“Experienced journalists will look me in the eye and solemnly ask, "Why do you do it?" They are not asking me why I say things in public (which is an increasingly pertinent question). They are asking me why I deliberately stir up the newspapers. How can they have such a slender understanding of their own trade? Getting taken up (and recklessly distorted) in the newspapers is not something I do. It's something the newspapers do”.

Thus Martin Amis in the Guardian on February 13. Is a famed novelist in the same position vis-à-vis the press as the politician: that he should no more complain about it than a fish complain about the water? No: for that is wrong about the politician, as well as the writer. Complaining about inaccuracies, distortions, casual libels and massive misrepresentation may be a waste of time on most occasions: but occasionally it works. Journalism is there to give an account of the world: it increasingly works within a network of sources and responses, who can and do answer back. Journalism, to survive and prosper, needs them to answer back. Especially from the world of politics, which we increasingly control.