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.

Competition and collectivity

Awards ceremonies.   Slightly awkward affairs where the great and good of a particular industry indulge in what is sometimes nauseating and occasionally insincere back-slapping.

Usually associated with creative professions and typified by the emetic acceptance speeches of actors lacking any semblance of self-awareness, these annual get-togethers have long since become an established part of many a career - some more worthy than others.   Teaching, healthcare, operational excellence in a health and beauty retailer (just trust me on that one).   Be it a vocation or merely an occupation, recognition and the desire for it is widespread.

It is no surprise that awards for journalism predate many of these more recent attempts to aggrandise the average or turn a calling into a red carpet career.   By its very nature, journalism is a competitive industry - the desire to expose and to be first in doing so runs deep.   That competitive edge, coupled with gallons of free-flowing booze, does not always make for the most edifying of spectacles, especially when rival print outlets are gathered in the same room.

I have no way of knowing whether broadcast journalists were any better behaved at the Royal Television Society's TV Journalism Awards last night, though I very much suspect they were.   If nothing else, any unseemly scenes involving TV's most-respected faces would be far more damaging than a bust-up between largely unknown hacks at a naval-gazing junket.    Yet this presumed good behaviour is probably also attributable to the fact that broadcast journalism largely fosters a very particular kind of competition.

It is a competition which, whilst as intense as that in any branch of the profession, appears more capable of genuinely recognising the achievements of others in the field.   Of course, all self-respecting broadcast journalists compete in the pursuit of plaudits for themselves and their employers.   In the process, however, they seem ready to acknowledge that it is the collective endeavours of the entire industry which serve to maintain and advance its reputation as a trusted and worthy source of news in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Not for a minute does this create some kind of "after you, Sir" collusion, with journalists collaborating for a greater good - witness the wariness over the proposal even to share technical facilities for regional news across the BBC and ITV.   Yet the common standards and regulations binding broadcast journalism stand in marked contrast to a print press riven with political and, as evidenced this week, commercial considerations.   

Print journalists would no doubt rightly posit that in the cossetted world of the licence fee on the one hand and OFCOM news quotas on the other, broadcast journalism can afford its big-picture perspective.   Whilst newspaper groups delight in and increasingly instigate the travails of their rivals, television and radio news is founded on a less grudging form of shared respect.   

Of course none of this means that the nation's broadcast newsrooms are fully paid-up members of a mutual appreciation society and nor should they be.   Neither does it mean that there is not some ill-founded snobbery about the relative merits of different outlets.   But does Dispatches really seek the downfall of Panorama?   Does BBC News long for the oft-forecast disappearance of its dogged ITV rival?   It would be beyond foolish if they did.

As last night's RTS attendees reflect on their personal achievements, the winners, the runners-up and the how-the-hell-wasn't-I-nominated can take heart from the strength of the competition - both for the awards themselves and for content on a daily basis.   Without it, there would be far less worth getting dressed up for.

Whose story is it anyway?

Show me a broadcast journalist who has never got a story or an idea for a story from a newspaper and I'll show you a liar.    

Cross-media fertilisation might sound like a concept straight out of a digital babble bible, but it is actually as old as broadcast journalism itself.   What kind of newsroom would operate in complete isolation, blind to the output or content of other sources?   Just as press journalists will monitor television and radio news programmes, so broadcast journalists have traditionally checked the papers (and now their websites) to ensure that they are not missing out on a story which is yet to appear on their own radar.

This fact was seized upon by some critics of BBC local radio when the corporation announced a review of the service last year.   Claims abounded that local radio journalists were lifting stories from local papers in their coverage area.   Research by the BBC debunked that suggestion, but the threat of swingeing cuts to the local radio budget raised fears that local stations would be rendered incapable of sustaining the current standard of journalism.   Last week's announcement that local stations are having less money taken from them will hopefully secure their journalistic future.

The issue has, however, highlighted the oft-overlooked question of originality in broadcast journalism, at both the local and national level.    Is the primary role of the broadcast journalist to uncover stories or to bring them to life for the widest possible audience?   Every broadcast journalist with an ounce of pride will say that it should be both - but, in reality, how many times does the necessity for the latter mean the former is sacrificed?   

Original journalism is the holy grail for any journalist, but it does seem the press often takes the lead when it comes to doing the digging.    Perhaps that is because broadcast is more labour intensive and the need for recording, editing and presenting a polished product usually leaves little time for anything else.   Yet considering the pagination of newspapers nowadays, the 24-hour business of updating their websites and the fact that press newsrooms have seen some drastic cutbacks of their own, maybe that explanation is just a little too easy.   Here's a more uncomfortable proposition - are print journalists just more suited to good old-fashioned investigative journalism than their broadcast counterparts?

Fortunately for broadcasters, however, nobody owns the news.   Just because one organisation has originated a story does not preclude others from reporting it.   And here is where broadcast comes into its own.   Broadcast journalists are the profession's storytellers.   A relatively dry story on paper can be brought to life by a television or radio package or interview.   Real voices, explaining complex issues or conveying a sense of place or emotion.   The best broadcasters transport the listener or viewer to the heart of a story - and then guide them through it.

Broadcast journalists are also usually best placed to develop a story.   Original journalism is not confined to the bald notion of uncovering facts.   It can be about moving a story on, putting the facts unearthed by another organisation into perspective - and under scrutiny.   This weekend, the BBC's Sunday Politics did not originate the story of a potential £8 million bonus package for the RBS Chief Executive Steven Hester - but it was able to put the Sunday Times findings to a cabinet minister and press him as to whether such a deal would be acceptable.   That still counts as original journalism.

Similarly, as the most trusted and widely used source of news, broadcast outlets are well positioned to present stories in an accessible and engaging way for the widest audience.   Last year, ITV Anglia ran an extended feature on the planned NHS reforms, hinged on the fact that the new commissioning groups were being trialled in the region.   Anglia Television journalists were not the first to uncover the potential pitfalls and controversies of the reforms - but they did highlight and explain them to an audience which might otherwise have turned the page when seeing the issue reported in the press.   Original journalism.

Of course, broadcast journalists do still get traditional exclusives.   In the top tier of the hierarchy of news, broadcasters will often find stories come to them first.   In 2005, the preliminary findings of the inquiry into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground were leaked to ITV News, which handed them a powerful exclusive on one of the biggest stories of the year.   Meanwhile, broadcast journalists routinely prove just as capable of cultivating their own sources as their print counterparts.   Last year's Newsnight investigation into alleged corruption in boxing was an example of what many would regard as traditional original journalism - the direct reporting, rather than the re-reporting, of a story.   So while broadcasters must guard against the worst forms of churnalism, maybe their originating capacity is sufficient that the odd local radio or regional TV story 'sourced' from the previous day's papers can be forgiven.

Perhaps in this multi-platform world, it is not surprising that traditional news outlets are also beginning to collaborate with each other, for their mutual benefit.   Channel 4 News has worked closely with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on several stories and ITN and the BBC have both partnered Guardian Films.   Competition is a healthy aspect of the profession, both in broadcast and print, but as traditional outlets face new challenges, co-operation might need to be more readily embraced.      

The apparent surprise in some quarters that the BBC occasionally uses private investigators (as revealed last week at the Leveson Inquiry) is perhaps indicative of a perception of the level at which broadcast journalism operates.   There seems to be a tacit assumption that it is not the role of the broadcast journalist to dig as deeply as their counterparts in the press.   Yet while broadcast outlets must fulfil their primary obligation to bring the news that matters to the masses, they should never lose sight of the scoop.   

So as well as telling a good story, broadcasters should always be trying to find one, too.

And the headlines - television news still matters

The permanent hum of new media soothsayers predicting the imminent demise of traditional sources of news has reached almost deafening levels.   And at the end of a week when one of the oldest provincial papers closed its daily operations and more than a million people were found to have drifted away from Sunday newspapers, the doom-laden prophesying of the past decade seems ever closer to becoming a reality.

Yet it's not all bad news for the news.   A long-term academic study by Westminster University has just given television news a clean bill of health.   Analysis of bulletins across the terrestrial network found no evidence that news on the main channels is dumbing down and, in contrast to the last time the study was carried out in 1999, the researchers' confidence both in the future worth and relevance of television news was positively unbridled.   Their prediction that appointment-to-view television bulletins will remain broadly unaffected by on-going technological change is a bold, but welcome one.   That television news has already weathered a digital revolution does seem to bode well for this particular branch of journalism, even while the rest of the profession appears to be in a state of constant flux.

Although the reach of television news is not what it once was (the combined BBC and ITV audience for their 10pm news programmes today is less than that enjoyed just by the ITV/ITN bulletin thirty years ago), recent polling by OFCOM has reaffirmed the value placed on it by the viewing public.   Three quarters of people rank television as their primary source of news and an even higher figure regard it as the most trusted source.   Incredibly - given the carefully-cultivated narrative of the direction in which news consumption is heading - the internet fails to make it beyond single percentage figures on either measurement.    Meanwhile, we are still watching more than twenty minutes of television news per day on average and the regular combined audience for all terrestrial bulletins exceeds ten million.

So what do the millions of us who are still tuning in actually get?   Fears about trivialisation have proved largely to be unfounded, with all the terrestrial channels except Channel 5 following an overtly broadsheet agenda.   The unfortunate (but persistent) lie that the ITV bulletins have dumbed down in recent years should be nailed by the fact that their tabloid content has remained static, at about a third, for over a decade.    The slight shift in their editorial stance - often overblown by ill-informed commentators - came not after the abandonment of the original News At Ten in 1999, but in the years prior to that, as costs were cut to the bone when the network merged into two controlling conglomerates.   Remarkably, ITN is today producing content not dissimilar in terms of scope to that which made the organisation renowned, but for little more than half the £80 million budget they were afforded in 1990.   

Editorial shifts and the vagaries of the news agenda have, in fact, resulted in tabloid levels fluctuating across all providers.   At times, the BBC's tabloid content has hovered around a third, but has now settled at a fifth.   It is also worth pointing out that 'tabloid', in the definition adopted by the study, includes crime and consumer stories, many of which are inherently worthy of reporting and appear on bulletins across all channels.

The healthy ecosystem of television news in the UK is due in no small part to the breadth of coverage on offer - something which stems from having competing and slightly contrasting providers.   The BBC's ten o'clock bulletin, for instance, features the highest proportion of foreign news of any programme, whilst Channel 4 is the place to go for detailed coverage of social policy.   Interestingly, political coverage has also generally increased in the past decade, in spite of the perceived wisdom that politics, for many, is a turn off.

Against all the technological and societal odds stacked against it, television news has proved itself to be a resilient beast.   It is comforting to know that, even in the digital age, when we want to know what's happening, many of us simply still turn on the TV - and find news that is worth watching.

 

The power of the package

The opening and closing segments of last week's BBC Politics Show could have been produced as a tutorial for trainee broadcast journalists.    The programme was helpfully bookended with demonstrations of two very different ways of covering a story -  first, the big, set-piece interview, where the heavyweight journalist grills guests from opposite sides of a particular debate, perhaps generating a headline for that day's other news programmes in the process;  last, the pre-recorded package, an altogether more reserved affair, which epitomises the broadcast news conventions of balance and fairness, using carefully selected contributors to guide the viewer/listener through a story in a short space of time.

Both have their place, of course - but the success of one is heavily dependent on the other.   Live interviews and debates are an invaluable method of putting decision-makers and opinion-formers on the spot and exposing them and their views to scrutiny.   In a journalist, they require a quick mind and copious amounts of research, ideally to cover every eventually.   They are challenging to conduct and often theatrical to watch - at their best, they can be an adrenaline rush both for the participants and those at the other end of a television or radio.

Yet what if the subject under discussion is one about which the viewer or listener is not fully informed?   Will they really engage with the topic, listening intently to glean any snippets of hard fact that might emerge from the debate - or will their interest wain in the cacophony of claim and counter-claim?   And, if it does, could their attention have been better held by setting up the story with a package (as discussed elsewhere)?   Imagine Newsnight without the packages.   Just a constant stream of consciousness from guests wanting to get their point across.   Would we really be that much better informed by the end of the proceedings?   

As for the example from the latest Politics Show, it was editorially entirely justifiable to cover the two stories in the way in which the programme did.   The first topic - the public sector strikes - necessitated the interrogation given to the two main protagonists in the story, the unions and the government.   While the packaged story - which trailed this week's Autumn Statement - lent itself to a more considered approach.   Yet even as somebody taking a keen interest in the news, I found myself distracted during the live interview, busy trying to call to mind the minutiae of the issue, prompted by certain references made by the contributors - a mini package beforehand might have given me the best chance of getting the most out of the subsequent interview.

The package - thankfully - remains the default unit of broadcast news.   Television news bulletins, at least, could not properly function without it.   However, it has endured a recent period of being considered rather unfashionable in some quarters.

While Radio 4's very deliberate brand of pause-punctuated packages continue to dominate the station's news programmes, packages on local radio became an endangered species in the 2000s.   On commercial radio, this was a fait accompli, as the time given over to extended bulletins (remember them?) dwindled to almost nothing.   On the BBC, meanwhile, the trend was for presenter-led news programmes, a tactic which usually resulted in a story being told via the live guest (usually over the phone), in much the same way as described above.   "Don't give the listener the opportunity to tune away" - an oft-used mantra in radio - but why the presumption that the package provides an excuse to do so?     Even on television, the advent of the superfluous pre-package introduction from the reporter in the field seemed to be subliminally apologising to the viewer for what was to follow -  "I'm so sorry, but I'm now going to have to force you to watch a package." 

The implication of all this seemed to be that the package should be tolerated only when no other suitable device could be conjured up.   Of course, all programmes need and benefit from lives, two-ways and the rest, but the package was fast acquiring the stigma of being uncreative.    Yet anybody with an interest in the art of broadcast news need only witness the packages produced by the best in the business to understand that this aspect of journalism is, indeed, an art.   Watch the workmanship of a Paul Mason extended package on Newsnight or the master craftsman at ITV News like John Irvine, Bill Neely and (taking the baton for the next generation) Geraint Vincent - subtly, they impart information and leave impressions without appearing to do either.

Similarly, in radio, IRN stalwarts Kevin Murphy and Political Editor Peter Murphy made necessary brevity a speciality.   When radio news bulletins usually provide thirty seconds to cover a story, a two or three minute package is a gift from the radio gods, which the best reporters can use to great effect.

The package gives a story room to breathe, to garner an understanding of each side of a debate.   Crucially, it also offers a platform for the facts, which are sometimes a casualty of other methods of covering of a story.   The package requires incisive, yet uncomplicated writing, the creation of an easily understood, but never simplistic, narrative and the ability to match words with pictures or to use atmospheric sound to bring a story to life.   All of which requires real skill and makes real impact - that's the power of the package.