Wednesday, 31 August 2016

Clowns v experts



Having been at work all day, I've not heard much of Radio 4 - other than catching up with that Gus O'Donnell documentary and hearing PM as I drove home. 

I did, however, hear Steve Hewlett's interview with former BBC DG Mark Thompson on this afternoon's The Media Show and was struck by two things:

Firstly, the specific examples of 'wrong use of language' that Mark Thompson used to bolster his argument that "something has gone wrong with political language and it's making it harder to have serious public debates about important issues" in the UK and the US included a couple of recent examples from British politics - both from the Leave side of the EU referendum: "take back control" and "our Independence Day".  

And, secondly, that Steve Hewlett pushed a 'Roy Greenslade/Timothy Garton Ash (etc)' line of questioning on how the BBC had reported the referendum, and whether BBC guidelines should be changed to stop the BBC treating both sides of a referendum equally - or as Steve 'n' Mark put it, treating 'Coco the Clown' on one side with the same respect as a 'world-leading expert' on the other. 

Mark Thompson duly went along with Steve's line of questioning and agree that if there's another referendum it should be conducted differently by the BBC and that 'Coco the Clown' on one side shouldn't be accorded the same respect as the 'world-leading expert' on the other. 

I think it's not hard to guess where that kind of argument is intended to take us - especially if there's another referendum.