Society
NS Essay - 'The men and women who control broadcasting believe that television is an idiot's lantern'
Published 09 December 2002
TV executives, brought up on written culture, lack faith in the capacity of a visual medium to make sense of the news. Yet "ordinary people" constantly urge their betters to raise their sights. By David Cox
The news is bad. TV bulletins are watched less and less, and current affairs shows are watched less still. Newspapers are losing both circulation and public trust. Meanwhile, the nature of the news itself has changed. Nowadays, "if it bleeds, it leads", while outside times of crisis, the rest of the running order is in thrall to celebrity, lifestyle and sensation. Increasingly, news aims to shock, amuse or reassure, rather than inform. Coverage of serious topics, in the Guardian as much as the Sun, is largely calculated to reinforce prejudice rather than enlighten. As a result, such news as we consume keeps us less and less abreast of the public agenda.
Does it matter? Callow political advisers and well-fed lobbyists will tell you it doesn't. Leave people to enjoy the circuses they seem to prefer; affairs of state can be sorted out by those who understand them. Whether commendable or contemp- tible, this approach is no longer viable. The days when people were prepared to devolve authority to their betters have departed. Nowadays, we all want the say to which democracy entitles us, whether or not we know what we're talking about.
So popular understanding of public affairs matters. If citizens are poorly informed, government is left at the mercy of prejudice at worst, "common sense" at best. And common sense is not good enough, because the wisest course is often counter-intuitive. Equally, citizens need to appreciate the flaws in the government's schemes and comprehend alternatives to its proposals. How are these things to happen, if not through our news media?
It is easy to demand more responsibility from news providers. Unfortunately, readers, listeners and viewers prefer being entertained to being told about depressing and intractable public issues. Outlets at the mercy of market forces cannot buck consumer taste. Fortunately, unlike America and much of the rest of the world, Britain boasts information providers (in broadcasting if not in print) with other than simply commercial objectives. The BBC and Channel 4 exist solely to contribute to the public weal. Most of our other broadcasters are also required to provide socially useful output in return for their licences. What more important task could society require of the media under its sway than equipping citizens to perform their democratic duty?
As it happens, those responsible for the organisations involved are aware of the news crisis and keen to show that they are getting across it. This summer, the BBC conducted a far-reaching review of its political output. It is making substantial changes, and the effects will shortly hit our screens. The Independent Television Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Commission, which regulate the rest of British television, have just published a head-scratching report advancing a ten-point action plan. A common theme unites these two initiatives - the idea that news-based programming needs to be made more attractive.
The BBC is therefore axing On the Record and Despatch Box, programmes in which ageing male presenters address the Westminster agenda and interrogate politicians. Instead, programmes will involve ordinary people, report from places where they live and adopt the idiom of the young. The ITC/BSC report suggests that the impartiality rule, which now applies to all news broadcasters, should be withdrawn in at least some cases. Viewers might then be attracted by the excitement of partisanship.
Popularisation may seem the obvious way forward. Up till now, however, it has put few more bums on seats, let alone enhanced public understanding. The audience for dumb-as-possible Tonight with Trevor McDonald averaged only 3.6 million in 2001, compared with 6.7 million for its serious predecessor, World in Action. People often seem to find "news lite" even less appealing than the real thing, which at least appears to believe in itself. But there is a more important problem. Even if populist programmes could attract big audiences, would they really do the job required? Vacuous, frothy news shows will not create an informed citizenry. Still, at least they do not usually pretend to. Programming which aspires to be popular while purporting to be serious can actually do harm.
Last month, the BBC's current affairs flagship, Panorama, tackled pensions. Though this issue is often described as complex, the basics are comprehensible enough if clearly explained. Panorama did not attempt this task. Instead, viewers were offered the "human stories" of a handful of people who had experienced a pensions problem. The reporter rabbited on about his travel problems, and from time to time a disjointed "fact" crawled across the screen in the manner briefly favoured by youth shows in the 1980s. The programme-makers' objective seemed not so much to inform as to instil anxiety. Employers and politicians (though not increased life expectancy or long-term interest rates) were vaguely accused of betrayal. Only Panorama was apparently on our side. Sadly, it had no help to offer us.
This programme can only have left viewers worse equipped to plan their lives or assess public proposals than before. Much would-be popular, news-related programming is similarly mind-numbing, reflecting the audience's confusion back to it. This, however, seems to be the kind of fare that those in charge see as the solution to the news problem, perhaps with the added miracle ingredient of the "shock jock" presenter, primed to provoke instead of inform. Only emotiveness, sensationalism, triviality and folksiness will grab the punters, they seem to believe, so serious exposition is out.
People used to say history was too boring for television. A bit of effort has turned it into a vogue genre, and Simon Schama and David Starkey into highly paid superstars. The case for according public affairs similar treatment is arguably more urgent; it would certainly be worth giving it a go. Let us suppose, however, that genuinely serious news-based programmes could only ever attract small audiences. This would not make them pointless.
The majority have never spent much time contemplating the implications of events. Their opinions have been formed largely through a process of osmosis ultimately reliant on input from such trusted figures as choose to put in the effort: spouses, teachers, clergymen, a bloke down the pub, shop stewards, postmistresses, tribal chiefs. As time gets more precious, "secondary dissemination" through such figures is probably growing more important. The ITC/BSC study found that 43 per cent of 16- to 34-year-olds identified "word of mouth" as a useful source of news.
It is both legitimate and rational for individuals to delegate the task of analysing public affairs to others of their choosing. In a society dependent on this process, what matters is not the numbers consuming primary data, but the quality of the data available to the minority who in effect act as opinion-formers for the community. Public broadcasting offers a means of delivering such data instantly throughout the kingdom. On the Record may reach only a couple of million viewers; but when John Humphrys kebabbed Tony Blair over the Ecclestone affair, most of us got to hear of it.
What counts is the range, rigour and reliability of such programmes, not the size of their audiences. Another vital ingredient is the now challenged commitment to impartiality with which they are currently Kitemarked. Inevitably, this obligation raises all kinds of problems, but its value as an aspiration can be seen in the high degree of trust that broadcast news enjoys compared to its print equivalent.
So why do our public broadcasters refuse to provide in-depth analysis of the public agenda, even in obscure corners of their schedules? Part of the answer is that their public service objectives are nowhere clearly defined, and they have come to expect to be judged, like their commercial counterparts, by their ratings, rather than the character of their output. The executives involved, who are overwhelmingly of privileged origin, live in fear of losing the patronage of mass audiences they assume to be incorrigibly frivolous. Yet "ordinary people" are constantly urging their betters to raise their sights. Focus groups conducted by the Hansard Society found people demanding more "issue-based information", between elections as well as during them, and broadcasters' postbags tell the same story. Even if some of those making such pleas neglected to consume what they demand, they would presumably approve of its being made available.
Those to whom they appeal, however, lack not just the will to provide what is asked, but faith in their capacity to do so. The men and women who control broadcasting usually watch less television than their viewers and have less grasp of its grammar. Often Oxbridge types brought up on written culture, they regard print as the natural vehicle for information. Many believe that television is not just inherently a "visual" medium, but immutably an "idiot's lantern", incapable of handling ideas of any kind. Newspaper commentators jealous of TV's power eagerly encourage this attitude. Meanwhile, the Radio 4 brigade argue that though talk can be serious, pictures are a distraction.
Yet since chalk first hit blackboard and the first diagram found its way into a textbook, communicators of complexity have groped for images to support their words. Today, few talks are attempted without flip charts, overheads or Powerpoint presentations. Why do we look at people when they speak to us, and travel to meetings rather than rely on the phone? Because audiovisual transmission is the most effective kind. A University of Manchester study on Television and the Brain, completed last month, showed that information is much better remembered when conveyed by video than by voice or text alone. Sound and vision are processed by different sides of the brain. Delivering both at once apparently prompts both sides to work in tandem, to considerably greater effect.
Admittedly, television's capacity to disentangle the chaos of public affairs is not obvious, because current attitudes ensure we do not see it attempting the task. Yet from 1972 until 1988, ITV's Weekend World demonstrated that this task can be fulfilled. Each Sunday, this programme took apart an issue of the day, seeking the causes of problems, explaining policy options and identifying their deficiencies. Politicians debated the programme's conclusions, rather than being treated as objects of derision.
People who did not enjoy such stuff considered the programme boring, yet it had a passionate following. This was strongest, incidentally, among the industrial working class and immigrant communities, but WW's insights also fuelled leader columns, parliamentary speeches, current affairs lessons and ambassadorial reports. The programme helped shift economic policy from inflationary demand management to the sound money regime now crowned by central bank independence, a change fiercely disputed at the time but now universally approved. Today, a comparable show might help us judge whether Blair or Brown is right about the financing of public services.
Unfortunately, those to whom the job would fall might resist assuming this mantle. In 1975, Weekend World's founders, John Birt and Peter Jay, wrote a series of articles identifying a "bias against understanding" in broadcast journalism and calling for a more analytical approach. In his recent autobiography, Birt recalls the "snarling hostility" these articles provoked, as the journalistic establishment accused the pair of "pomposity", "snobbery" and "elitism". The reporter Denis Tuohy explained that the job of TV journalism was to be "a mirror" rather than "a blackboard".
Behind such cries lies a transformation in the attitudes of our educated elite. Lord Reith believed it was his task to tell people what was what. His successors believe it is part of their task to prevent any such thing from happening. Once analysis of the public agenda goes beyond the level of Newsnight, it necessarily opens up profound questions about how society should be ordered. Our broadcast journalists and their masters shrink from subjecting such matters to reasoned analysis. They prefer telling stories to seeking explanations.
This is not simply because they want to divert their audience rather than challenge it. They doubt the viability of in-depth news analysis in an increasingly diverse, multicultural society that lacks consensus about either concerns or values. Coherent accounts of causes and possible courses of action would inevitably end up favouring some actors on the political stage and undermining others. If the message appeared supportive of the established order, those hostile to the status quo would protest that totalitarianism was upon us. If it seemed subversive, authority would mobilise its forces against those fanning dissent. Who wants to get involved in all that?
Broadcast journalists, you might think. But you'd be wrong. Weekend World's practitioners were ruthlessly open-minded, relished controversy and cared nothing what the impact of their conclusions might be. The products of today's media culture have a horror of didacticism, yet are at the same time often wedded to a raft of notions they consider it incorrect to question. To claim impartiality discomfits them: those who dislike what is offered in its name might be affronted. In a postmodern universe, seriousness is not cool and expertise is out of fashion, while reason and even meaning are questionable concepts. What is truth, anyway, and who really needs it?
The answer is that we all need it. Playground philosophers used to tell us that the world might be an illusion. So it may, but most of us prefer to work on the assumption that it isn't. To take charge of our destiny, we need the best information and ideas that the human mind can garner. We all need to work out what we think of the arguments for and against the euro or war in Iraq, and what should be done about global warming or GM foods. It is time that our public broadcasters, for all the difficulties, got on with the job of helping us to do so.
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