Tuesday 5 May 2015

Trivial pursuit

The BBC is not alone in whipping up irrelevant, distracting media frenzies about trivial matters, but it seems much more unseemly when it comes from the state broadcaster.


Why on earth has a tweet from an obscure Lib Dem about an alleged utterance by the Prime Minister (that was made long before the election campaign got its boots on) achieved such hysterical media focus to the exclusion of all else just as we are nearing the home straight? 

So bloody what if David Cameron did express a less than confident prediction about the future?
   
Even if David Cameron did deviate from the media-driven pretence that all parties are obliged to adhere to, i.e. that they are certain of winning an outright majority, so what?

All that hype merely opens the door to tedious denials, and worse, the inevitable twisting by all opponents, particularly Ed Miliband’s “Cameron has conceded defeat,” Clegg’s “Big fat lie” and various other posturing twaddle that has been whipped up by the media.

It has been another enormous unwanted distraction, just at a time when there are still important policies that haven’t been addressed. 

Mind you the policies that have been addressed have been presented to us in a spectacularly vacuous manner. Long lists promising motherhood and apple piedom, obviously based on the assumption that we, the general public, are all half-wits. 

The media has created a malignant stagnancy. If any politician steps out of line or says anything interesting, the media will get hold of it, magnify it, turn it inside out and upside down, misinterpret it, chew it up and spit it out.

Is that what we want? No. Not I.

I must say that some of the Labour party’s P.R. efforts are pure ‘Thick of it.”  The Edstone, Russell Brand, and the Steve Coogan party political broadcast. Has Steve Coogan gawn completely mad? Or is he a Tory and the laugh’s on us?
The Indy online clogs up my computer, but sometimes a bit of constipated internet has to be endured in the line of duty.



And don’t let’s get started on Eddie Izzard.  All I can say is....Why?

John Humphrys’s interview with Nick Clegg more or less encapsulated the distracting effect of the media’s intervention between the voter and the political party's true intentions. The media, as middle man, imposes a massive restriction on the electorate’s ability to access the facts. 

I do understand that possible political allegiances are important, and premature certainty about, say, the Lib Dems’ ‘red lines’ might affect the voter’s decision. But we also know that for that very reason, the politician cannot risk giving a direct answer. If it weren’t for the media’s meddling, twisting, spinning and interference they might just be able to be honest. We all know this, so why the pantomime?



Here’s what the BBC has to offer. Coalitions for dummies. It’s probably helpful, if anyone cares to read it, so I say they should just leave it at that, and let the electorate do what it will. 




4 comments:

  1. No stopping that Steph Hegarty is there?

    She puts it about that: "No political party has done more for hedge funds and bankers recently than Britain’s Conservatives" (RT from NYT)

    I tend to agree but that's not the point. The point surely is that we expect BBC journos to take a vow of political impartiality, not just on air but off as well, in terms of public pronouncements.

    This is direct intervention in the GE campaign and in a partial manner.

    Meanwhile, she's obviously realised that her earlier tweet on the attempted murder of free speech activists in Texas - putting about the horrendous slur that they WANTED to provoke a murderous attack - was a bit off. So she's got a clarification up now, giving IS an ambiguous slap on the wrist (for poor PR) and express her pleasure that the people at the event were not killed.

    By the way I am recommending the phrase "putting it about" to cover re-tweets since re-tweeting is obviously used as a "denial" tactic. But you are still "putting it about" as far as I am concerned.

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  2. "Why on earth has a tweet from an obscure Lib Dem about an alleged utterance by the Prime Minister (that was made long before the election campaign got its boots on) achieved such hysterical media focus to the exclusion of all else just as we are nearing the home straight?"

    I love the smell of a rhetorical question in the morning.

    The BBC's record of what is vitally important vs. what needs buried is getting a bit silly now.

    I note Labour's Lucy Powell, fresh from claiming to be unaware of the awkwardly gender-split party gathering, has now taken the #EdStone to new levels of farce by suggesting it will need to be more of a flip chart as things change.

    Now that... should be pretty high up the BBC 'news' lists.

    I doubt it will be.

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  3. David Preiser6 May 2015 at 00:24

    Hey, at least in your country the media - including the BBC these days - are chewing up and spitting out any slip by Labour and Miliband. In my country, most of the media not only refused to seriously look into the background of a Presidential candidate, they refused to investigate or question anything he did as President for years, and are now spending more time helping their next Democrat choice spin away the scandals.

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    1. "the media - including the BBC these days - are chewing up and spitting out any slip by Labour and Miliband"

      If I may beg to differ, such as the #Edifice, Loose Lips Lucy and the Party Gathering That Never Was, to name but three recently, were handled 'sensitively' to the point of oblivion by the BBC's main news and satirical brigades.

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