When Michale Buerk went onto the Today program today to announce this evening's Moral Maze
about the crisis of trust and authority, he signed off with a little
insider joke: "It's not just MP's, it's judges, churches, doctors ...
who is left that people can trust? Just journalists and
broadcasters..." There was a satisfied chortle from Humphreys. Not the
laugh of the joshing that Today encourages when it is Melvyn Bragg
making a joke about Humphreys' age. No. It was the embarrassed chortle
of someone who is trying to hide the satisfaction of believing this was
true but should not be said too loud. "We know "Today" is a rock of
truth and trustworthiness" whispered the chortle.
And yet, just a few minutes before, we had had someone from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers
talking about combined heat and power - the practice of taking waste
heat from power stations to heat houses and supply hot water. Innocent
enough, it seems. And trustworthy. Yet there was no probing
questioning. A small amount of research would have revealed David
MacKay's fascinating argument for heat pumps and against combined heat an power.
So was this piece just lazy journalism? No doubt a Public Relations
company approached Today with a ready-made story that didn't seem as if
it would cause too much of a fuss and filled the difficult slot of
0650-0653 when politicians have gone to ground. But do we want to be
paying a license fee to maintain a Public Relations channel open for
whatever lobby group happens to strike the audience equivalent of a
small win on the national lottery? Who was behind the story? Where were
the engineering firms that supply combined heat and power plant? And
how many stories, like this one, are lazy and questionable plugs?
The wind of mis-trust is blowing hard, and the national treasures on
the BBC should not confidently chortle as they think of themselves as
the rocks in the system while all other sources of confidence fall
away.
We
will soon, I hope, be asking the BBC to tell us how stories have come
to them. We will want to know whether we would believe a story less if
we understood its provenance. And we will be shocked to discover how
much news that is presented as trustworthy becomes questionable when
examined closely. And, in so far as we become more responsible for our
own judgements, that will be a good thing.
About the author
Tony Curzon Price is openDemocracy's Editor-in-Chief
When Michale Buerk went onto the Today program today to announce this evening's Moral Maze about the crisis of trust and authority, he signed off with a little insider joke: "It's not just MP's, it's judges, churches, doctors ... who is left that people can trust? Just journalists and broadcasters..." There was a satisfied chortle from Humphreys. Not the laugh of the joshing that Today encourages when it is Melvyn Bragg making a joke about Humphreys' age. No. It was the embarrassed chortle of someone who is trying to hide the satisfaction of believing this was true but should not be said too loud. "We know "Today" is a rock of truth and trustworthiness" whispered the chortle.
And yet, just a few minutes before, we had had someone from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers talking about combined heat and power - the practice of taking waste heat from power stations to heat houses and supply hot water. Innocent enough, it seems. And trustworthy. Yet there was no probing questioning. A small amount of research would have revealed David MacKay's fascinating argument for heat pumps and against combined heat an power.
So was this piece just lazy journalism? No doubt a Public Relations company approached Today with a ready-made story that didn't seem as if it would cause too much of a fuss and filled the difficult slot of 0650-0653 when politicians have gone to ground. But do we want to be paying a license fee to maintain a Public Relations channel open for whatever lobby group happens to strike the audience equivalent of a small win on the national lottery? Who was behind the story? Where were the engineering firms that supply combined heat and power plant? And how many stories, like this one, are lazy and questionable plugs?
The wind of mis-trust is blowing hard, and the national treasures on the BBC should not confidently chortle as they think of themselves as the rocks in the system while all other sources of confidence fall away.
We will soon, I hope, be asking the BBC to tell us how stories have come to them. We will want to know whether we would believe a story less if we understood its provenance. And we will be shocked to discover how much news that is presented as trustworthy becomes questionable when examined closely. And, in so far as we become more responsible for our own judgements, that will be a good thing.
This article is
copyright Tony Curzon Price and openDemocracy.
Comments
Well said. Another aspect is how much they are paid - in the BBC's case by the taxpayer. One of the thing that MPs resent is that to make any public impression they must get the hearing of journalists who work half as hard and get paid twice as much The top presenters are paid far more than the Prime Minister..... Hmmm
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