Maligning the mainstream

"Make sure that doesn't auto-correct to a pack of lies."   So came the scornful pseudo-advice over my shoulder as I stood outside a court in Blackpool tweeting the outcome of a case in which three councillors were convicted of highway obstruction during an anti-fracking protest.

It was a message delivered by a man (not one of the councillors) who clearly wanted to direct it at what he would no doubt disdainfully describe as the "mainstream media".   Even as a lowly local television reporter, I was, as far as he was concerned, its embodiment.   Such was his opinion of the outlets covered by this catch-all term that even a blatantly inaccurate court report would not be beyond my odious modus operandi.

Seconds later, the dispenser of the dismissive missive paraded up and down the pavement, mobile in hand, recording his own piece to camera.   The verdict was duly - and, in fairness, correctly - reported and all in a loquacious and unscripted style, which would have been the envy of anybody in the business of live broadcasting.

Unsurprisingly, however, there was something which differentiated our anti-fracking friend from the mainstream masses he so despises.   For following the facts, came a cavalcade of comment - from justification of the protestors' actions, to what was in the judge's mind, to the predicted downfall of the fracking industry.   To the man behind the diatribe - and many of those who will have seen and shared his post on-line - this is what constitutes news.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when in recent years the phrase "mainstream media" began to be spat out with bile by those whose lips the words crossed - but 2017 certainly solidified its place in the pantheon of social media insults.   While the term itself doesn't discriminate between its intended targets - print or broadcast, partisan or not - there are clear and crucial distinctions between those who use it and why.

For most, it's a reaction to a sense of bias, either political or in the coverage of a contentious subject like fracking.   Yet for some, it's prompted by the sight of a very real injustice - as reflected in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, when both BBC and Sky reporters felt the force of a community's anger directed at a profession which they felt had failed them.    

The disaster rightly prompted some mainstream media soul-searching, most memorably in the form of Jon Snow's searing MacTaggart Lecture just a few months later.   Whether it was by dent of being actively ignored by a media elite or simply by concluding that it wasn't worth approaching such an out-of-touch collective in the first place, residents who raised prior concerns about safety were failed when they rightly expected respected outlets to raise their voices with them.

In analysing the use of 'MSM' as a weapon, a dearth of distinction between motivations is as unhelpful as the imprecise way in which the term itself is increasingly deployed.   Such oversights fuel the theory that all members of the mainstream are legitimate targets and that all targets are legitimate if they do not subscribe to a particular world view on any given issue.

Not only does that do a disservice to those whose grievance is undeniable, as in the case of Grenfell, but it fails to recognise the important difference between broadcast and print outlets and the rules governing each.   The requirement for due impartiality in broadcasting is something which many who decry the medium may not recognise, but is a far stronger buttress against bias than anything which their social media bubble has to offer.   

Even within the partisan print press, basic accuracy is a requirement - although it would be myopic to argue that proprietorial agendas don't have the potential to distort the facts and, in several cases, do.   Yet amidst anti-mainstream rage, every newspaper is lumped together for coagulated contempt - local and national, broadsheet and tabloid - and their reduction to "begging for donations" is celebrated.

It all points down a path where many cannot wait to delight in the demise of the mainstream media, even if they have never been directly wronged by it.   A post on my own Facebook 'news' feed earlier this year took just such a tone, even though it was written by someone who has ever dwindling engagement with the outlets which he now claims don't serve his suddenly discerning media tastes. 

It feels like those who dissent from this view are rapidly becoming a minority.   However, a survey at the end of the tumultuous 2017 suggested the public might have more of a capacity to differentiate between sources than has been apparent during the divisive twelve months gone by.   In the accuracy and impartiality stakes, individual newspaper titles ranked roughly in the order which might be expected - but broadcasters easily outflanked the press and social media, topping the lists measuring both of those qualities.

Ensuring such markers remain regarded as qualities at all - and ones associated with the mainstream to which broadcast belongs - requires a robust defence of the medium's record.   Broadcasters aren't infallible and I certainly sat through some programmes last year which weren't the finest examples of the news and current affairs genre.   

Yet the breadth and depth of stories tackled is testament to a profession fighting against a turning tide.   From hidden poverty amongst working parents to deficiencies in housing policy, standards in children's homes to NHS whistleblowing.   The resultant reports have relevance not only in their own right, but also by maintaining broadcasting's role as a much-needed watchdog.   How many mainstream naysayers are even aware of the existence of this kind of output?

As its detractors continue to denounce it, broadcast journalism needs to be braver still, answering criticism where it is merited by affording time to complex issues - both research time to unpick them and airtime to explain them.  

If the mainstream does what it does best, even its most ardent critics can potentially be won round.   There was a time when the single barb which came my way outside that Blackpool courtroom would have been just one of many.   But a concerted effort by a small team proud to be part of the mainstream has persuaded many anti-fracking protestors no longer to construe balance as bias - and instead to relish the opportunity to be challenged and so speak to an audience which doesn't already share their views. 

When the words "mainstream media" are typed into Google, the top results include "lies", "bias" and "is dying" - reflecting a narrative which is as flawed as any purportedly projected by the mainstream itself.   The challenge for those outlets which comprise the maligned mainstream is no longer just to make their content pay, but to disprove claims of malevolence by making it matter - because it still does.

Passing (on the chance to) comment

When Robert Peston joked he might be about to resign on ITV News at Ten last month (you will search in vain for video evidence), it was a knowing nod to anybody with an interest in the strict conventions of broadcast journalism.   The political editor with a penchant for doing things differently was rebelling against the notion of absolute balance, whereby equal weight is afforded to both sides of any argument.   Instead, he eschewed etiquette and ventured a considered opinion on the latest claim and counter-claim in the EU referendum debate - assessing the weight of available evidence and drawing his own conclusion.   Brave stuff in the world of broadcast journalism.

So far, Peston hasn't started a trend.   Yet there is nothing to say this will not become the latest broadcasting rule to be bent, if not broken.   

There was a time when a refused request for comment was reported in perfunctory tones - most commonly, "X was unavailable for interview."   It was a message designed more to demonstrate that the journalist had done their duty rather than accurately summing up the circumstances surrounding the no-show.   After all, the intended interviewee was probably not so much unavailable as simply unpersuaded of the benefit of going on air.

Of course, various wordings could be deployed - "X declined to be interviewed" or "X could not be contacted for comment."   Yet there was a hint of deference about all of these constructs.   None of them reflected the reality of the labyrinthine efforts which had probably been made to secure an interview.   In fact, I know of one old-school broadcast journalist who even balked at the use of the word "refused" in this context - feeling it came far too close to passing comment on a failure to comment.

Whilst neither the empty chair nor the words used to explain it were particularly satisfactory, all this mattered less when interview refusals were more of a rarity than a regularity.   In recent years, however, the incidence of refusal certainly seems to have rocketed.   How else to explain that broadcast journalists are increasingly commenting themselves on the fact that official comment - from politicians and the public bodies they oversee - is so often elusive?

Pioneering this critique of coyness are those journalists whose work is most blighted by it.   Top of the list - Radio 4's flagship investigative strand, File On 4.   A bastion of broadcast journalism, the programme probably felt it had to take a different tack as minister after minister, ahem, 'declined' to appear week after week.   For stylistic reasons if nothing else, reporters had to search for more inventive ways of saying the same thing - i.e. the press office said no.

It started with a gentle hint of sarcasm in the voices of journalists clearly weary of building a programme so obviously designed for government comment, but which was audibly being stymied in its attempts to obtain it.  The situation became worthy of parody and whilst the team of journalists somehow resisted that temptation, regular listeners began to hear 'no comment' itself being given the kind of forensic treatment for which File on 4 is known.

In place of parroted platitudes about unavailability from on high were detailed explanations about the many reasons the programme had sought an interview with officialdom.   In the process, officialdom's refusal was exposed as being unreasonable, ridiculous or both.   Listeners were, of course, allowed to draw such conclusions for themselves, but the programme increasingly armed them with the information to do so.   This reached its zenith last year with a devastating (and, for journalists everywhere, delicious) account of the e-mail exchange between reporter Fran Abrams and the principal of a further education college with whom she had tried to secure an interview - hear it at 11'30 here.

The days of passively reporting a refused interview request may be numbered.   Jon Snow has recently taken to task the chief dental officer and several Conservative MPs for refusing to appear on Channel 4 News - and the audience thus glimpsed the idiocy of their obfuscation.   Andrew Neil teases those senior politicians who will not appear on his programmes and thereby shield themselves from what they no doubt regard as the most rigorous political interview they could ever endure.   

Like Fran Abrams, their tone in doing so can be barbed - but that does not impugn their impartiality.   As with every other aspect of their job, they are simply reporting the facts - albeit in more detailed terms than tradition dictates and than the refusers would probably like.   That they do so wryly is probably a reflection of the regularity with which they encounter this journalistic roadblock;  and, in any case, wryness is not a breach of any broadcasting code.

No reasonable journalist expects politicians and officials to be waiting on the whim of every media outlet.   However, the journalism with which they fail to engage is usually the serious, investigative, off-diary kind;  difficult for journalists to produce and difficult for officials to answer - but all too easy for them to dodge.   It is the kind of journalism to which officialdom pays lip-service in public, but increasingly treats with contempt in practice. 
 

So what is the viewing and listening public to make of it all?  It would be easy to conclude that they are not missing out on much.   The intended interviewee may have been as rigid and banal as the press office statement sent in their place.   Of course, journalists themselves may bear some responsibility - as Newsnight editor Ian Katz and Robert Peston have argued (here and here), the combative style of these set-pieces has raised the stakes for their participants.   Maybe, then, it is no wonder that it makes little sense for those in positions of power to submit to them.

Whatever the reasons for it, the empty chair is as bad for journalism as it is for public discourse.   So perhaps the answer is for broadcast journalists to carry on creatively filling the void of silence left by those at the top of public life.   Reluctance to comment might be overcome if, when right of reply is rejected, it is replaced with ridicule - both from journalists and their audience.