NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS

Jokes about the reports written by newly-engaged reporters, before they have honed their journalistic skills, are well-known.  These inexperienced writers are usually given assignments in the courts or local council meetings.  They end up writing reports like this:

“Mr Brown, asked whether he had been in the car at the time, replied, ‘No.  I was at home watching Coronation Street on television.  I had a curry for supper and a can of lager with it.’  The case continues.”  Such irrelevances often turn up again as jokes in Private Eye or similar humorous magazines.

There was a complaint on the radio the other morning that news reports in the media these days are always depressing.  If someone is rescued after a motor accident for example, so the complaint went, it never makes the news.  But a fatal car crash can be splashed across the front pages.  I suppose that’s inevitable.  Somehow ‘MAN IN CAR CRASH UNHURT’ doesn’t make for a very exciting headline and I probably wouldn’t read the whole article, even if a cub reporter adds information about what he was listening to on the radio at the time and what he had for lunch, etc.  But ‘M25 closed for 4 hours after man crashes through road barrier and dies on way to hospital’ has unfortunately more of a ring of a drama about it.

Anyway, in answer to the criticism about its news, the radio tried to issue a news bulletin with only positive and optimistic stories.  It included the ‘small earthquake in Peru; no one hurt.’ item, which rather spoilt it I thought, but otherwise it was OK.  I did feel better afterwards that, for once, seemingly there was no pain or suffering anywhere in the world.  But of course the bad news leaks out eventually and the bulletin was also one of the least interesting I had ever listened to.

But it is not just anodyne stories that make the news boring – sometimes editors add totally irrelevant information just to fill column inches.  This usually only happens in the local press; the stuff that never reaches the nationals, like “Man steals pair of socks from H R Taylor and Sons, men’s outfitters, 27 High Street, Haslemere.  Police took him into custody.  The socks were blue with red spots.”  Or “Mrs Emily Jones tripped over the step at the entrance of the Georgian Hotel on the High Street, Haslemere.  She was treated for a grazed knee.  Afterwards, she walked home.  When asked if she wanted a lift, she replied, ’oh, stop making a fuss’.”  And so on and so on.  You all know the sort of local news I mean.

But I wonder whether I have detected more such irrelevant writing in the press in recent days.  Are the newspapers, post-Leveson, scared of reporting information that might be a bit contentious or have they maybe run out of the exclusives they used to obtain earlier when they used more dubious news-gathering methods?

The thought first occurred to me when listening to a news report on the radio about a violin being offered for sale in Bulgaria by some gypsy possibly being the missing Stradivarius of classical musician Min-Jin Kym.  It was a fascinating story about how stolen goods, such as copper wire and lead roofing, passed through various travellers’ hands across Europe.  The musical instrument appeared to have followed a similar route, before turning up on the streets of Sofia.  But the report then ended with the sentence, ‘Miss Kym’s violin was stolen in Euston Station while she was buying a sandwich’.  My wife and I looked at each other and both burst out laughing.  It was such an incongruous statement after all the interesting stuff about itinerant European families.

In the last couple of days, there has been a flurry of Royal news.  We are always subjected to lengthy articles at such times from various royal watchers and experts, but this time the relatively minor incidents seem to have been an excuse for filling page after page of the newspapers.  Maybe there wasn’t any other news.  Or maybe this was another attempt to fool us with feel good stories.  Or was it simply the safest subject to cover?

One report discussed the hospital where The Queen recently spent a night.  However interesting the history and lay-out of the hospital is, the article rather fizzled out with the sentence, ‘One of the police guards on the door was Britain’s tallest officer, Anthony Wallyn, who stands at 7ft 2in.  His partner is Tony Thich, who is 5ft 6in.’  I could imagine the young cub reporter being sent to the hospital to get what information he could for the article and coming back with this tit-bit.  No attempt to telephone the hospital to ask a nurse for a report on The Queen’s condition this time though.

Then an article about Kate contained the information, ‘The Duchess of Cambridge wore a green double-breasted coat and matching high heels.  Experts advise against the wearing of high heels by women after the fifth month of their pregnancy.’  For goodness sake!  What are we supposed to do with this snidey aside?  Or perhaps this is the most controversial the paper felt it could be in the present climate?

Finally, an article about the Royal Princes on a skiing holiday.  It’s not as if this was a trip packed with off-piste shenanigans; at least one evening the Princes were invited to a ‘reception in a nearby hotel attended by 200 guests.’  But the article droned on and on about who was in town that week, whom the Princes spoke to, what they wore, etc, until the whole page was covered with words and photographs of snow.  And then, feeling something had to be added about Kate, the Royal all their readers are currently gagging to hear about, the paper ended the article with the sentence, ‘The Duchess of Cambridge had a traditional sledge made of wood.’  Obviously this information made an impact on me or I wouldn’t be writing about it, but equally clearly a one paragraph diary note that the younger Royals went skiing in the Alps just wouldn’t do.  And no suggestion of overhearing private conversations or telephone calls either.  I could see a whole team of cub reporters in the bar of the Gstad Hotel, scrabbling around to find enough information to fill a whole page.  Or perhaps we’re supposed to think, ‘oh no, surely she didn’t lie on a sledge on her tummy in her condition.  And could she drag the sledge to the top of the hill by herself without inviting injury, especially if it wasn’t a modern, lightweight plastic one?’ 

Is this the sensation and controversy and contentious discussion and provocative argument we must content ourselves with in this brave new world of media watchdogs underpinned by legislation?

PRESS FOR FREEDOM

Let's try and make some sense of the Levenson debate.  Can you call it a debate?  I will have to simplify things a bit, but, basically, Levenson wants better ethics in the press with some legislative back-up which he says wouldn't be control of the press.  The press don't want the legislation, although they admit they got carried away and became too intrusive before. They want stricter self-regulation.  The Labour party want all Levenson's recommendations implemented  regardless.  The Lib Dem part of the Coalition want them implemented too, including legislation.  But the Conservative part of the Government doesn't want legislation, which it sees as press control.  Meanwhile, those who had their phones hacked ('personalities' on the whole) want the press curbed.  And the active section of the public seems to be moving against press freedom too; some 100,000 have signed the petition calling for legislation.

I find all this a bit odd.

I can see why Levenson recommended tougher oversight of the press.  For a start, he had to, given his brief.  No one, not even the press, would have accepted a recommendation from him to do nothing.  The activities of reporters over the last few years had become totally unacceptable.  The argument at the time, from the offending press, was that public interest was being served.  And here we have a slight problem - is public interest served by publishing tittle-tattle about celebrities or are we just naturally avid gossipers and happy to read tittle-tattle?  Of course, if criminal activity or even simply hypocrisy is uncovered, I guess you could argue that such activities as phone hacking might be justified.  And, frankly, all that dramatic bleating by celebrities to Levenson (and interestingly to the press) about privacy didn't convince me at all.  Of course celebrities would like to be in the newspapers for what might be called good publicity only.  But that's not how it works.  The latest broadside from Hugh Grant, who assumes we have forgotten the press articles revealing his assignation in a car with a prostitute, is a case in point.  The more he blusters with affronted innocence, the more I remember how the fiction of his clean image was made known, and the less I am convinced that a watchdog backed up by legislation would have kept his seedy nightlife out of the news.  OK, so there is a limit to the amount of celebrity news we really want to read in even the mass circulation newspapers.  But surely it's legitimate to expose and show up a so-called clean-living film star.  Shouldn't it also be right to investigate other blustering innocents in the interests of finding the truth?

Of course we have some difficulties if the press insist on publishing innuendos, despite failing to find evidence.  This is where libel laws and a watchdog with teeth are an essential requirement.  It is also where legislative provisions would not help.

Having said that, I am not at all interested in pics of the Duchess of Cambridge's breasts or Prince Harry's bottom.  That doesn't mean that there should be no pictures of celebrities doing what they don't want us to see.  But I don't need to know private addresses nor details of their children.  I think I would be able to draw a line beyond which there is no real public interest.

But what exactly does Levenson mean by legislation that doesn't amount to control of the press?  He suggested that the legislation should be written in such a way as to show that it wasn't a curb on press freedom.  As The Telegraph succinctly put it - why does it need to be written in that way if there is in fact no curb on press freedom?  And I should here define my terms.  By 'press' I do mean TV and radio too - wherever reporters are out ferreting for information.  I don't use the word 'media' because I am excluding 'the new media'.  Even Levenson decided that the Internet was impossible to regulate.  He described it as an 'ethical vaccuum' and suggested that we all knew it wasn't reliable.  I'm not sure that's true.  But anyway half the recent press intrusion problems arose from the speed and coverage of the Internet.  A report or a picture in one news outlet is almost immediately available worldwide online.  So I exclude the Internet for the purposes of these comments, but the fact remains that a curb on the press, whilst leaving online media completely free is an anomaly in the inquiry's findings.  Levenson wrote 2,000 pages on press activities and measures to rein them in, but only one page on the whole Internet, which seems to me to leave rather a gap in the inquiry.

As far as public opinion is concerned, I fear we must, as we seem to need to increasingly these days, discount it.  There is such a knee-jerk reaction to the pronouncements and actions of authority these days, especially where the political parties are involved, that little thought is given to the implications of what people are asking for.  Having our legislators curb press activities is the last thing we really want.  We actually want journalists poking around in the affairs of state.  I am proud to live in a country where the press is unfettered.  Yes, it leads occasionally to excesses, but, as this time, we then do something about it.  And I don't see any problem in reporters pursuing celebrities either, especially those that make use of the press for their own purposes.  Should we accept without question the statements and views of those who appear in our newspapers or on our TV screens?  Where such activities are concerned, I think the press has a duty to expose hypocrisy.  Oddly, even the anti-phone hacking campaign Hacked-Off has said that phone-hacking could serve a public interest where a crime might be uncovered.  Does this sound like a fudge to you?  Not clear to me where they are drawing the line.  It only serves to underline the difficult of regulating press activity.

And of course where a crime is committed the whole matter becomes simpler; you don't need more legislation, existing provisions are strong enough - just take the culprits to court, journalists, editors, newspaper owners or whoever.  The same applies to intrusive publication of private information.  And we have another problem here.  How did the phone-hacking affair come to light in the first place?  It wasn't the police; they decided not to pursue the phone-hacking evidence.  It certainly wasn't the Government; they were much too cosy with the editors.  No, it was the Guardian newspaper that revealed all.  Now that's a blow for press freedom.  And maybe even for self -regulation.

So what of the political parties?  I am rather surprised that the Labour party and, more particularly, the Lib Dems, seem to be in favour of legislation to back up press regulation.  I thought this might seem an illiberal proposal to them.  But of course it's an easy position to call for implementation of the Levenson proposals without actually commenting on anything but the government's cold feet.  And the Government's hesitation is indeed a bit of a shot in the foot, since they set the inquiry up.

But let's see what the press come up with on Tuesday.  Sometimes, where civil liberties are concerned, arrangements have to be a little messy.  We have to put up with some things we don't like in other words.  I saw an episode of the TV programme The Hour the other day in which a black man was interviewed on a programme where a racist had just stated his views.  The black man said, 'this is the country I want to live in, where a racist that no one likes and very few agree with, can freely state his views in public, where the right of such a man to speak his views is respected and where he is not prevented from speaking'.  Amen.  Many other countries restrict their journalists (or pop singer protesters) in various ways or punish them afterwards.  I want us to criticise those countries and reform them, not teach them how to restrict freedoms in an acceptable way.

GAGS OFF

I shall try not to say, ‘PC gone mad’.  Oh, I just said it.  Anyway the fact is that PC is mad, so technically it can only go madder (though not in fact possible) or saner.  Can the latter at last be happening?  Is there finally a non-PC backlash?

I did wonder this the other day when there was the outcry about Frankie Boyle who likes to attack taboos with his humour.  Personally, I don’t find much of this stuff funny and so it does come across as tasteless and gratuitous.  It’s outrageous and insulting to specific persons, but not, I think, wit.  Maybe it’s also rather lazy, puerile writing.  It reminds me of when I was at school and we used to tell jokes like, ‘why did the leper lose at poker?’*  I’m not even always sure about Michael McIntyre who occasionally raises a laugh by slating someone/thing just for effect (rather than for real humour).  But I accept that many people like this.  It is in any case often the way stand-up is.  And I have always appreciated comedians like Joan Rivers or Ruby Wax who rarely take prisoners (but who I think are consistently funny too). 

And humour has fashions, like anything else.  Maybe there is no place these days for the comedians of yore (although I though the Christmas Ronnie programme was pretty popular.) (Perhaps that was only amongst the older population?).  But maybe attitudes have fashion too?  Has the PC approach had its day?

A propos my last post, I imagine for example that the BBC will be careful to find good reasons in future why it is appointing certain persons as presenters.  It won’t necessarily flood our screens with old people.  That case rather goes against the trend, except that in their final judgement, the tribunal also criticised the BBC for being obsessed with recruiting ethnic minorities.  Maybe that misguided policy will change too?  But hopefully with selection of the best candidates, rather than some extension of the present positive discrimination.

Anyway I was much encouraged by former Home Secretary Jack Straw’s comments on Pakistani gangs.  I have always thought quite a lot of him and his willingness to say ‘Pakistani’ earned him much respect from me (since that’s what they are).  You can read the position of the police here.  This reticence was understandable, if palpable nonsense.

I wondered too if the present government was detecting a mood for greater incorrectness, or whether it just wished to start a movement to break down the sillier aspects of correctness, when it stated in the Education White Paper last month that it wished to increase teacher authority in schools.  I think even parents have had enough of this ludicrous situation where teachers have to put up with abuse because they can’t punish pupils without breaking some over-hyped code.

Next, it would be nice to see a few more infringement of rights cases thrown out by the courts.  Especially those brought by women who never seem arsed to do any work, but winge loudly on their mobiles about how badly done by they are as they go down the shops to buy fags, diet Coke and undersized underwear and then fall over steps they can't see under their bellies.  Oh, am I allowed to say all that?

*  because he threw in his hand.