The art of warfare

John Lloyd argues that the treatment of politics (and politicians) by the British media ­- both broadcasters and the press -­ has had the effect of coarsening political discourse. We have, he says, moved from cynicism to scepticism. He thinks that the degrading of politics is harmful to democracy and calls for a renewal of ‘civic journalism’ in order to cure the problem.Is his assessment of the media’s relationship with the political sphere correct, and - if so - is there any hope for his solution?

Watching a recent broadcast of BBC’s Newsnight it was easy to see why John Lloyd believes the media has moved from cynicism to scepticism and that development is harming political discourse. The guests, the assorted candidates for London mayor, were grilled by presenter Jeremy Paxman and he bellowed at them to answer the question, answer it more succinctly, more truthfully or just better. At the same time the candidates squirmed behind their podiums, dodged the difficult questions, recited their prepared lines and stayed on message but did not deliver any answers that might reveal flaws in their plans.

Similarly, during last week’s Question Time, when debate turned to the abolition of the 10p tax rate, Conservative MP Caroline Spelman was asked if a Tory government would re-instate the tax bracket. Ms Spelman used the time to helpfully outline the role of the opposition as the party to protect the interests of the country and oppose that which is wrong. David Dimbleby told her to stop dithering and pressed her for an answer on what the Conservatives would do. Ms Spelman floundered for a while, and then said she was confident they would defeat the bill so the question did not merit an answer, leaving the audience still mystified.

These two examples are not chosen because either is particularly dramatic but because they are recent, generic demonstrations of the kind of questioning and answering the electorate sees on almost a daily basis. This style of interviewing is the chicken-and-the-egg question of the political media. Which came first? The aggressive interviewing that forced politicians on to the defensive or the frustrating spin of the politicians that obliged interviewers to push harder?

In his book What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics Lloyd accuses interviewers like Paxman and John Humphrys of constantly and unconsciously tapping into the belief that "today's politicians and politics are a travesty of those who were with us in the good old days". In a later essay in Prospect magazine he argued that ‘spin’ was a reaction to a more aggressive media. However, in an inteview with MediaGuardian in 2005 Paxman rejected such criticism and said:"It seems to me that the way to remove people's cynicism is, when asked a straight question, to give a straight answer. The cure for cynicism is simply to engage honestly."

The then chairman of the BBC Micheal Grade had recently called for an end to automatic cynicism. He said the corporation should avoid "slipping into the knee-jerk cynicism that dismisses every statement from every politician as, by definition, a lie. Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth."Grade’s point is crucial, when the media immediately assume they are being deceived and manipulated they help nobody. Likewise when the press are deceived and manipulated by policians they become immediately suspicious in the future.

In his memoirs, Louis Heren, a former deputy editor of the Times, wrote that he always asked himself, “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” Immediately assuming every political operative is about to lie to you is not conducive to a productive interview but nor is swallowing the party line. A healthy scepticism is the ideal that is slipping away.

In a feature about the balance between cynicism and scepticism published in the Times in December 2006 David Aaronovitch said that the public’s eagerness to believe the worst about politics and politicians means we now shy away from the truth. He said: “Yesterday I was listening to a radio discussion on political parties, featuring a Daily Mail sketch writer. He gave it out as fact that Commons whipping and party discipline was more severe than ever before. But as Philip Cowley, of Nottingham University, has proved, there have been more rebellions by MPs over the past half decade than at any time in parliamentary history. The truth is the exact reverse of the conventional wisdom. As any true sceptic should know.”

Our level of cynicism about today’s politicians means we will accept the worst about them even when the facts contradict it. Aaronovitch continued by saying that if he could he would give a press award to Martin Kettle of The Guardian: “There, he regularly has the nerve to suggest that this Government and this political system, while flawed, are fairly decent. You should see what he gets by way of response on his paper’s comment website! He’s a sycophant, he should be sacked, he wants a peerage, he’s being paid off by shadowy forces. The commenters are united in their intolerant certainty that they are the sceptics and that Kettle (who could — as some do — easily mount the bully pulpit and throw red meat to them) is the voice of smothering orthodoxy.”He argued that it is the dogmatic nature of cynicism that is most dangerous, a factor that does not apply to scepticism, which by its own nature cannot blindly pursue one ‘truth’.

However, while the treatment of politicians by the press has certainly damaged the political discourse, it would be unfair and naive to say the treatment is unwarranted. The obvious example of Alastair Campbell’s aggressive attempt to control the news agenda and punish the journalists who gave unfavourable coverage set a hostile precedent that remains today. While a tension is beneficial, an active hostility is not.

Lloyd’s call for a renewal of ‘civic journalism’ maybe seen as idealistic but it is not an ideal. As he said in an article on opendemocracy.net in 2005, the media is “among the greatest powers of contemporary democratic societies” and that must be preserved. The media should be powerful or its purpose becomes defunct. The notion that “the media are now no longer functioning as an inquiring check on the excesses of the political class, instead they have become an alternative establishment, one supremely dedicated to a theatrical distrust of individual politicians and a furious and calculated indifference to the real-life intricacies of world policy-making” is overdramatic and scare-mongering.

Civic journalism is not the answer because it would create more ill-informed hysteria, as Aaronovitch demonstrates with his anecdote about Martin Kettle. Instead the media that already exists should assess how their attitude to politics is damaging discourse in this country and politicians should consider carefully if their equally hostile attitude to the press is just as much to blame.