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The Press Association
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Incorporated on 6 November 1868, the British news agency the Press Association (PA) was the brainchild of John Edward Taylor, the then editor of "The Manchester Guardian" (and son of its founder, also John Edward Taylor).  Taylor saw its creation as the means by which accurate news could be provided to The Guardian and the hundreds of other provincial newspapers that served towns and cities across the British Isles.  Thirty-six years later in 1904, out of a total issue of 3708 shares, the PA had 191 shareholders from the four corners of Great Britain and Ireland.  The highest shareholding of 54 shares was held by two newspapers (each representing less than 1½ % of the issue), but the most common tenure was between 6 and 36 shares.

    By 1928 the share issue had increased to 4,944 and, though the number of shareholders had fallen to 145, the biggest, held by Allied Newspapers of Manchester (publishers of the Empire News and Daily Dispatch), still represented only 104 shares (2%).  The Manchester Guardian and Manchester Evening News held just 72 shares (1½%), whilst Associated Newspapers (publishers of The Daily Mail) held just 48 (1%).
    By 1997, the disparate ownership that safeguarded the Press Association's impartiality had evaporated, with just five newspaper groups owning over 60% of the 7,965,000 shares: Mirror Group plc (1,455,000 shares or 18%); Associated Newspaper Holdings Ltd (1,120,000 shares or 14%); News International plc (1,042,500 shares or 13%) United News and Media Group Ltd (900,000 shares or 11%); and Guardian Media Group plc (314,000 shares or 4%).

Press Association chairman Sir Henry 'Harry' Roche. He also chaired The Guardian Media Group up to Jan. 1997.  As The Guardian's chairman, he oversaw the publishing of the paper's 'cash for questions' story of Oct. 1994.  He was knighted following Labour's sweep to power.

This is no different to the centralisation that has evolved across all sorts of businesses, from tissue manufacture to clothes retailing.  However, a democracy does not depend on the integrity of its toilet rolls or T-shirts to the same extent as it does the integrity of its news. 
    Any employee who wants to further their career is naturally averse to acting against the interests of their employer.  This being self-evident, it is not surprising that the Press Association's journalists gulped down The Guardian's 'cash for questions' story of 20 October 1994, given the added factor that the PA's chairman, Henry 'Harry' Roche (above, right), in his other role as the chairman of Guardian Media Group, had actually been responsible for overseeing that story's publication. 

This wasn't Roche's only connection with The Guardian.  His career with the paper began over twenty years earlier in 1973 when he joined as a deputy production director.  In 1985 he became The Guardian's Managing Director, where, after three years, his loyalty led him to being nominated as The Guardian's representative on the Press Association Board.  Roche was duly made a director of the PA on 8 June 1988, thus bringing him the ability to influence directly the organisation that by this time wielded more real ability to influence the national news agenda than Parliament itself. 
    However, as if being the chairman of Guardian Media Group didn't provide Roche with enough conflict of interest, he was also the chairman of three other Guardian companies: Broadcast Communications PLC (a major supplier of TV programmes to the BBC and ITV); Manchester Evening News Ltd; Guardian Press Centre Ltd; plus directorships on a four other Guardian companies.  Roche held all these posts until January 1997 some three months after the media hue & cry against Ian Greer & Neil Hamilton that erupted following the settlement of their libel actions against The Guardian on 30 Sept. 1996. 
    This onslaught of the lobbyist and the MP was the second to have been facilitated by the PA's dissemination of biased, Guardian-based news bulletins.  The first, which had raged for weeks, followed the publication of The Guardian's original 'cash for questions' story of October 1994.  It is not known whether any credit for these (and subsequent) outpourings can be attached to Roche's steerage of the PA, but his previous actions do not suggest that he is sensitive to the concepts of probity and impartiality. 

When The Guardian's original seminal article of 20 October 1994 hit the news stands, alleging (falsely, without any evidence in support) that the lobbyist Ian Greer had bribed Tory MPs Neil Hamilton & Tim Smith, Greer & Hamilton served The Guardian with libel writs within hours.  Nevertheless, Greer's lobbying business went into free-fall as clients deserted him in the face of a Guardian-led, PA-fuelled, media Blitz.  It soon became apparent that the lobbyist's claim for damages would run into many millions of pounds (later calculated at £10 million) for which The Guardian, uniquely, did not carry libel insurance.  The person to whom Roche and his fellow Guardian executives turned to escape redress was libel specialist Geraldine Proudler of The Guardian's solicitors, Lovell White Durrant.  At the time Proudler was working a year's notice following her announcement a few months earlier of her intention to move to media solicitors Olswang.

Seven months later on 1 June 1995, as Proudler put the finishing touches to an ingenious Guardian defence involving lies, misrepresented documents, and illegally withheld documents, Roche quietly welcomed onto the Press Association's Board Simon Olswang (left), the senior partner of Proudler's new firm to whom The Guardian would soon transfer its account.  In the last week of June, as Simon Olswang settled into his seat on the PA board alongside his new client, Proudler exchanged witness statements with Hamilton's & Greer's solicitors.  On 31 July she joined her new boss at Olswang.  In the Press Association's next accounts, Roche opened up his chairman's statement thus:

"I am delighted to report that Simon Olswang was appointed to the Board in June 1995.  He is the senior partner of the solicitors' firm of Olswang and a leading specialist in media law."

Roche failed to disclose that Olswang was also his own newspaper's solicitor upon whose firm he (and his fellow Guardian directors Peter Preston & Alan Rusbridger) were relying to save The Guardian's skin. 
    Of course, one cannot imagine Roche or Olswang interfering in the PA's day-to-day business, but they wouldn't have needed to.  As leading Times columnist Matthew Parris confirmed, when commenting on his newspaper's subdued coverage of China where his proprietor Rupert Murdoch has business interests: "a journalist has to 'tread carefully' when writing a story that conflicts with the interests of the proprietor."

Simon Olswang, head of the solicitors retained by The Guardian to defend Greer & Hamilton's £10 million+ libel actions (for which it was uninsured). 
    Olswang was also a director of the PA throughout The Guardian's PA-fuelled media campaigns against Hamilton & Greer. He resigned 1 Sept. 1997, two months after the publication of Sir Gordon Downey's critical Report.

This truism, together with the inherent tendency for the PA's left-inclined journalists to follow The Guardian's line, explains further why the PA's news bulletins portrayed a misleading, biased account of the affair, with important facts excluded that would have helped an understanding, while irrelevancies were included and spun to create a false impression. 
    With all this in mind, it is no wonder that the Press Association refused to report Hunt & Keith-Hill's press conferences in Westminster in October 1997 and 1998 (see news bulletins in Section One of this website).  Clearly, any PA sub-editor who contemplated putting out news undermining The Guardian's evidence 'on the wires' would have needed to be able to withstand the ensuing discord, not only within The Guardian, but also within the Press Association's own newsrooms and boardroom.

A real-life Ministry of Truth

The PA's unseen influence grows