Interview: Nick Robinson, ITV News (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
POLITICAL editors don't generally become the story during an election campaign. But Nick Robinson, of ITV News, has developed a curious ability in recent weeks to find his name all over the next day's papers. Whether confronting the Prime Minister over a controversial election poster, or challenging the "all white" audience for Tony Blair's big immigration speech, Robinson has emerged as the campaign's most robust and persistent journalistic troublemaker. His coup de grace was being publicly anointed a "f***ing pillock" by John Prescott.
The suspicion among Robinson's rivals is that it is a deliberate attempt to get ITV noticed - part of a trend towards reporter involvement in stories or "RI" in the industry's jargon. If viewers are turned off by the politics, the theory goes, then perhaps a more theatrical and mischievous form of reporting might attract them back. At the very least, it gives him some lively footage to send back.
But Robinson, 41, sitting outside a Gray's Inn Road cafe between election-night rehearsals, is baffled at accusations that he is simply playing the showman. "No, the strategy has genuinely not been to get on to the front pages, or for me to get 'involved' in the election story," he says. "My job is just to ask the right questions in a sharp and pertinent way. There have been a couple of moments where I have become involved, but never as a result of any plan."
He first made headlines after challenging the launch of a Labour poster, claiming that the Conservatives were planning £35 billion of cuts to public services. He pointed out that the figure was misleading, before firing a brutal follow-up question to the Prime Minister and Chancellor: "Can you only win this election by distorting your opponents' policies?"
That, he explains now, was simply the unplanned outcome of a "grumpy" morning after little sleep and frustration that Gordon Brown would not give a post-Budget interview. "By chance, my bureau chief said they were launching a poster down the road. I was virtually the only reporter there, as they'd not invited any." But his intervention was hardly designed as theatre, he says. "I don't imagine down at the Dog and Duck they were discussing it. It was journalism, it was about analysis."
Labour's campaign managers were far less sanguine about his most recent intervention. Last Friday, in Dover, he asked provocatively why there were only white faces in the specially invited crowd for a speech on immigration.
"Labour had announced that Blair was doing 'the most important speech of the campaign', but that all day he would not take questions from journalists. Now, I don't think you should do the most important speech of your campaign and not take questions. So, I asked him one. And, to have any hope of him answering, it has to be provocative."
BLAIR'S entourage was furious, and Robinson was accused of getting his facts wrong. "There was one Asian in the audience, and that he was singled out to disprove me," says Robinson. "But we know that the big two parties carefully select audiences to give a particular appearance. Is it a great controversy to point this out? That's informing the audience."
He is concerned that party spin machines have excluded print journalists from this campaign "on an unprecedented scale". But he refuses to ally himself with "the carping school of journalism", pointing out the strategists' " security concerns" and wariness of media cynicism. Besides, he says, Blair has been far more available for questioning than expected.
But isn't that part of a strategy to silence other party voices? Where are the other front-bench politicians? "The parties are fighting to get attention on TV," he replies. "Why are they using single personalities more? Because the public know who they are. We're entitled to say we're not getting a proper debate on the issues but it's not wickedness."
Tomorrow, Robinson will be crunching the results as part of ITV News's election-night coverage. We are promised the "fastest and most comprehensive" results - although David Dimbleby and his BBC team were rather sniffy last week of ITV's "gimmick-led" approach. Robinson, a former BBC man, naturally springs to his employer's defence. "The idea that a combination of Jonathan Dimbleby, Alastair Stewart and the bald bespectacled bloke in front of you represent a 'sexing-up' of politics struck me as curious," he says. We are as trainspottery about politics as any team you could assemble at the BBC.
"Our election-night party [to be broadcast live] isn't about using B-list Hello! celebrities to change the subject - it's about reflecting exactly what will happen in parties up and down the country, but with people whose views you care about. Knowing what Richard Branson thinks, that's interesting."
David Dimbleby and Andrew Marr are "very talented guys", he adds. "But I've worked for the BBC on election night, and they've got so many people that it can get in the way of telling a good story." Besides, BBC journalism is suffering from the "period of caution" its management has chosen. "These off-air decisions have on-air consequences. It's not that we don't agonise about getting things right but we do so in meetings with two or three people and get on with it, not second-guessing this or that committee."
He joined ITN in 2002, having been chief political correspondent for BBC News 24 and, before that, a Five Live presenter and deputy editor of Panorama and On the Record. His great inspiration as a child had been Today presenter Brian Redhead, whose youngest son Will was his best mate at school in suburban Manchester. "When I walked past his house to get the train home, I'd often go in for my glass of milk and slice of chocolate cake, and Brian was often there," he says. "He talked to kids like they were grownups. I grew up thinking, 'I'd like your job, please'. I was obsessed with politics."
AT OXFORD, he rose through the Young Conservat ives to become national chairman, although he points out that his involvement ceased 20 years ago. Apart from an incident when Alastair Campbell brought it up in response to a difficult question, his past politics, he says, has never been an issue. "Just think what you were doing 20 years ago. I was still, sadly, going to Genesis concerts and listening to the Human League. I had quite a lot of hair, actually, but still the preposterous glasses."
Now, he says, he has the perfect job to indulge his passion for politics, as well as a wife - a relationship counsellor - understanding enough to tolerate his workinduced absences from their three young children. But what about that persistent Millbank rumour that Andrew Marr's job will shortly become vacant. Would he want it?
"I have a lovely job, thank you very much," he replies with a smile. "There's not much bigger a job than ITV political editor. Yes, we have fewer resources than the BBC - but the upside is the freedom to tell the story well. That would be a hell of a thing to give up."
So ... Does that mean he would ignore a call to be interviewed?
"That's the great Mark Thompson question, isn't it?" he says, shuffling a little. "Damned either way. Although I would probably call my editor, Dave Mannion, and say what's it worth?"
(Evening Standard, May 4 2005)
POLITICAL editors don't generally become the story during an election campaign. But Nick Robinson, of ITV News, has developed a curious ability in recent weeks to find his name all over the next day's papers. Whether confronting the Prime Minister over a controversial election poster, or challenging the "all white" audience for Tony Blair's big immigration speech, Robinson has emerged as the campaign's most robust and persistent journalistic troublemaker. His coup de grace was being publicly anointed a "f***ing pillock" by John Prescott.
The suspicion among Robinson's rivals is that it is a deliberate attempt to get ITV noticed - part of a trend towards reporter involvement in stories or "RI" in the industry's jargon. If viewers are turned off by the politics, the theory goes, then perhaps a more theatrical and mischievous form of reporting might attract them back. At the very least, it gives him some lively footage to send back.
But Robinson, 41, sitting outside a Gray's Inn Road cafe between election-night rehearsals, is baffled at accusations that he is simply playing the showman. "No, the strategy has genuinely not been to get on to the front pages, or for me to get 'involved' in the election story," he says. "My job is just to ask the right questions in a sharp and pertinent way. There have been a couple of moments where I have become involved, but never as a result of any plan."
He first made headlines after challenging the launch of a Labour poster, claiming that the Conservatives were planning £35 billion of cuts to public services. He pointed out that the figure was misleading, before firing a brutal follow-up question to the Prime Minister and Chancellor: "Can you only win this election by distorting your opponents' policies?"
That, he explains now, was simply the unplanned outcome of a "grumpy" morning after little sleep and frustration that Gordon Brown would not give a post-Budget interview. "By chance, my bureau chief said they were launching a poster down the road. I was virtually the only reporter there, as they'd not invited any." But his intervention was hardly designed as theatre, he says. "I don't imagine down at the Dog and Duck they were discussing it. It was journalism, it was about analysis."
Labour's campaign managers were far less sanguine about his most recent intervention. Last Friday, in Dover, he asked provocatively why there were only white faces in the specially invited crowd for a speech on immigration.
"Labour had announced that Blair was doing 'the most important speech of the campaign', but that all day he would not take questions from journalists. Now, I don't think you should do the most important speech of your campaign and not take questions. So, I asked him one. And, to have any hope of him answering, it has to be provocative."
BLAIR'S entourage was furious, and Robinson was accused of getting his facts wrong. "There was one Asian in the audience, and that he was singled out to disprove me," says Robinson. "But we know that the big two parties carefully select audiences to give a particular appearance. Is it a great controversy to point this out? That's informing the audience."
He is concerned that party spin machines have excluded print journalists from this campaign "on an unprecedented scale". But he refuses to ally himself with "the carping school of journalism", pointing out the strategists' " security concerns" and wariness of media cynicism. Besides, he says, Blair has been far more available for questioning than expected.
But isn't that part of a strategy to silence other party voices? Where are the other front-bench politicians? "The parties are fighting to get attention on TV," he replies. "Why are they using single personalities more? Because the public know who they are. We're entitled to say we're not getting a proper debate on the issues but it's not wickedness."
Tomorrow, Robinson will be crunching the results as part of ITV News's election-night coverage. We are promised the "fastest and most comprehensive" results - although David Dimbleby and his BBC team were rather sniffy last week of ITV's "gimmick-led" approach. Robinson, a former BBC man, naturally springs to his employer's defence. "The idea that a combination of Jonathan Dimbleby, Alastair Stewart and the bald bespectacled bloke in front of you represent a 'sexing-up' of politics struck me as curious," he says. We are as trainspottery about politics as any team you could assemble at the BBC.
"Our election-night party [to be broadcast live] isn't about using B-list Hello! celebrities to change the subject - it's about reflecting exactly what will happen in parties up and down the country, but with people whose views you care about. Knowing what Richard Branson thinks, that's interesting."
David Dimbleby and Andrew Marr are "very talented guys", he adds. "But I've worked for the BBC on election night, and they've got so many people that it can get in the way of telling a good story." Besides, BBC journalism is suffering from the "period of caution" its management has chosen. "These off-air decisions have on-air consequences. It's not that we don't agonise about getting things right but we do so in meetings with two or three people and get on with it, not second-guessing this or that committee."
He joined ITN in 2002, having been chief political correspondent for BBC News 24 and, before that, a Five Live presenter and deputy editor of Panorama and On the Record. His great inspiration as a child had been Today presenter Brian Redhead, whose youngest son Will was his best mate at school in suburban Manchester. "When I walked past his house to get the train home, I'd often go in for my glass of milk and slice of chocolate cake, and Brian was often there," he says. "He talked to kids like they were grownups. I grew up thinking, 'I'd like your job, please'. I was obsessed with politics."
AT OXFORD, he rose through the Young Conservat ives to become national chairman, although he points out that his involvement ceased 20 years ago. Apart from an incident when Alastair Campbell brought it up in response to a difficult question, his past politics, he says, has never been an issue. "Just think what you were doing 20 years ago. I was still, sadly, going to Genesis concerts and listening to the Human League. I had quite a lot of hair, actually, but still the preposterous glasses."
Now, he says, he has the perfect job to indulge his passion for politics, as well as a wife - a relationship counsellor - understanding enough to tolerate his workinduced absences from their three young children. But what about that persistent Millbank rumour that Andrew Marr's job will shortly become vacant. Would he want it?
"I have a lovely job, thank you very much," he replies with a smile. "There's not much bigger a job than ITV political editor. Yes, we have fewer resources than the BBC - but the upside is the freedom to tell the story well. That would be a hell of a thing to give up."
So ... Does that mean he would ignore a call to be interviewed?
"That's the great Mark Thompson question, isn't it?" he says, shuffling a little. "Damned either way. Although I would probably call my editor, Dave Mannion, and say what's it worth?"
(Evening Standard, May 4 2005)
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