The news conspiracy

"What is wrong with Channel 4 News?" demands the title of a blog on the website BS News.   It's a tough question to ask of an outlet that recently retained the RTS News Programme of the Year title and is usually regarded as a bastion of original, long-form journalism.

Seemingly, it's an equally tough question to answer - the author draws her conclusions over the course of three blog posts, spanning twelve months.   Or rather she adduces evidence which she sincerely believes supports the conclusion reached in the opening paragraphs of the very first blog - namely, that the mainstream media is incapable of disentangling itself from vested interests and/or official sources and producing truly independent journalism.

The power of the argument being advanced, which focuses on the quality of foreign news reportage, hinges on whether you accept the premise that all such pieces should be 360-degree polemics that relay every conceivable contradiction about the protagonists involved.   Apart from practical considerations like limited time and the finite knowledge of even the best journalists, would such an approach be as illuminating as the blogger suggests?   An increase in standalone, off-diary reports on foreign affairs might be a better remedy than trying to explore tangential global complexities in each and every package from the world's troublespots.

Yet it's doubtful that contributors to Bullshit News, to give it its full title, would be swayed by any proposed solution to the inadequacies they identify in the "mainstream media" (imagine that phrase spat out with contempt, because I have a feeling that's how it is written).   For them, like so many other corners of the internet, the mainstream is all that's malign.

The author of the Channel 4 News critique doesn't even grant these seasoned ITN journos the status of conspirators with the vested interests they should be challenging - instead, they are dismissed as being "conditioned" to the point where they cannot even recognise their own shortcomings in holding the powerful to account.   To suggest that the likes of Paul Mason (who has turned looking askance into an art form) and the rest of his profession are in thrall to some global elite seriously undermines the case.   It also seems curious to alight upon a broadcaster which has a strong investigative history (both at home and abroad) and which, only this week, broadcast a host of new angles from the Syrian conflict, at a time when it could easily be dismissed as a story in stalemate.

Yet BS News is far from a lone voice in the on-line wilderness.   Visit a media messageboard or enter a Twitter hashtag for any of our broadcast news or current affairs programmes and it's not long before a stream of critical armchair analysis unfolds.   The BBC, unsurprisingly, is berated for supposed bias at both ends of the political spectrum (as here and here), while the editors of various programmes are accused of allowing their reporters to misrepresent the facts of any given story.   Maybe when journalists find that they are annoying everybody, they are pretty close to doing their job properly.

In years long since past, the most a broadcast journalist had to worry about was an official complaint to the regulator or a critical review in the print press.   Nowadays, their work is subject to a cacophony of comment with which different reporters and editors will engage to varying degrees.   That can only be good for the sum of human knowledge and journalists should never be allowed to occupy some higher plain where they go unchallenged.   Moreover, the growth in fact-checking, both from within and independent of traditional media, has been a great leveller in holding journalists themselves to account.    

Sometimes viewers or listeners with particular knowledge will be able to add facts and perspective to a story, as was the case with this blog, which put a more nuanced spin on BBC coverage of an exodus of train carriages from the North to the South.   Still, the author couldn't resist having a pop at "headless chicken" journalists in the process.   

Whatever the on-line world makes of the mainstream, it's fanciful to suggest that broadcast journalism is populated with those who are too blind, too lazy or too conditioned to pursue the real stories.   Be it professional pride, egotism, or a combination of the two, the majority of broadcast journalists thrive on the age-old thrill of the scoop.

The profession is far from perfect;  time pressures and human fallibility mean there will always be examples of poor journalism or instances where the industry falls short of the high standards it sets itself and mistakes are made.   But acknowledging these weaknesses does not mean acquiescing to the view that broadcast journalists are living in a lemming-like stupor or engaged in a grand conspiracy.

The potential for an on-line commentariat to improve and complement (if never compliment) traditional media output is a journalistic fact of life in the digital age.   However, its insistent, insidious undermining of the mainstream just for being mainstream often drowns out anything worthwhile which it has to say.  

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.