I would like to add my voice to the many protesting against the BBC’s planned cuts, in particular the cutting of 6Music, and to echo the many tributes and plaudits that this service has received over the past few days. To quote Jon Ronson, “The station is everything the BBC should be about: nurturing intelligent talent (both musical and presenting). Whilst some parts of the BBC (like BBC 3) seem at times nothing more than copies of certain independent channels, there is nothing out there like 6Music. It is a unique and very BBC station. Brilliant sharp, funny presenters like Adam and Joe, Lauren Laverne, The Queens of Noise, Phil Jupitus, Sean Keaveny, etc, have been entertaining loyal, grateful fans like me for years. These are intelligent people who aren’t afraid to be passionate about good, not particularly populist music. 6Music is the Radio 4 of music channels.”
I have long been a defender of the licence fee, as I feel that the BBC provides journalistic and entertainment services that the commercial sector cannot provide. I fully agree with Mark Thompson’s statement in the Guardian today, that the BBC’s remit is ,”To inform, educate and entertain audiences with programmes and services of high quality, originality and value. It strives to fulfil this mission not to further any political or commercial interest, but because the British public believe that universal access to ideas and cultural experiences of merit and ambition is a good in itself.” BBC 6Music, I believe, epitomises the BBC’s potential to succeed in fulfilling this remit. The way that its wonderful presenters are allowed to employ their own judgement and share their tastes has enabled them to make brilliant use of the BBC’s unparalleled archives as well as to discover and support a wide variety of new music.
Through the licence fee BBC has an incredible ability and a responsibility to provide a service to the whole population and not just to the majority. I sincerely hope that it will not betray the public’s trust in its willingness to fulfil this promise and that it will continue to support exciting and innovative media services such as 6Music.
I feel like I want to write something about this, because not only was it a pretty big deal in the big picture of British media and politics, it felt like a pretty big deal for me and my engagement shifting from interested and theoretical to faintly active (I mean, it’s not like twittering uses up many calories but it *is* still participating in a discourse). It was also a little sobering, because although I would normally count myself as pretty engaged in current affairs, I hadn’t heard anything about the incident in the Ivory Coast or about Trafigura (I mean, I might have seen a Trafigura logo on a board at a rugby match, but I hadn’t heard of them). Time to read more papers and watch more Newsnight, clearly.
Anyway, I first heard about the Guardian’s initial ‘This is all we can’t tell you about some stuff that we can’t tell you’ report late on Monday night – I can’t remember, but I suspect someone tweeted the link. My initial reactions were (a) that’s really weird, (b) how can it happen that a paper can be barred from reporting on parliament and, (c) that’s a very canny piece. But I didn’t quite realise how canny, and off I trotted to snoozeland. Only to wake up the next morning to find that #trafigura had exploded on twitter. And bang, my plan to spend my morning applying for JRFs disapparated in a cloud of retweeting and reading and participating. Sure it was head and finger business, but I actually really enjoyed the buzz of business after three years of sitting in libraries and offices slogging through books and thesis writing. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my academic-y-ness, it’s just that I really really like the bit where my academic interests hit the actual real world and has the potential to be functional in some way that I’m just beginning to try and work out. (On which subject, of interest and participation and new tech and its role in enabling participation, you should read Hannah Nicklin’s post about Louder, a new online space for campaigners, it’s really exciting). Even if I stay in academia (and my future plans are still pretty up in the air), I don’t want to get lost in my little ivory tower – and I really like that the internet has the potential to make it so much harder for that getting lost to happen.
But back to #Trafigura. It’s been said that Carter-Ruck’s claim that the Guardian would be in contempt of court (over their injunction) if they reported on Parliament would have been ruled against when they got to court, so twitter wasn’t necessarily a big factor – but I think it must be seen as a factor in getting Carter-Ruck to step back before going to court. That’s a lot of popular pressure – and more importantly, a great rise in unpopularity for your law firm and your client that you might think you could offset by backing down in advance of being removed. And I really liked the way the word spread on twitter – it was essentially well-mannered outrage, which sounds silly, but honestly, you’re more likely to make something happen and LAST if you don’t swear and jump up and down on people’s heads. It was a spread of information – which is, of course, exactly what Carter-Ruck and Trafigura didn’t want, so in this case the medium really worked for the issue.
I also quite like the way it’s worked politically – yes, the Prime Minister jumping on a bandwagon that is already rolling, in his call to investigate these super-injunctions (but I happen to like the bandwagon). But it was a bandwagon that actually started where it should have started – in good journalism by the likes of the Guardian and Newsnight, and in a question by an MP who actually decided he cared enough to ask the Justice Secretary a question about the injunction banning publication of references to a report (this one, here, on wiki-leaks). The dog did actually cause the tail to wag, created a broader public discourse and got some traction on the issue. This is good – long may it continue.
Oh, and you can see Newsnight’s report on #trafigura, here.
BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson’s latest blog post is interesting. Turns out even politicians and party members don’t show up to listen to a roll of speeches at conventions. Colour me surprised. Even at academic conventions the best part of panels is often the Q & A session.
But here’s the problem – if even the above mentioned hacks aren’t engaged with the main substance of these conferences, why the hell would anyone else be? If, even when you join a party you’re not getting to discuss or debate the issues, because the leadership are too scared of being seen to be uncertain or disorganised, what is the point of joining at all?
If decisions are made by those who show up, and the number of people showing up is getting ever smaller, what happens to the quality of decision-making?
The BBC and other media cover all the conferences, so you get some sense of the broader debate between the parties, and in parliament, thank heavens, they all still yell at each other a lot. But how do the parties come to their decisions? Well, right now it seems like two or three guys in a room with a lot of polling data. Which is a pretty crappy way to decide anything, even with the wonders of modern statistical analysis and polling. Plus, what about the things they don’t poll on? John Zaller once asked, “If the public had an opinion and there was no pollster around to measure it, would public opinion exist?”(1) It might not as an entity, but it would as individual opinions; but would these actually ever get reflected in policy-making? Almost certainly not. And is that really representative democracy?
Dear Politicians,
Do you remember that line in exam questions? It used to feature notably in maths and science. SHOW YOUR WORKINGS. When the media and the public are interested in debate and dissent, it isn’t (just) because all they want is scandal and gossip. It’s because that’s the most interesting bit – the bit that shows HOW and WHY you got to the policies you did. To take the exam analagy to the edge of sanity, it enables those of us marking you to decide whether we want to give you points for your workings, even if we’re not totally convinced the end result is right. Maybe if we get to ask you some more questions about it, you could fix that. If you know, you had workings that you could build on. The workings, the debate and, yes, even the dissent are the bits that make the answer – your policy. If you miss them out, you’re over-confident, and we don’t know we can trust you. So bring ‘em back. K?
Me x
(1) John Zaller (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge) p.265
I was just listening to last week’s Start the Week, from the Cheltenham Literary Festival. We shall leave aside that nice Robert Fox, who, according to google, writes for the Guardian, and his thoughts about Herodotus and Thucydides being “dashed good reporters”, and the eyewitness nature of Pericles Funeral Oration, because it leads to irateness where there need be none. For the programme featured Simon Schama, the celebrity historian most dear to my heart because he does his own research, writes a dream and does incredibly good analysis-through-narrative, and because his book on the French Revolution is A-Mazing, talking to Andrew Marr, BBC reporter/presenter who would have all my devotion even if I hadn’t seen the clips of him doing the Timewarp in pink fishnet tights and leather shorts for Children in Need, about American history and politics. My brain went to its happy place of nerdiness.
The frustration of many over the inability of the US debates monitors to actually guide and focus the debates has been fairly clear for the last month.
Last night, the BBC’s American editor got a leeeetle over excited: “2117: Yippee! Schieffer actually interrupted Obama to point out that he had to answer the question – not sure he did answer it but it was a brave effort. He did it again with McCain. He’s already earned his 1000000000 billion dollar salary.”
He’s been yearning to unleash Paxman or Humphrys on the candidates for weeks…
Maybe if the BBC insists on cutting the wages of some of its journalists, the likes of Paxman, Humphrys and Marr could start an interviewing school for other nations who lack the benefit of their skillz.
I’d never heard of Russell Howard till a week and a half ago. Now this is one of my favourite pieces of news comedy from this year. It is absolutely spot on, and hilarious. It’s from Mock the Week.
