24th August 2022
This blog has been mentioned today by Emily Maitlis in her MacTaggert lecture.
At 23:34.
The post she refers to is here – about how various constitutional ‘gatekeepers’ failed to prevent this government openly proposing to deliberately break international law.
The lecture is about the challenges for journalism in this age of populism.
If you would like to comment on her lecture generally – or her reference to this blog in particular – please do so below.
And thank you for following and in many cases supporting this blog – for without your following and support this blog would never have been in a position to be cited in such a prestigious lecture!
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Emily Maitlis, along with Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, has a new podcast launching in a week. Could there be an opportunity for a regular guest slot for an expert legal commentator?
That would be great. The people of the U.K. need all the critical examination of what has been going on that can be provided by the likes of Emily Maitlis, and Lewis Goodall and others.
Congratulation, David. It was an insightful, intelligent piece of work that greatly helped me in understanding the weaknesses inherent in our democracy.
Just listened to it. Deserved credit for your blog. A lot to take in for an hour. Might be better as a Ted talk or TikTok. Demonstrates why your short sharp sentence approach works so well.
If time is at a premium, try playing it at 1.75x — , which is approximately the speed at which it would come off the page.
I would take in even less at 1.75 – time isn’t the issue for me. But thank you for the suggestion.
A very interesting and insightful lecture, but it’s a shame it’s taken excellent journalists like Emily Maitlis such a long time to realise their reactions to populism were part of the problem. The BBC is already hobbled by the current compliant DG who seems determined to “bothside” the entire Corporation.
It was the BBC that enabled Nigel Farage to be such a populist influence. He is the perfect example of what bothsiding does. Everytime the BBC needed a balancing voice to represent an anti-EU position, or later a pro-Brexit voice on Question Time (or any news discussion) Nigel would get the call. Espousing what was then a minority view but his frequent appearances gave him a powerful platform and put his views to a wider public. Angry about how they’d lost out over austerity and willing believe Farage’s UKIP rhetoric explained their loss.
The same has happened with Climate Change. There has always been a near complete consensus on the greenhouse effect and the resultant warming of the climate, but the big news organisations felt they had to give equal prominence to the small minority of climate change deniers, allowing them to push their message and create doubt where none had been before.
I was pleased Maitlis defended the Cummings Newsnight intro. I invested a lot of time complaining to the BBC about their treatment of her, as if she alone wrote the introduction. She was hung out to dry to satisfy the government. Everything was deadbatted back, first misrepresenting my views, then flatly denying what to me was obvious. I escalated it to OFCOM, on the grounds that the BBC editorial guidelines and compliance managers were to blame if that introduction was thought to be biased, not Maitlis for reading out the approved script. Unsurprisingly I have heard nothing from OFCOM since.
At least with Climate Change, the BBC has designated subject-matter journalists who make factual reports. I think they should have appointed a previously unknown person to educate the public about the EU, in the same way that James Burke educated us about the Apollo Space programme.
The only factual programmes I saw were presented by Paxman, Robinson and Kuenssberg, and the first two came over to me as quite EU-sceptic, though Paxman has since said he voted to remain.
More of that, and fewer shouty debates would have probably ended up in a more informed result. The BBC utterly failed to fulfill its mission to inform.
She was greatly restricted in what she could say until she left their employment.
Kevin, the example you give of Nigel Farage being “the perfect example of what bothsiding does” seems to me to be largely incorrect.
The fault isn’t with “bothsiding” per se, as you would have it, but with the BBC’s decision to invite Nigel Farage to speak. And why did they do that? Because Farage has/had a much better understanding of the electorate and their concerns, because he spoke to people, widely, on a constant basis. I’m not going to argue he was correct in his views or that he somehow manipulated the BBC into always turning to him for the counterpoint.
Instead, I’m going to point out that if there is a fault, it lies with the producers of BBC News, who became lazy, who decided he was “good for ratings”, or because he simply said, “Yes!” whenever they asked for a volunteer to speak. You can and indeed should argue that the BBC failed to provide a representative view of the Leave campaign – especially when, like the Remain campaign, it was a broad, cross-party coalition.
The fault here lies with the mainstream media. Fat and lazy.
Farage was just an opportunist whose willingness to engage caught the establishment buy surprise.
Sadly the Maitlis YouTube video is not available in Australia.
Excellent lecture. Well, the BBC is the licenced fool and we its licenced viewers, a slightly schizoid position for all concerned.
To quote Swift:- “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”.
We are still living with the success of Edward Bernays who pointed the way for governments and politicians to use spin effectively. Spin is easier and cheaper than bashing one’s head against reality, so use plenty of spin, you know it makes sense. He exhibited an interesting split between his personal and professional life.
Boris’s spin doctor is Guto Harri. Interesting chap illustrating a similar personality split to Bernays etc. His predecessor Jack Doyle seems a slightly more quotidian character. But Trump is the master of them all, he is a natural.
Cheer up. We have only a few days to wait before we get to see who the next incumbent(s) will be. Then we can look forward to the mind numbing tedium of the party conferences logoed condoms and all.
Oops – licensed fool.
Congratulations DAG. Reference well deserved. Your blogs have joined the FT and Private Eye as my “must reads”.
If people are not to flee towards media outlets that reinforce their existing prejudices, then public broadcasters have to be willing to cater for a wide range of opinions (but, obviously, within legal limits). To form an objective picture of any conflict, surely it is necessary to have some understanding of the point of view of the different parties? The problem isn’t giving someone like Farage a platform, but not subjecting his views to sufficiently rigorous critical analysis and scrutiny. Clegg wasn’t wrong to challenge Farage in debate but he was grievously at fault for being so underprepared. To put this in terms of issues rather than personalities, the answer to bigotry on the issue of immigration is not to avoid the subject, but to go into it in depth. The same applies to the climate emergency.
Before Climate Change (once called Global Warming) the strategy of creating the false impression of a real scientific debate – rather than the truth of the clear and unambiguous scientific consensus – was created over the safety of tobacco. And before that lead in petrol. For that, and CFCs, we can thank Thomas Midgley. (There are still elevated levels of lead in the air in London, despite it being banned for decades – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57564953 )
You will always find some crackpot who will claim the Earth is flat, or that the Apollo astronauts never landed on the Moon. Some may actually believe their nonsense. But the BBC and other mainstream media do not need to give them a megaphone to spout their falsehoods.
Or indeed a platform for a populist demagogue like Farage.
Without wishing to seem apocalyptic. If it looks like a coup, sounds like a coup and walks like a coup, the it probably is a coup. The only redeeming feature is that the present cabal in government lack the moral certainty to make the last step. Probably because people in the army have given them a stiff talking to. Sorry that this comment lacks the legal scholarship of David.