When Jeremy Pax­man engages, he is an excel­lent presenter. When he is bored…not so much. The clip below shows what hap­pens when News­night attempts to recre­ate the kind of boor­ish con­ver­sa­tion that would not have passed for debate in ye olde Eng­lish pub of thirty years ago.

By using con­tro­ver­sial­ists like Oborne, and an ex-journalist Lam­bert, as a proxy for opin­ion, the pro­gramme does no one a service.

Instead of being edgy and inform­at­ive, Oborne is allowed to simply hijack the stu­dio floor.

A prop­erly briefed Pax­man could have taken on a real offi­cial forensic­ally — and actu­ally “held someone to account”. Isn’t that what News­night was sup­posed to do?

Instead Pax­man is asked to ring­mas­ter a largely power­less array of opin­ion ped­dlers. Mean­while, if you’ve never seen a snake charmer bit­ten by a cobra…

When we fol­low through the his­tory of par­tic­u­lar indus­tries and see new skills arise as old ones decline, it is pos­sible to for­get that the old skill and the new almost always were the per­quis­ite of dif­fer­ent people… Even where an old skill was replaced by a new pro­cess requir­ing equal or greater skill, we rarely find the same work­ers trans­ferred from one to another… The rewards of the “march of pro­gress” always seemed to be gathered by someone else.

E.P. Thompson, The Mak­ing of the Eng­lish Work­ing Class

More than thirty years have passed since my father was vis­ited by the first of sev­eral stretches of unem­ploy­ment that were to haunt his life, and the lives of those who loved him.

He was a trav­el­ling tim­ber sales­man — the Willy Loman of a work­shop world that still ran on thick and tight-grained boards, fra­gile and exotic ven­eers, the seasoned planks and beams that were his stock in trade.

Self-educated, his book­shelf held the nov­els of Alistair McLean and Isaac Asimov along­side Vance Pack­ard’s The Hid­den Per­suaders, J.A.C. Brown’s Tech­niques of Per­sua­sion, Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influ­ence People.

His psy­cho­logy of selling would be shared with me on long drives between boat yards and build­ing sites, the work­shops of the cus­tom­ers for whom he was also listener and entertainer.

But changes in the psy­cho­logy of selling did not des­troy his live­li­hood. The makers of repro­duc­tion fur­niture fol­ded. Fibre­glass replaced well-varnished tim­bers in the boat­yards. The eco­nom­ics of busi­ness con­sol­id­a­tion elim­in­ated the need for com­pet­ing sales teams. Tech­no­logy, com­pet­i­tion, and demo­graphy made him redundant.

My father’s exper­i­ence of unem­ploy­ment in the early 1980s was hardly unique, but it was singular.

Laid off tim­ber reps were not heroic enough to myth­o­lo­gised as labour­ers, nor skilled enough to write their own legend and embalm their mis­for­tune with sen­ti­ment­al­ity and social significance.

But when we talk about the cre­at­ive destruc­tion of cre­at­ive indus­tries like journ­al­ism, there is a human cost, and — like my father — it’s lonely and eas­ily forgotten.

Appar­ently not. And I owe Stephen Bates an apology.

Mr. Monck,

I just pur­chased a copy of your book Can You Trust the Media? I found your dis­cus­sion of the 1940s Hutchins Com­mis­sion on Free­dom of the Press on p. 165 par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing. You write:

“The report, A Free and Respons­ible Press, was pub­lished in 1947 and was an astute, artic­u­late and impas­sioned indict­ment of the mass media. It asser­ted that the press is free for the pur­pose of serving demo­cracy and that a press that shirks its demo­cratic duties will lose its free­dom. The report calls on the press to improve itself in the name of mor­al­ity, demo­cracy and self-preservation.… Over the half-century since Hutchins, the report has shaped aca­demic think­ing about journ­al­ism, but the prac­tice of journ­al­ism car­ries on untouched. A flawed suc­cess as an ana­lysis, A Free and Respons­ible Press has proved, as a call to action, a mag­ni­fi­cent failure.”

In my 1995 mono­graph on the Hutchins Com­mis­sion, pub­lished by North­west­ern University’s Annen­berg Wash­ing­ton Pro­gram and avail­able online, I wrote:

“A Free and Respons­ible Press offers an astute, lit­er­ate, and impas­sioned indict­ment of the nation’s mass media. The 133-page report con­tends that the press is free for the pur­pose of serving demo­cracy; a press that shirks its demo­cratic duties will lose its free­dom. The report calls on the press to improve itself in the name of mor­al­ity, demo­cracy, and self-preservation.… Over the half-century since, the report has appre­ciably influ­enced aca­demic think­ing about journ­al­ism, but not journ­al­ism itself. A flawed suc­cess as an ana­lysis, A Free and Respons­ible Press has proved, as a call to action, a mag­ni­fi­cent failure.”

Any com­ments?

Stephen Bates

Yup. It should be a quote. Simple as that. Instead it’s an attempt, not even com­pleted, to rewrite some­thing that someone else had suc­cinctly expressed. Lazy and dumb. In the pro­cess of shuff­ling text between Sydney and Lon­don without exer­cising due care and atten­tion I reck­lessly trampled on Stephen Bates’ work.

His ori­ginal piece is here:

http://www.annenberg.northwestern.edu/pubs/hutchins/hutch01.htm

The Hutchins Com­mis­sion Report is here: http://www.archive.org/stream/freeandresponsib029216mbp#page/n17/mode/2up

Most aspects of the News of the World’s demise have been picked over. But this is not, for all the head­lines, a scan­dal of journ­al­ism, or pro­pri­et­ors, or mer­gers and acquis­i­tions. Journ­al­ists are journ­al­ists, pro­pri­et­ors are busi­ness­men and deals are what they do. This is a scan­dal of pub­lic ser­vice and pub­lic information.

The most ser­i­ous aspect of this inquiry is what it says about the Brit­ish police ser­vice, its cul­ture of col­lu­sion and media “rela­tion­ship management”.

Con­sider this line on Dick Fedorcio, the Met’s head of media rela­tions, bur­ied in a Nick Dav­ies report about attempts allegedly linked to the News of the World to intim­id­ate a senior police officer:

Scot­land Yard took no fur­ther action, appar­ently reflect­ing the desire of Fedorcio, who has had a close work­ing rela­tion­ship with Brooks, to avoid unne­ces­sary fric­tion with the News of the World.

Note the “close work­ing relationship”.

This scan­dal of goes bey­ond people like the police, of course, to White­hall and its mar­ket­ing of pub­lic service.

The toxic inter­de­pend­en­cies which these “rela­tion­ships” foster could eas­ily have been bypassed at any time by gov­ern­ments brave or determ­ined enough to address the issue of how the pub­lic should be informed of what is done in its name and on its taxes. In the case of the Met — Boris John­son take note.

Instead gov­ern­ment, and local gov­ern­ment, press offices have out­grown news­rooms. Com­mu­nic­a­tion is not on the basis of inform­a­tion but on ‘quid pro quos’. It is the cul­ture of embed, access and favour.

Let’s have a debate that goes bey­ond it, and that asks how we can put inform­a­tion pro­vi­sion and not spin con­trol at the heart of pub­lic ser­vice. Ed Miliband claims the pub­lic want a “frank, free and fear­less press”. Let the pub­lic sort the press out.

If politi­cians sor­ted out the way pub­lic bod­ies com­mu­nic­ated they might reduce the incent­ives for journ­al­ists to pay pub­lic ser­vants for inform­a­tion and the trad­ing in what is effect­ively “inside information”.

In the mean­time let us hear from the likes of Mr Fedorcio on his rela­tion­ships, and how he man­ages them. In the interests of pub­lic service.

I sup­pose the title reveals my con­cerns, which are more about the former than the lat­ter. We’ll be talk­ing about it in Per­u­gia this week at the Inter­na­tional Journ­al­ism Fest­ival.

Here’s a read­ing list:

Journ­al­ism was long ago seen as a fourth estate, an extra-parliamentary rep­res­ent­at­ive cohort.

In 19C polit­ical the­ory, the press is seen as a neces­sary ele­ment in a rep­res­ent­at­ive democracy.

In the ancient world, though there might be, and often was, great indi­vidual or local inde­pend­ence, there could be noth­ing like a reg­u­lated pop­u­lar gov­ern­ment bey­ond the bounds of a single city-community; because there did not exist the phys­ical con­di­tions for the form­a­tion and propaga­tion of a pub­lic opin­ion, except among those who could be brought together to dis­cuss pub­lic mat­ters in the same agora. This obstacle is gen­er­ally thought to have ceased by the adop­tion of the rep­res­ent­at­ive sys­tem. But to sur­mount it com­pletely, required the press, and even the news­pa­per press, the real equi­val­ent, though not in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and the Forum. (John Stu­art Mill, Con­sid­er­a­tions on Rep­res­ent­at­ive Gov­ern­ment, 1861)

The press is no good in the role hav­ing been cap­tured by cor­por­ate interests, UK edi­tion (Julian Pet­ley, Fourth Rate Estate).

The press could never ful­fill the role since cit­izens can never play the role deman­ded of them by demo­cractic the­ory (Jorn Hen­rik Petersen, Lippmann Revis­ited, 2003).

The “informed cit­izen” (i.e. the con­sumer of journ­al­ism) is not a require­ment of demo­cracy (Michael Schud­son America’s Ignor­ant Voters, 2000)

The decline in the journ­al­ism industry is not a crisis for demo­cracy.

Journalism’s role is import­ant and worthy of pub­lic fund­ing.

Please add any inter­est­ing links in the comments.

In the mid-2000s City University’s Journ­al­ism school — well me, to be pre­cise — had a num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions with the Bahraini author­it­ies about journ­al­ism edu­ca­tion, in the con­text of a more open and robust polit­ical cul­ture. The con­ver­sa­tions began with an approach by a junior mem­ber of the rul­ing fam­ily, a former aca­demic of lib­eral inclin­a­tion who wanted to do some­thing to sup­port change.

As a journ­al­ist with CBS News, I was depor­ted from Bahrain back in 1992 so I was a little wary of their enthu­si­asm. (The Inform­a­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tariq Alo­moayyed summoned me to his office and asked why I had entered Bahrain on a tour­ist visa: “No one comes to Bahrain as a tour­ist, Mr Monck.”)

But in the mid-2000s, the small king­dom seemed to be slowly open­ing up. The old king and his min­is­ters were gone. Exiles had been recalled.

One of the more encour­aging signs was a tol­er­ance of digital dis­sent, embod­ied by blog­gers like Ali Abd­ulemam, who ran bahrainonline.org . The Wall Street Journal (art­icle here) noted Abdulemam’s blog as a pointer to pro­gress in the Gulf. He was part of the Global Voices network.

The con­ver­sa­tion about journ­al­ism edu­ca­tion car­ried on for a year or two, went up the offi­cial chain of com­mand, and even­tu­ally went cold. The prom­ise of a more robust polit­ical cul­ture cooled too. That chill brought not only silence, it also brought arrest and impris­on­ment for some.

Today Ali Abd­ulemam is on trial, hav­ing been arres­ted for “dif­fus­ing fab­ric­ated and mali­cious news on Bahrain’s internal situ­ation to spread rumours and sub­vert the Kingdom’s secur­ity and sta­bil­ity.” (http://english.bna.bh/?ID=89532 ). I know the pro­gress­ive and enlightened people I met in Bahrain’s gov­ern­ment will be embar­rassed and saddened by this trial, and that their pub­lic silence will not reflect their private views. They will also know that their efforts to pro­mote Bahrain as a mod­ern and busi­ness friendly state risk being under­mined by the actions of the secur­ity appar­atus. In build­ing a bet­ter future for Bahrain enabling dis­sent — and integ­rat­ing it — is as import­ant as inter­na­tional advert­ising campaigns.

You can read more about Ali Abd­ulemam in the WSJ, The Atlantic and on Global Voices.

Ali Abdulemam’s trial is sched­uled for today (Thursday 28, Octo­ber). His case is but one of many, yet it stands for what many people hoped blogs and the digital revolu­tion might achieve, and his impris­on­ment is testi­mony to another broken tech-topian prom­ise. And he deserves better.