29th September 2022
This was not a good day for the new Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss.
Liz Truss crumbles under questioning from @GrahamLiver on @BBCLancashire about local consent for fracking. pic.twitter.com/nDp2t5815P
— Dino Sofos (@dinosofos) September 29, 2022
And that was just one of many local radio interviews, which are collected together here:
Just dropped. All the BBC Local Radio interviews Liz Truss in one place @BBCSounds 👇👇 https://t.co/HigkqBPVTv
— Robert Thompson (@thomprobert) September 29, 2022
The interviews were excruciating.
And they were very effective:
This round of short interviews, where Truss is attacked on a different front every ten minutes, expose her weakness, the sound bites and the media training, far more than a single high-profile piece would have done.
— Caroline Dodds Pennock (@carolinepennock) September 29, 2022
One reaction to this round of interviews was to praise local journalists for pressing this hard questions about urgent matters.
But this was not mere local journalism, it was journalism.
And it showed up, by relief, how hard questions about urgent matters are not similarly pressed at the national level.
There are some very fine national journalists, in the so-called lobby and otherwise.
But there is also what can be called an information economy.
A national political journalist is often only as good as their access to political information that is not otherwise available.
Of course: there is a need for off the record and background conversations.
But.
Politicians and their advisers take advantage of the need for a supply of information and so can exclude any journalist who pressed hard questions about urgent matters.
This means that the only broadcast and newsprint journalists who will press on regardless are those who are so established no longer need to be supplied by the information economy of Westminster.
And such established media figures will often have their own agendas and prejudices too.
But for an up-and-coming political journalist there is a constant risk of exclusion from the information economy.
And it is easier to state the problem rather than to fix it.
One possibility is that the news media shy away from using stories where there is nobody on the record.
But if one news media site does this, then it will be at a competitive disadvantage.
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My own approach to commentary and journalism is to rely as much as possible on public domain sources – asking hard questions of texts rather than of people, and comparing (and contrasting) multiple documents.
But that sort of commentary and journalism can only go so far, and the human elements of policy and law making need there to be journalists who ask questions of politicians.
And politicians need to face such questions, as it is a good discipline.
Accountability leads, generally, to better government.
So it would benefit everyone involved if the Westminster information economy was made more, well, more efficient.
And, if so, a Prime Minister would not be able to tell the difference between quizzed by a national journalist and a local journalist.
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Given I know nothing about how to produce current affairs broadcasts, this might be a ridiculous thing to say.
But this morning made me wonder if the answer is for the BBC to make more use of its journalists around the country. Have them do interviews on Newsnight or The World At One. Make better use of this superb resource the BBC have.
As well as driving better and more accountable government, it might also help connect Westminster political circles with the rest of the population. Might even help the BBC’s political team to win some trust back.
I think what we saw this morning was very slightly different.
There’s a “Westminster Bubble” when it comes to political reporting… the sitting government control their message by controlling who has access to ministers and who ministers give interviews to. It is very simple and very effective – if as a journalist you ask tough questions of a minister, you will be blacklisted.
What we saw today was a set of questions from journalists who won’t get another chance to ask this PM questions (because she won’t last that long) and they decided to “go for it”. By virtue of being outside the Westminster bubble, they were able to ask tough, direct questions, and the PM failed appallingly.
But push further with your question. The British political system is designed such that HM Opposition has a key roll in holding the government to account – through for example PMQs. Yet just look at the thatrical farce that PMQs has become – it is little more than a handful of ivory-tower politicians trading bon-mots with their mates. It’s “yah-boo politics” of the worst kind.
And our PM was shown to be insensitive.
I have long thought a couple of female primary teachers on any interrogatory panel would be very effective.
“…wonder if the answer is for the BBC to make more use of its journalists around the country. ”
Lovely idea, but then you have the problem of getting the usual suspects out of the Westminster bubble and into the sticks: I imagine that’s suddenly a far less attractive proposition.
If political journalists at a national level, for various reasons, are not prepared to ask the hard questions of those in power, i.e. to hold power to account, does this sound like a functioning fourth estate and in turn a functioning democracy to you?
Kudos to all those “real” journalists today for exposing what those of us paying attention had already worked out.
Agree with you on the defects of our media and democracy. I feel pretty hopeless about the chances of doing anything of significance to improve either.
“Who bells the cat?”
That was a remarkable 59 minutes and thirty-something seconds of audio. The pauses before Liz Truss answered to some of the questions were both shocking and so telling.
I was disappointed that it was only in the last 5 minutes or so that she was pushed hard on the question of the abolition of the 45% tax rate, because that is so completely unjustifiable it would have been nice to put her on the record.
Her misrepresentation of tax rates was shocking – does she not remember that we used to have a 60% tax rate for the highest earners – until Margaret Thatcher came to power?
Most of all, it was her unwillingness to accept personal responsibility – when asked why it was necessary for the BoE to step in and rescue her policy change, she deflected to say that the BoE was independent.
I think what we saw here is fall-out from a massive mis-calculation on her part. Truss thought that she could offer “everyone” a 1% income tax cut [which got zero airtime, tellingly] and by sleight-of-hand slip a much bigger prize to the wealthiest. Clearly she didn’t expect the blow-back she is now getting.
But the most interesting thing for me here is a different question: exactly how were these economic proposals actually decided?
What we haven’t heard is that the various changes were discussed across cabinet and that the cabinet collectively decided that the changes would be in the nation’s best interest.
Nothing has been said, but this looks more and more like a private little discussion between PM and Chancellor. I for one would like to see the BBC interview every single cabinet member and get them on record: What was your participation in the setting of the budget? How did you evaluate the impact of the budget on your department? What source data did you use? Did you consult with the Bank of England? Why didn’t you use the OBR?
And:
You have said that everything you did was to keep prices and inflation down and spur growth. Please go on record with your forecast data that shows what you are expecting to get as a result of these changes. We will come back to you in a year from now and we can all see how well your plans have fared…”
And if the cabinet refused to provide that data, then if I were a BBC News producer, I’d be off to legal to ask them to fire off a FOIA request.
Because I suspect that there is no substance behind this at all.
None whatsoever.
“Most of all, it was her unwillingness to accept personal responsibility – when asked why it was necessary for the BoE to step in and rescue her policy change, she deflected to say that the BoE was independent.”
She’s a free-market Tory politician – should we expect anything else?
I think we should. I think we should expect better of an elected leader.
“Nothing has been said, but this looks more and more like a private little discussion between PM and Chancellor. I for one would like to see the BBC interview every single cabinet member and get them on record: What was your participation in the setting of the budget? How did you evaluate the impact of the budget on your department? What source data did you use? Did you consult with the Bank of England? Why didn’t you use the OBR?”
Absolutely and not to mention, ‘What guidance did you seek in trying to understand the populace and how to sell your ideas to us so that we’d be on your side, rather than thoroughly sickened and demoralised?
These people don’t even have the subtlety of a thirsty rhinoceros.
It has now become quite clear that the “fiscal statement” was devised by Truss and Kwarteng advised by Minford and leading shady individuals from the IEA.
They have openly admitted it. The cabinet if they were given anything were presented with a fait accompli and all to scared / thick to voice any opposition.
I find myself listening more & more to the BBC World Service, as it cuts through the Westminster ‘information economy’ (in less polite terms, ‘media circus’) to cast light on global issues. The other end of the telescope to ‘local’ journalism…
“We will never get the right answers to our questions, until we ask the right questions” observed Norbert Weiner, father of cybernetics at MIT in the 1950s. Truss was asked the right questions. She just didn’t have the right (or any substantive) answers. (Why do politicians think we can’t see through the evasion, or do the spin doctors think a successfully evasive interview is a triumph? It isn’t.)
“Why do politicians think we can’t see through the evasion, or do the spin doctors think a successfully evasive interview is a triumph? It isn’t.”
Sadly, there’s a significant cohort of the electorate who will accept this behaviour, as long as the Tory’s propagandist client media tell them they should.
Part of the effectiveness was that they were local journalists; a number of them were able to ask questions linked to specific local effects in their patch. I think that made the questions have more bite and made it even more obvious when Truss tried to pivot away to generalities. It would have been harder for a national interviewer to ask those narrow questions both due to lack of specific knowledge and an assumption they need to be relevant to everyone.
To be fair, people with legal training who litigate develop an ability to construct a coherent narrative out of a pile of disorderly bits of information that I suspect is more sophisticated than many journalists’ if only because it must be so as to snag a judge’s imagination. (Disclosure: former US legal writing teacher opining.) More directly to your point, I refer you to Steven Colbert’s Washington Press Dinner speech (on the Tube of You), where he points out how much “journalism” has become a stenography of press releases. Ultimately if people want to be journalists not just – literally – reporters aka repeaters they will have to be willing to take risks. In the US, when the news folks had more declassė backgrounds they were at least freer to risk the little they had. Apparently having a journalism degree, or a six (or seven) figure salary is an excellent risk-taking damping device.
I’m not a supporter of the honours system but I think the nation should award a knighthood to whoever it was that told Liz Truss to give her interviews to provincial journalists for an easy ride.
It was probably Boris.
She made a mistake – not her first and definitely not her last. She assumed, ( she constantly assumes – frequently incorrectly) that the local hacks would be so impressed at her mere presence they would fawn all over her – the new PM in our neck of the woods, wow what an honour – she’s not even doing the national media.
What she discovered was, as David point out, is that these are seasoned journalists who never get the chance to speak truth to power and they weren’t going to pass up this chance – no way.
I have quite a lot of money that says she won’t do that again in a hurry. Meanwhile the water pouring in below the water line continues unabated….this can only stay afloat for so long, then it is going to sink!
I’m pretty certain that those long gaps of dead air after Truss was asked a question were not because she did not know the real answer but because she was calculating just how honest she could really be.
Her overall mantra was/is ‘I’m the one to make tough decisions’ and ‘I won’t be turned’
So what tough decisions has she made?
The budget statement was full of jam – tax cuts galore (yes massively benefitting the rich) so it was not ‘tough’.
The truth is that Truss & Kwarteng have not yet got round to dropping the other shoe which is that these tax cuts will be ‘paid for’ by swingeing cuts in services.
If you read ‘Britannia Unchained’ (its a quick read) it channels Ronald Reagan (the government is the enemy) and Newt Gingrich (starve the beast), & lays out a path to a libertarian utopia of a small government and a people supposedly now “free” to look after themselves.
The reality however is that its the old Golden Rule of libertarianism which is that ‘those who have the gold make all the rules’.
I really believe that people have not realised that the barbarians are not merely at the gates but have in fact occupied the high castle.
It’s not new. The Late Professor Ian Grimble referred to William of Normandy’s support-band as “the Norman crime-syndicate”.
The technical name for that high castle, by the way, is a “motte”, or if you want to impress at dinner parties, a “donjon”. The barbarians would say, (if they condescended to engage in debate), that they are simply reoccupying what they regard as theirs. They omit to mention that they built it in order to crush any restless natives. Part of our heritage, innit? Admission £15. Thank you. Would you like a guide-book?
Incidentally, and not totally unrelated, did me beady old ears deceive me, or did I hear on the radio in recent years a snippet about research which revealed a surprisingly close correspondence between present-day wealth-ownership and command of the sources thereof on the one hand, and, on the other, possession of an Anglo-Norman surname?
I’m afraid I over-promoted Dr. Grimble. He never held a professorial chair.
As a follow on I read in today’s Times (Oct 1) a front page interview with Simon Clark the Levelling Up Secretary who has at least been honest about the Truss/ERG plans. He says the people of the UK have been living in a ‘fools paradise for too long’ with a ‘very large welfare state’ and that the 45 billion of tax cuts must be balanced by ‘reduced public spending’ so Whitehall departments would ‘have to trim the fat’.
He opined that Truss ‘believes the markets have overreacted and will recover once they have seen her full plans’.
Given that Truss has for example talked of the need for people to buy their own health insurance its easy to see that the Tories have zero intention of properly funding what are the functions of government in a modern liberal social-democratic state.
Brace, Brace.
Very nice.
Two quick thoughts. The first is that Westminster political correspondents are specialists.
They have to cover Westminster minutiae day and night, no matter what the political weather.
It is human nature to develop some connections with sources, spokesmen and women and even the supporting world of lobbyists.
It is possible to be quite effective without being clubbable. But it’s a harder path. And journalism is an unrelenting grind of daily news stories.
I’d argue that the old booze economy of lunches for insights that Private Eye used to caricature has pretty much gone now. Everything isn’t always getting worse!
The second thought is related – but refers to your thoughts about regional journalists.
I remember one of the Magnum photo agency photographers explaining the difference between a gifted amateur and a top professional photographer once.
“Anyone can take a great photo. But professionals have to take a great photo regardless of the subject.”
And to clear – the human interest/warmth requirements of local radio journalists are challenging for the most cerebral of journos.
For an example of just how insidious and effective political corruption of journalism has become, try listening to any BBC News broadcasts early in the morning.
You will hear – almost every day – a journalist begin a piece with, “In a speech later today, the {Minister of your Choice} will say {something that hasn’t been said yet}.”
How is this corrupt?
Simple: No. 10 is turning the new media in to their own PR Firm. By doling out “exclusives” and “leaks” and having the news media carry the story, they get a delivery that’s far more polished than some of their own elected ministers could manage – topped off with the gravitas of the announcement coming from “The BBC”…
Obviously it isn’t just the BBC that gets manipulated in this way.
Politicians have weaponised “scoops”, “leaks” and the media and are using it to manipulate airtime and coverage to “bury bad news” and promote their own propaganda.
As citizens, we should expect our journalists to have integrity and refuse to carry these announcements. That it has become “the norm” at the BBC and elsewhere shows you just how corrupt the entire ecosystem has become.
Brian Redhead’s response to that complaint was, “The programme’s title is ‘Today’, not ‘Yesterday’.”