How BBC star Clare Balding nicked my byline

An interview with the all-round good egg and nation’s darling? What could possibly go wrong … until the nightmare of ‘copy control’ started.

After 35 years as a journalist, I experienced two firsts last week. One was that I asked for my byline to be removed from an interview I had written, which was a direct consequence of the other first: the subject of my interview being given, without my prior knowledge, copy control and – in a breathtaking liberty – removing sections of my interview and replacing them with her own, self-promoting, words.

Who is this insecure diva who does not know better about what should be an essential divide between journalism and public relations? It must be one of those Hollywood actors, you might think, represented by aggressively image-controlling agents. Well, it is disappointing to report that it is one of the nation’s darlings and a champion of other women, particularly right now in the battle for equal pay at the BBC. Yes, it’s all-round good egg Clare Balding.

In our interview, Balding talked about how much she loves the corporation. But the BBC’s badge of honour – its most cherished tenet – is editorial independence: how could one of its most recognised female broadcasters think it is acceptable to demand not only to see an article about her before publication, but then to change the words – making it look as though they were said in the interview and recorded by the journalist?

This is obviously, for a start, unsisterly and undermining of a fellow woman professional. More importantly, there is an unwritten pact between a publication’s journalist and reader – certainly in reputable publications, which Saga (the magazine in question) is – that what they read is real.

The deal is that the celebrity gets their new book or film promoted to a wider public by dint of being on the cover of the magazine – as Balding is in the October issue, for her new children’s book – and a mention of the product in question.

What they don’t get – or should never get – is permission to make alterations to the journalist’s interview before publication. And, beyond that they do not get to substitute their own words as though this is what they have said in the interview!

Some might be tempted to shrug. “It’s only an interview with a showbiz personality. Who cares if they have copy control?” But, as one of my editor friends says: “It does matter because it erodes the integrity of our public print and means the public stop believing anything they read. Also, just because someone is famous and powerful, they should not be able to bully a publication into writing what they want printed.”

“Even the silliest of celebrities use their profile to make pronouncements on all manner of issues, so it’s quite right that they are questioned fairly and independently.”

So how did this Saga setback happen? I have been assured by the magazine staff to whom I complained that it is not normal practice for them to give celebrities copy control. In this case, Dawn French – the intended cover – dropped out at the last minute and Balding was a rapidly found substitute. Did Saga’s editor agree to the unacceptable because she was in a jam? And if so, why not get Balding to write the piece herself?

In our interview, Balding was friendly and unprickly, talking about a range of subjects – happy to be revealing about the sides of professional life she found tricky. The features editor wrote to me saying the written up interview was “absolutely lovely” but could I add a couple of sentences about Balding’s sports commentary achievements and also say how “lovely” she was – and put this quite near the beginning of the article. (I wrote back to say that I could not: “I don’t think I can write about her being incredibly warm because that is not my experience of her. She is quite a brisk, jolly-hockey-sticks type, and that is how I have written her.” Despite this, the piece will appear with these mincing words inserted: “And indeed she sparkles all the way through the photo shoot.”)

By the end of that day, I’d been sent a copy of the pages and that, I thought, was that. The next day, I receive an email from the editor, Katy Bravery, apologising but adding: “Clare and her agent have complained that there is way too much about her being gay in the interview, and I have to say I agree.”

Wow! Apart from anything else, the idea that in this year – the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisaton of homosexuality, for which Balding has done some broadcasts – one of the very few leading lesbians in British public life could find an article “too gay” was flabbergasting.

This was very late in the day for the editor to come back to me: the piece was supposed to have gone off to the printers the previous week. I phoned her to say that I was shocked that “Clare and her agent” had been sent the piece for copy control, and Bravery’s response was that it was more like “copy approval”, and I wondered about the difference.

Worse was to come. I asked the features editor to send me the new, doctored, gay-reduced version – as, after all, the piece would have my name attached to it. She wrote back: “I have attached the new version, which I hope you will see has changed little from your original copy – with a few quotes from your longer version added, together with a couple of quotes from Clare about football.”

A couple of quotes from Clare! Had we reached a new low where interview subjects could write their own copy masquerading as that of an independent journalist? What had Balding inserted? A paragraph or two about her hosting the women’s European football championships in the summer and then… a shameless puff for her own book: “It’s why I wanted to have a female heroine in my book who is not afraid to take on the establishment and is also a team player. The response I received from readers and their parents has been so positive – most of whom say that it’s rare to find a sporty, strong heroine – with short hair.”

This was the point at which I asked for my name to be removed. How would Balding like it if – unbeknown to her – one of her broadcasts had some new words dubbed in, written by someone else, and under her name?

Since my Saga saga, I have been asking friends and colleagues in the business what they think about what I may have to call Baldingate. Some of them say I have been insulated from the copy control nightmare because of the strength of the titles I’ve worked for.

Another point of view is that the reader won’t notice the difference so why does it matter? That is, it won’t reflect badly on me. But the point is that I know what has happened and it is not something with which I can knowingly collude.

At a time when journalism is under siege everywhere – when fake news sites are on the rise and online newspapers just help themselves to journalists’ articles and present them as their own – it is more important than ever for those of us who are still writing to stand up for the values that attracted us to the profession in the first place.

Back in 2003, I was asked to interview Madonna, after she’d written several children’s books (note to self: avoid celebrities who turn their hand to writing for kids.). The interview was a bit more obviously chequered than this Balding debacle but, again, we seemed to part on good terms.

This was my conclusion to that piece: “What followed was any journalist’s idea of a nightmare. The very next day the rumbles started… This escalated into a full-blown inquiry, with her people threatening to stop dealings with the Times unless they had full approval and control of the interview… The discussions went on for four weeks and were eventually resolved, with the result that this interview is appearing as it was intended, without any interference.”

We still tend to think of this bullying behaviour as an American problem. But if it originated with the big bad agents in Hollywood, it has certainly been making inroads with our homegrown, household names.

So what is the way forward? Perhaps we need to adopt another response to the economic downturn in our industry – the sponsored editorial label. How about some equal transparency for the readers so they still bother to buy the product when it is genuine? A differentiating label such as, “This article has been approved by the subject” and, in cases like mine, “Some paragraphs of this interview have been written in by the celebrity after the event.” We could call it, as a writer buddy of mine suggested, celebritorial.

In the meantime, I take comfort in the fact that La Balding’s behaviour is not yet completely the norm and, despite her aristocratic forbears, shows that she lacks class.

The real pros – such as the marvellous Dame Judi Dench, who has provoked headlines around the world because of her recent comments to me on desire and naughty knickers – believe in letting you do your job with the same freedom and lack of interference they would expect to do their own. They are the real stars.

The Observer