"As fruitful as arguing that a prawn should be a giraffe"

Newsnight's one redeeming feature - poor, worn-out, disenchanted, utterly-bored-to-tears Jeremy Paxman - has written an article for the Grauniad laying into philosopher Alain de Botton and his much-plugged views on the news. (We even plugged A de B here at "Is".) 

It's hardly a profound piece, but it certainly made me laugh. 

Of course, some people will pick up on the perfect translation of Paxo's trademark arched eyebrow and sneer into prose in this passage: 

Thanks be, Alain de Botton has come among us again, as he does so often when we're perplexed. Anxious about whether you understand art? Do you appreciate sex properly? What's religion about? How can you be happy? Fear not, De Botton can tell you, quickly and easily. Not since Moses went up a mountain and came down carrying a couple of slabs of granite reducing life to 10 commandments has anyone been able to reduce the complex enigmas of existence down to simple injunctions. The man has a solution for everything.

Or this delicious turn of phrase (perfectly capturing former BBC Head of News turned Professor of Media Studies at Cardiff University, Richard Sambrook, perhaps?):

Reporters in rehab (now often posing as professors of media studies)...

The Daily Mail has also been quick to spot and blow up a passing dig at the Newsnight presenter's BBC colleague Huw Edwards...

Admittedly Huw Edwards can come across like some evangelical preacher on a wet Sunday morning in Merthyr Tydfil

...turning it into "an extraordinary attack" and "a bizarre feud". Which calls for this image:

But Jeremy Paxman had some interesting things to say about the news as well. 

His article begins, with plenty of the the studious cynicism for which he's known:

What is news? To judge from the daily newspapers and TV bulletins we can discard my favourite definition – that it is something that someone somewhere doesn't want us to know.

Jeremy's conspiratorial definition of the news (which he then dismisses) is something which will resonate with many of the BBC's critics (and critics of Newsnight). 

For those of us on the mainstream Right (as we see ourselves) - the Biased BBC/Daily Mail/Is the BBC biased?/Daily Telegraph/Not a Sheep/The Commentator tendency - that's a definition which finds itself crossing our minds, from time to time, to varying degrees, probably without us even being aware of it having done so.

For example, from Quentin Letts at the Daily Mail and Damian Thompson at the Telegraph, through to many commenters at Biased BBC - and, well away from the mainstream Right, Roy Greenslade at the Guardian too - many people have been aghast (if not exactly surprised) that the BBC has (at least until this afternoon) resolutely avoided reporting the Harriet Harman-Jack Dromey-Tessa Jowell PIE/NCCL paedophile allegations being made by the Mail - a story the Mail has been making hay with for several days now (and which other papers have subsequently taken up). 

Except for Prof. Greenslade of the Graun, all the above have seen that refusal to cover the story by the BBC as clear evidence of pro-Labour bias on the BBC's part - and a case of "something that someone somewhere [the BBC and the Labour Party] doesn't want us to know". 

What's changed today that finally provoked the BBC to break cover (keeping with this way of thinking), is that Harriet Harman and her husband have now denounced the Mail's investigation as a "smear". The BBC, so it seems, now feel safe to leap into action in response. Clicking its heels, so to speak, at Hattie's command.

I doubt that example was in Paxo's mind though.

His main point seems to be that the news just isn't interesting enough these days, that the news needs to be perpetually new and surprising:

Astonishing events that burst into our consciousness with the impact of the attack on the Twin Towers are very rare indeed. Most of the rest is just regurgitated announcement, speech or advertisement. Sometimes, the press release has scarcely been rewritten. Maybe that's why so many people don't seem to be paying much attention any more.

That's far too world-weary (and wrong-headed) for me. There's plenty going on, and novel excitements aren't everything (or anything much). 

Just because Jeremy is bored and just because Ian Katz's Newsnight isn't interested in covering the lurch into leftist authoritarian - and the reactive protests - in post-Chavez Venezuela, for example, doesn't mean that it's not a story of importance for our times, telling us important things about radical chic regimes and their way of degenerating into Gadaffiesque strangeness (or, in Maduro's case, extreme mediocrity) and cruelty.

Still, I've got to concede that there is some truth in this:

Technology has eliminated time-delay and now enables us to be virtually present at any event, almost anywhere. Enjoying lives of greater comfort and safety than ever before, we can be regaled in our own sitting rooms with mayhem or misery from most corners of the globe. But the more news there is, the less anyone really needs it. The result, too often, is paralysis – information overload. What are we to do with it all?

And, in a dig that I think applies to many a BBC editor (Newsnight's Ian Katz included), I rather liked this:

When it comes to it, news is just some things that have happened, as chosen by some not-very-interesting people running newspapers and television.

These people have rather predictable tastes and rather obvious blindspots. 

Don't they just! (See our coverage of Newsnight and Sunday for evidence of that). 

The most exciting bit for me involved that old chestnut - one which gets me and Sue playing conkers with each other from time to time: the question of impartiality v advocacy for the 'best kinds of bias'. Paxo is on my side here:

De Botton's cure for the indifference that afflicts so many of us when confronted with tidings of some awful human tragedy far away is for the news to be less preoccupied with accuracy and more with advocacy. Fine if De Botton is the advocate-in-chief. But just supposing that George Galloway, David Icke or Abu Hamza got the job?

Anyhow, in the spirit of Newsnight's David Bowie tribute act, I think the last word is best left to the Thin White Duke himself:

All the young dudes/Carry the news/Boogaloo dudes/Carry the news. 

I can imagine Newsnight editor Ian Katz sagely nodding his head at that (like it actually means anything).

Do we care?

I see Archie Bland has reviewed Alain de Botton’s book in the Indy.  Unlike Craig and me, Archie’s actually read it, and even though I suspect he’s a bit of a lefty, he’s not keen. “Simplistic and ultimately flawed.” We, however are going merely by what we’ve heard on the BBC.

A few days ago, unbeknownst to me, Craig was writing about Alain de Botton at the same time as I was, and would you believe it, we came to similar conclusions. For example Craig outlined Alain’s theory:

“Too much information "starts to numb you", and makes you forget what you're interested in and what can be changed. "Rather than making us more political, an excess of information can erode any real sense of what the priorities really are." This, he suggested, is a sly way of maintaining the status quo.”

Craig observed:

“Well, yes, the news does give you too much news at times. But then it's the news. That's what the news is.” 

Hundreds of miles away I was tapping out:

“So Alain de Botton thinks we, the public, have been anaesthetised by news ‘overload’, and the sheer volume turns it all into meaningless white noise. 

As a result, we don’t care enough about things we should care about.  By deduction I gather Alain would prefer us to be guided by news gatherers or editors; people who are clever enough to sift through it and determine what is newsworthy and what is not, and by doing so show us what we should care about. (What they think we should care about.) Which is what more or less what already happens, don’t you know.”

(I always thought that making people care was the job of drama, art and literature. I thought that news reporting was primarily reporting News. ‘new things’.)

That’s why we’re here doing this and overloading the interweb with more stuff. We’re saying that this ‘manipulation’ is already being done, covertly, by the BBC, Channel 4 and much of the press. They may overload our consciousness with ‘too much’ news, but much of it is weighted by means of selective discussions and analyses, and of course omissions.

If indeed there’s no alternative to human-generated news, which is inherently partial and biased, (yes it is Craig) claims of impartiality are unrealistic, and somewhat dishonest. Especially because the bias isn’t ....(what’s that thing that everything ought to be?) ...transparent! 

The BBC’s (inherent) bias isn’t delivered in an overt fashion, because it’s not supposed to be there.  Much of the agenda isn’t made clear. If the BBC genuinely aspires to impartiality as per its charter, the biases and affiliations of politically motivated reporters, experts or talking heads should be made known to the audience, as per the BBC’s own guidelines. 

The  viewer should be credited with enough intelligence to put into context words uttered by polemicists or activists, provided they’re consistently introduced as such,. 

The problem seems to be that if the BBC’s worldview is homogeneously left-leaning, then the only bias they and their left-leaning listeners would recognise is the bias of the ‘other’.

Craig points out that we...

“can go online and click on the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Economist websites and read plenty of in-depth coverage about a vast number of stories, week in and week out. If you're interested in a story, we have a large and diverse media beyond the BBC that can fill in all the gaps and extend a story almost to infinity.”

 As for the theory that the BBC is propping up the status quo, I’m not at all sure how anyone came to that conclusion. It seems to me that the BBC often behaves like a rebellious teenager, cheekily defying some imaginary authority. The BBC is seemingly alone in being unaware that they themselves have become the new authority, wielding extraordinary influence in the irresponsible, willy-nilly manner of those who don’t know their own strength.

  

Then Craig tackles ‘Bias’, and isn’t wholly convinced by Alain’s (and my) contention that (sorry for the repetition) that human-generated news is inherently biased, but quite reasonably adds: 

“I still don't think though that the attempt to be objective and fair in your reporting of what you see is a bad thing.” 

Absolutely not. It’s no bad thing at all. That’s why there should be: a) awareness of their own lack of objectivity when it occurs: b) balance over time: c) transparency.

Determining the “best kinds” of bias is subjective, but these are some of the thoughts I scribbled before I read Craig’s post. 

“We have the BBC’s infamous charter which contains the unachievable obligation to be impartial. I have always contended that literal impartiality is unachievable so long as it emanates from animate objects (humankind) but that if, in the absence of universal newsbots, there is to be an inherent bias it should be under the auspices of some sort of moral compass. Here in Britain that roughly corresponds with what we call the Judeo-Christian ethos. Do as you would be done by, etc. etc.

Now though, the whole country’s moral compass seems to have gone awry. Complaints about bias often focus on the BBC’s hell-bent quest for a superficial kind of impartiality, which entails studiously avoiding the value judgement altogether, often with inhuman zeal. 

It eschews the once familiar moral compass, and strays into self-loathing and that new fangled, indiscriminate tolerance of the intolerant. 

Even if the news avalanche suddenly stuck to ‘facts’ without loading them with bias by omission, moral equivalence or inexplicable editorial decisions, flagship programmes with their endless analyses by BBC hacks still select ‘what is news’.  Without making an obvious value judgement, even when a value judgement couldn’t be more obvious if it came up and punched you in the face, the elite gaggle of agenda-driven ‘experts-on-speed-dial’ still guide you persuasively towards the appropriate conclusion.   

Surely this amounts to telling us what to care about, and one obvious example is the serial plugging of Alain de Botton’s book. They’ve made Craig and me care about it, apparently.

Alain de Botton's take on the news

Slipping back to the subject of Newsnight, one of its most talked-about features this week was a piece by philosopher Alain de Botton. It tackled the subject of 'the news' itself, and was highly critical of modern newsgathering and reporting.

It was certainly interesting to have Alain de Botton on Newsnight giving an intellectual's two-fingered salute to media organisations like the BBC - and doing so on one of the BBC's own programmes. His short report was so packed with ideas - some initially persuasive, others less so - that it needed re-watching. 

A studio discussion followed, with Jeremy Paxman acting as ringmaster. In the ring with Alain was Newswatch's Samira Ahmed and the man who poisoned public life in the UK, Alistair Campbell (not that that was how Newsnight introduced him). Samira held her ground well against the collective criticisms of Messrs de Botton and Campbell and ended by accusing the Newsnight editor (the famous Ian Katz) of refusing to come on Newswatch. Sue rightly described her as being 'on fire'.

That's the background. Now for what Alain de Botton argued. 

He began by saying that the news doesn't come with instructions. Children are taught at school how to analyse books and pictures "but no one ever tells you how to make sense of that far more questionable art form, the news."

We're taught to analyse Shakespeare but not the celebrity section of the Daily Mail.

Well, up to a point Alain. He seems to have forgotten that much-maligned but still-surviving subject, available in many schools, Media Studies, plus the sheer wealth of higher education Media Studies courses being offered (and snapped up). 

Still, children (and adults) should be encouraged to look at the news through partly sceptical eyes. Too many people take what they read, see and hear at face value. That probably should be taught in schools (as part of English?)

He then noted that the news is far more powerful at "shaping how we view political and economic reality". 

Well, that's so obviously true as to be almost a truism. Part of the logic behind blogs like this and Biased BBC is based on that obvious fact.

He then gave his list of what he finds questionable about the news. 

Firstly, Excess. 

Too much information "starts to numb you", and makes you forget what you're interested in and what can be changed. "Rather than making us more political, an excess of information can erode any real sense of what the priorities really are." This, he suggested, is a sly way of maintaining the status quo.

Well, yes, the news does give you too much news at times. But then it's the news. That's what the news is. 

Still, I can see his point that the news as we get it, say, on the BBC News at Six or Today does bombard us with a mass of stories and then moves on to another story and another story. You generally get glimpses of a story at its dramatic beginnings then fail to be shown the aftermath. Some other big story takes its place. 

That, however, doesn't take account of the fact that I can go online and click on the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Economist websites and read plenty of in-depth coverage about a vast number of stories, week in and week out. If you're interested in a story, we have a large and diverse media beyond the BBC that can fill in all the gaps and extend a story almost to infinity. 

Plus Alain's point is clearly shading into Adam Curtis left-wing conspiracy theory/paranoia territory - or, to put it more neutrally, into that sector of opinion (found on Twitter and Media Lens) that the BBC and the mainstream UK media are all about propping up the status quo rather than encouraging radical change.

That is the claim that the BBC has an agenda. 

Many on the Right have their own mirror image version of that claim, that the BBC is all about undermining traditional British values and promoting progressive social and political change. 

Both can't be right, but it doesn't necessarily mean that one of them can't be right, of course.

His second point  concerns Bias - and here he's singing rather more from the same spreadsheet as Is's very own Sue, and rather against my own instincts on the subject:  

Thoughtful people often imagine that what makes news organisations serious and worthy is their ability to provide us with information that's unbiased, but this bias against bias is fundamentally mistaken. Facts only become meaningful to us when they slot into some picture of what matters. Neutrality is simply impossible vis a vis the biggest questions. Think of the big figures of history - Plato, the Buddha, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. All of these have been highly biased. Their judgements were anything but perfectly balanced. We don't need news stripped of bias. We need news presented to us with the best kinds of bias.

The more I've written this blog and the more Sue has debated this issue with me, the more I can see the truth of their shared point about the impossibility of neutrality. I still don't think though that the attempt to be objective and fair in your reporting of what you see is a bad thing. 

Plus we probably all, wherever we come from politically, really feel (in our heart of hearts) that news organisations should present news "with the best kinds of bias" - and I can also see that now. 

Unfortunately, I think this inevitably means "my kinds of bias" - even if we're never likely to admit this to ourselves. (Most people aren't, I think, as generous as they like to think they are to their opponents' way of thinking. And I include myself in that). 

. 

Plus I suspect that Alain de Botton's view of what constitutes "the best kinds of bias" is rather different to mine - and I don't want to pay for the privilege of having someone else's very different "best kinds of bias" imposed upon me, if my own "best kinds of bias" are marginalised as a result. 

(Actually that's rather how I feel at the moment about having to endure the BBC's biased version of neutrality.)

This then, surely, is an argument for doing away with the BBC's pretence of neutrality and having it (a) gather together the broadest possible range of opinionated people as its reporters and presenters and giving fair coverage to all their points of views or (b) becoming the UK equivalent of MSNBC in rival to, say, a newly-constituted Sky News acting as the UK equivalent of FOX News. 

Alain de B's third questionable aspect was styled Narrow Minded (above). Alain somewhat reverted to Pilger/Curtis territory again here, but I suspect many economic liberals who want to see a radically-reduced state might see his essential point and agree with it - and many others might agree with it on a whole range of other points too:

The news may tell us what's happening in the Economic Establishment but it fails to tell us what might or should happen. It sets an agenda but this agenda is woefully limited. The so-called debate about the economy doesn't stray beyond some tightly defined lines, restricting the audience's understanding of what's actually possible. Alternative views soon end up in the territory of what's dismissed as 'radical', 'ridiculous'.

'Outlying' positions on many social and political subjects can be interesting, and might even be valid. Some are simply incendiary. 

The restriction of debate to the usual narrow range of voices, plus the odd token 'not-too-far-out' 'radical voice', is common at the BBC. (This morning's Sunday was an absolutely classic example of that). So I can see some truth in Alain's argument here. 

Whether he'd want the same 'radical' and 'ridiculous' people as I want to see brought back in from the cold at the BBC I rather doubt - and vice versa. 

Next up was Anger. 

The news terrifies us every day about floods, fires, cancer, and at the same time it makes us furious, mainly at apparently incompetent people running the country, messing things up. News outlets badly need their audiences to be agitated, frightened and bothered a lot of the time.  And yet we have an even greater responsibility to try to remain resilient and to see that the news is at least, in part, winding us up for its own ends - to keep itself in a job.

Doesn't that rather contradict his earlier point about how those self-same media outlets are trying to numb us into submission to the status quo?

Obviously, there's some truth in A de B's point here though. You hear Radio 4 folk and Guardian-reading types saying that all the time about the Daily Mail of course - and not entirely without justification - though similar kinds of complaint can be turned back on Radio 4 and the Guardian with their own brands of 'anger'-inducing story (over cuts, Islamophobia, bankers' bonuses, Western foreign policy, Israel, etc). 

We're into a very old argument here about whether the media should concentrate on 'good news stories' as much as 'bad news stories', and whether the public would actually want to see lots and lots of 'good news stories'. Do we not like getting hot and bothered about stuff? The stuff that agitates us (like BBC bias!) also interests us, and we seem to gravitate towards reading it. 

Maybe more of a balance between 'good news' and 'bad news' is needed. That seems desirable to me. But push it too far and viewers might well become bored. 

Alain de Botton's next topic was Who cares? and returned us to a subject discussed on Newsnight a couple of week's ago (and discussed at Is too).

We hear about terrible catastrophes all the time - 300 gone here, a thousand starving there - and yet, in our hearts, we all know we don't much care. Is it because we're shallow and cold? No. It's just that the news doesn't help us to care because it parachutes us into places only when disaster strikes but we can't care about people in trouble when we didn't know them when things were OK. We need to know the steady state of a land before we can be motivated to care about its crises.  

I do think that's true. We do seem to care more if it's about people we know better or like better. Thus disasters in America seem to hit us emotionally much more than disasters in China, because we know America so well from TV and films and popular culture, and disasters in countries that aren't full of people who hate us (the Philippines, most recently) draw our sympathy more than those in countries that do hate us (like Pakistan). 

Finally, to end with, came the word Endless. 

The news ends up corrupting us with a sense of the overwhelming importance of our own era and concerns - our debt, our affairs, our parties, our rogue missiles - but a good life involves realising their are moments when the news no longer has anything important to teach us, when we have to leave it behind to focus more intently on some of our own anxieties and hopes in the brief time we're all allotted. 

Again, doesn't this rather contradict Alain's first point, about the danger of us becoming numb to the news and not feeling motivated to bring about change?

Still, though it's a rather sweeping point, it's probably one that will resonate with a lot of people (including bloggers).

It does unconsciously resonate with a lot of people already, as most people's interest in current affairs does seem very limited, often barely existent. Large swathes of British people must, therefore, already be enjoying the good life, as they have precious little interest in the news and are already content to focus more intently on their own anxieties and hopes, in between watching episodes of Eastenders and Coronation Street. 

Wonder if Alain has realised that, and what he thinks about it?

Well, so much for my ramblings on the subject. Time to go and focus on my anxieties over a nice cup of tea.