valuable was the journalist who accepted a duty to provide support, as well as constructive criticism, for the authorities.In those days, Britain was still a great power with a great empire, the hub of the universe, with the kind of quality newspapers that such a role required. While any hack can expose what the powerful are doing wrong, it takes real experience and skill to discern what they are doing right. But another reason was that all the quality newspapers of those days, including the liberal Manchester Guardian, felt a real responsibility for not rocking the ship of state.Recently I heard Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, say in a lecture that “the exposure of corruption in high places is at the very centre of what good journalism is about.” Fifty years ago, an editor, even a radical one like CP Scott, Rusbridger’s great predecessor, would have said that muck-raking was unworthy of the quality press.