Emotions and journalism revisited

A while back we hos­ted a con­fer­ence to pro­mote the work of col­leagues at Bournemouth Uni­ver­sity on emo­tions and journ­al­ism. In the after­noon there was a ses­sion with Derek Draper which I fol­lowed via Mar­tin Moore and pos­ted here.

Out­go­ing Dart Cen­ter boss Mark Brayne took issue with me, and in the interests of fair­ness I thought I would post our exchange below:

Hi Adrian.

Noticed your blog with great interest — but for­give me for say­ing so, I do think you got ser­i­ously the wrong end of the stick. If that’s what you — and John L — think emo­tional intel­li­gence in journ­al­ism is about, then I and we and Dart and Gavin have failed miser­ably in explain­ing our agenda.

You/one may not like Draper — although as a rather non-political animal, I don’t have a view myself. But what he said about the psy­cho­logy of soci­ety and how media and polit­ics are received is quite simply psy­cho­lo­gical mainstream.

I have to say, sadly, and again for­give me for say­ing so, that I’m rather dis­ap­poin­ted how both you and John Lloyd respon­ded to this. Journ­al­ism has got to get the plot on emo­tions. If it doesn’t, it’s going to become ulti­mately mean­ing­less and irrel­ev­ant enter­tain­ment. With the chal­lenges now brew­ing, human­ity can’t AFFORD a journ­al­ism or media that don’t get this.

Read Ant­o­nio Dam­a­sio or Daniel Gole­man or almost any­one on the lead­ing edge of brain research and how human beings func­tion in the real world. Draper is right.

Feel free to quote me on your blog, if you like … this is an import­ant debate.

I wrote back:

Hi Mark

I was just going to say per­haps it’s a case of right mes­sage, wrong preacher.

Hard not to divorce Draper’s views from his time selling favours to big business.

I think there are increas­ingly places for more thought­ful and enga­ging inter­ac­tions with politi­cians, though — the late Anthony Clare led the way.

Mark has the final word:

The unfor­tu­nate thing as I see it, Adrian, is that people will con­fuse your cri­ti­cisms of Draper (which I find to be unfair, whatever his pre­vi­ous incarn­a­tion) with a rub­bish­ing of his ideas. Not help­ful, I’m afraid, to the cause of help­ing the ordin­ary punter to under­stand the dynam­ics of polit­ics and lead­er­ship and responsibility.

You – and John – are usu­ally and rightly fero­ciously crit­ical of point-scoring, un-thought-through tabloid hype, mean fun-poking and super­fi­ci­al­ity. Your blog is guilty in my book of the same sins, and frankly, I’m dis­ap­poin­ted. What a pity. But agreed, Anthony Clare was good. Really good. There’s a need for someone to fill that space.

And your thoughts?