COVER -> DAY ONE
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To a politics addict an election is the best possible fix. The increased time devoted to the subject all points towards an event whose outcome is uncertain which adds spice. Never mind that in this United Kingdom General Election the coverage is unimaginatively dire and that the outcome is as certain as any such outcome can be, an election is an election.
There has never been one yet which has not been condemned for its crudity and superficiality. As far back as Mr. Pickwick (Eatanswill) and Will Ladislaw (Middlemarch) there are fine, journalistic accounts of venality, skullduggery, puerility and excess which make our contemporary contests seem sedate by comparison. The other change which has to be noted is that we have far less respect for our journalists than mid-Victorians had for Dickens and Eliot.
So far in this Election the contest for the wooden spoon has gone to form; the journalists have performed much less well than the politicians, the only trouble being that it is not easy to see this as long as the journalists are the filter through which we watch the performances of our politicians. They spend all their time accusing the party managers of "Spin" as if they were incapable of reading it accurately and getting to the heart of affairs.
Let me give three instances where the media has not lived up to basic standards.
First, at the beginning of the campaign, on no evidence whatsoever, the Election was universally billed as being a matter of indifference; the result, being a foregone conclusion, the public were apathetic. It follows, however, that if the public is so apathetic that it does not vote then the conclusion is by no means foregone, not least because the vote of the governing Labour Party is much 'softer' than that of the opposition Conservatives who are currently a long way behind in the polls.
Secondly, on the day when Labour issued its campaign Manifesto, the Deputy Prime Minister was involved in a scuffle with an avowed trouble-maker who admits to having thrown an egg at him from less than a yard away. On the same day a lady who was dissatisfied with the treatment of her partner in a state run hospital harangued the Prime Minister. On that day, too, the Home Secretary was barracked by a congress of policemen. All three incidents were interesting, made good television pictures and were worthy of reporting on their own merits but that is not to excuse the almost universal commentary: "These incidents wiped out coverage of the Manifesto launch" as if some unseen hand was at work. The very people reporting the wipe-out had been doing the wiping.
The third incident was by far the silliest. The Conservatives issued a "Secret" document from the European Union paving the way to tax harmonisation. It was almost a day before any journalist discovered extensive chunks of it calling for competitive rather than harmonised taxation and it was more than a day before anyone discovered that, far from being "Secret", the document had been in the public domain for weeks.
Now it may be quite rightly argued that Manifestos are of little account but if that is the case it cannot be argued with equal force that breaking manifesto commitments is a terrible breach of trust. They are, surely, important to the extent that we expect them to be honoured and as we expect them to be honoured to the letter they are surely important.
We are fast reaching the farcical situation where, three years from now, the Party in Government will be accused by the media of breaking promises which they collectively failed to report to the electorate. We are, in other words, entering an era where politics are an internal matter between politicians and the media from which the rest of us are excluded.
Having colluded to shut us out of the experience, the journalists then accuse the politicians of staying away from "Real People". The immediate inference from this is that journalists are not real people.
Party activists are not real people.
All those whose temperament or office leads them to keep their political opinions to themselves are not real people.
All those who more or less agree with the Government, or that the Government is doing a reasonably good job, are not real people.
When it comes down to it, the only "Real" people are anti-Government fanatics who commit acts of common assault for the pleasure of the cameras, so the man who threw an egg in an act of common assault was definitely a real person; so criminals at least are real people.
When these "real people" harangue the Prime Minister in respect of the minute details of a particular hospital he is expected meekly to take the blame, even though the very same (not real) people continually resent his 'interference' in detailed matters.
On the occasion in question Mr. Blair did stand meekly listening for a couple of minutes, visibly upset by the human hurt (rather than his own political 'show') and tactfully suggested that he and the lady might go somewhere quiet to discuss such a private matter. He behaved well both as a human being and a politician - the television pictures attest it - but he was dismissed as "Standing by helplessly". Of course, if he were that helpless, blaming him for what goes wrong would be pretty pointless. Either he is responsible or he isn't.
You can tell, can't you, that my favourite pastime is being marred by the knaves of the media? They still behave as if they were part of the constitution; they refer to themselves, self-servingly of course, as the "Fourth Estate" but, with the exception of the BBC, they are commercial enterprises, most of which have clear party political agendas.
Even the public broadcasting BBC is more interested in trapping politicians than coaxing them to explain; the interviewers are now much greater celebrities than the interviewees. A politician has to account for his actions to the electors, an interviewer is only accountable to the ratings and the less well he behaves, the converse of the politician, the more likely he is to keep his job.
For all such complaints, there is something mysterious about the political hidden hand. India turned out Mrs. Gandhi when she went too far; the British Conservatives were given a chance in 1992 which they did not deserve and so were doubly punished in 1997; for all his merits, Bill Clinton had drained Democrat credibility but not to the extent that Mr. Bush was loved. Result, a divided electorate.
There is an undercurrent of discourse, very hard to monitor, which produces election results and the more the media are divorced from it the less useful they are and the less accurate their predictions; and, after all, what is the point of an election without competing predictions?
Although I am interested in certain causes, my attitude to politics is not very different from the attitude of the sports fanatic. I want to win but, after that, let us have a good game and a bit of virtuosity from the other side. It is only the real fanatic that wants a dull game to guarantee victory; the best games are the close ones.
In the case of this election, everybody says it will not be close; which is why it is, from the sporting angle, a very poor show. Nonetheless, this does not dilute the obligation of the media, if it insists on its own importance, of covering the Election fully if not fairly.
