A TWO-PRONGED ATTACK?

Abstract

This paper critically assesses the journalistic practices adopted by the British magazine Private Eye. Drawing on interview data with key Private Eye personnel, this article examines the Eye's favoured journalistic technique of combining satirical humour and investigative journalism, and assesses the strengths and limitations of combining these different journalistic practices in British post-war journalism and British democracy. It also examines the magazine's contextual features which facilitate this combination of journalistic techniques. It is argued that this mix of satirical humour and investigative journalism is possible because of the distinctive manner in which Private Eye is organised editorially and politically. The paper concludes with a discussion of the future of combining satirical humour and investigative journalism as a journalistic technique.

Keywords:

• democracy
• investigative journalism
• journalistic freedom
• moral boundaries
• Private Eye
• satirical humour

The author gratefully acknowledges the advice given by Jerry Palmer and Michael Pickering on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to Bob Franklin and the insightful comments of anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. “Put the mock into democracy” was a phrase used by Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow when presenting The Channel Four Political Awards 2004, 13 February 2004.

2. On 31 May 2005 William Mark Felt, a former Associate Director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed that he was the informant known in the Watergate scandal as “Deep Throat”.

3. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with past and present Private Eye editors, Eye journalists and cartoonists and its libel lawyers. Interviews were conducted face-to-face between 1998 and 2000 in the interviewees’ place of work (either at the Private Eye offices, cartoon studios or the headquarters of its libel lawyers). Each interview lasted between 30 and 90 minutes.

4. This circulation of 200,872 is made up of 190,457 circulation in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and 10,415 circulation in other countries (Audit Bureau of Circulation, 2005).

5. In 1969 Granada Television awarded Private Eye a special prize, the “Irritant of the Year”, for its campaigning and exclusive stories that often formed the basis of newspaper stories. In 1972 and 1989 What the Papers Say named Paul Foot the “Journalist of the Year” and “Journalist of the Decade” during the 1990s. In the early 1970s Christopher Booker and Candida Lycett-Green jointly won “Campaigning Journalists of the Year” and in the mid-1980s Private Eye was named “Magazine of the Year”. Sustaining its journalistic significance, the Eye was awarded “The Best Political Satire—Print” by the Political Studies Association in 2003. The Channel Four Political Awards rewarded Private Eye with the “Political Satire Award” in 2004 and the “Political Comedy Award” in 2006.

6. Some Private Eye columns have been developed into stage performances. Mrs Wilson's Diary was developed into a play performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1967 and Anyone for Denis appeared on the stage in 1981. The comic strip The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was made into a film and November 1998 saw the first Private Eye column, St Albion Parish News, turned into a television series called Sermon from St Albion's on ITV.